Landesque capital as an alternative to food storage in Melanesia: Irrigated taro terraces in New Georgia,Solomon Islands

Abstract

In the Pacific islands, subsistence diversity made possible continuous production of food while well-developed exchange networks redistributed these foodstuffs as well as items within the prestige economy. All these were aspects of the ‘storage structures’ that enabled social and nutritional value to be saved, accumulated and later mobilised. In addition, there were investments in the land, landesque capital, which secured future food surpluses and so provided an alternative to food storage, in a region where the staple foods were mostly perishable, yams excepted, and food preservation was difficult. Landesque capital included such long-term improvements to productivity as terraces, mounds, irrigation channels, drainage ditches, soil structural changes and tree planting. These investments provided an effective alternative to food storage and made possible surplus production for exchange purposes. As an example, in the New Georgia group of the western Solomon Islands irrigated terraces, termed ruta, were constructed for growing the root crop taro (Colocasia esculenta). Surplus taro from ruta enabled inland groups to participate in regional exchange networks and so obtain the shell valuables that were produced by coastal groups. In this paper, we reconstruct how this exchange system worked in New Georgia using ethno-archaeological evidence, we chart its prehistoric rise and post-colonial fall, and we outline the factors that constrained its long-term expansion.     

Community-based Fisheries Management,Tradition and the Challenges of Development in Marovo,Solomon Islands

This study examines traditional fisheries-related resource management through a case in which local communities, from a basis of customary, ‘common property’ control over the sea and its resources, handle a multitude of development issues. Presenting first some important issues relating to people's role in fisheries management and to the ‘common property’ debate, the article then describes a traditional system for management of land and sea resources in a Pacific Islands society; that of Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands. Emphasis is given to fisheries resources, with a view to explaining in practical terms how a system of customary marine tenure operates under the wider social, political, economic and ecological circumstances of change arising from development pressures. Against this background, assessments are made of the viability of this traditional fisheries management system under present conditions of state control and of both external and internal pressures for large-scale resource development enterprises.