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Article Excerpt
Abstract
In West Polynesia, monumental structures with a volume [greater than or equal to] 2500 [m.sup.2] include mounds of earth or stone that in traditional history were used to house or bury chiefs, as well as being the focus of ceremonial and religious activity. We review archaeological theory about the initiation of monumental architecture and examines how chiefly and high-status activity might be identified. Large structures with monumental dimensions often have a complicated construction history that spanned several centuries indicating change to the social structure, particularly the power of elites. As a result archaeologists need to develop ideas that relate episodes of architectonic change to alterations in the prehistoric socio-political system.
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Complex societies are associated worldwide with monumental architecture, making the examination of massive structures integral to the study of the origins and development of socio-political complexity (Childe 1949; Peebles and Kus 1977; Trigger 1990). In Polynesia the hierarchically organized chiefdoms encountered by early European visitors displayed substantial variation in their size, organization and degree of stratification, as well as sharing fundamental features denoting a common origin (Sahlins 1957; Kirch and Green 1987). Such socio-political similarities and differences were manifested in the settlement landscapes of island groups, which often contained examples of monumental architecture made in earth, stone or a combination of the two (Kirch 1990; Graves and Green 1993).
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This paper examines the origins of monumental structures in West Polynesia (Figure 1), and reviews archaeological approaches to the study of massive structures. These include methods for assessing chiefly power from the evidence offered by large constructions, and how the study of monumental architecture might inform us about the development of late-prehistoric societies in the Central Pacific. Our approach draws on literature from Polynesia and other parts of the world, and illustrates conceptual perspectives on the study of monumental architecture, using examples from Samoa, particularly the Pulemelei mound, and Tonga, with which we are familiar. The review demonstrates the way in which different readings of monumental architecture, each containing a range of inbuilt assumptions, can be created for complex structures like the Pulemelei mound, and the importance of archaeological data to examine their validity.
Several factors have been used to explore variability in Polynesian socio-political institutions and they provide a context for understanding the development of monumental architecture. They include the productivity of island environments (Anderson and Walter 2002; Ladefoged 1992), the population growth cycle (Kirch 1984), and the nature of the ancestral political system (Kirch and Green 2001).
The nature of island environments clearly sets limits on the level of social complexity able to be supported by a Neolithic technology. Sahlins (1958) and Goldman (1970), for example, noted in their synchronic analyses of Polynesian chiefdoms that the least stratified societies came from resource-poor coral atolls that were unable to support large populations and where large-scale architecture was absent (see also Adler and Wilshusen 1990).
The attainment of large, high-density populations in much of Polynesia has been argued by Kirch (2000:307-11) to follow some form of logistic pattern, in which high rates of initial growth eventually slowed as human numbers began to exert various kinds of pressure. In island ecosystems with plentiful productive resources, particularly arable land, population size and density could reach levels where intensification of the political, economic and social systems comprising a chiefdom were expressed in monumental construction.
In addition to the demographic trajectory, political development was shaped by the social divisions and architectonic features of an Ancestral Polynesian Society (APS), hypothesized to be located in West Polynesia about 2200-1900 BP, and transported by colonists to East Polynesia (Kirch and Green 2001:79). The basic principle of ranking or status rivalry between junior and senior members of a group, and between junior and senior branches of a lineage in APS has been described as: "the structural germ that could give rise to hierarchy again and again once societies increased in size" (Kirch 2000:322).
These factors provide a historical framework for understanding pathways to socio-political complexity in Polynesia, but are less compelling when considering the emergence of monumental architecture. This is illustrated particularly by different timescales for the origins of monumental structures in West Polynesia and East Polynesia.
The islands of Tonga in West Polynesia have a combined land area of only 700 [km.sup.2], and were colonized at 2900 BP by Lapita groups (Burley and Dickinson 2001). The population size relative to the amount of arable land (the 'full-land' situation, see Kirch 1984: 222) was probably reached at 2300-1700 BP (Green 1973; Kirch 1984:222-3), yet monumental architecture emerged on Tonga, and on the nearby but much larger archipelago of Samoa, only after some 2000 years of prehistoric occupation at 1000-800 BP (Burley 1998; Green 2002). By comparison, East Polynesia was probably colonised by 1200-700 BP (Anderson and Sinoto 2002; Anderson 2005), with monumental structures constructed within 200-500 years of initial settlement on several islands, including Rapa Nui/Easter Island (Martinsson-Wallin and Crockford 2002), Hawaii (Kolb 1994) and New Zealand (Sutton et al. 2003). The coincidence in the timing of human arrival in East Polynesia and emergence of monumental architecture in West Polynesia suggests that the 'structural germ' of social complexity taken to East Polynesia came from the already stratified chiefdoms of West Polynesia (Smith 2004; cf. Kirch 1990:207). The rapid development of monumental architecture and other forms of social intensification in East Polynesia may result, therefore, from the political systems present in West Polynesian society 1000 years ago. If that is the case, the archaeological manifestation of early complex societies in West Polynesia--their community patterning and monumental architecture--is crucial for understanding the nature of chiefly power and authority taken by colonists to East Polynesia. Our focus on monumental architecture is also based on a common finding that massive structures frequently had complicated life-histories, involving change in their size, shape and function (Stevenson 2002; Graves and Sweeny 1993). This implies that the cultural meaning of monumental architecture was not invariant in the past--nor is it in contemporary settings (Holtorf 1999; Martinsson-Wallin 2004; Wallin 2004)--and such changes may indicate socio-political perturbation in the development of Polynesian chiefdoms that is not evident in linguistic reconstructions or recorded in ethnohistorical accounts. Archaeological approaches to examining the historical complexity of chiefdoms from their architecture are required, therefore, since it is clear that social organization has not remained static in West Polynesia during the last 1000 years (Kirch 1984:286; Herdrich and J. Clark 1993:60; Kolb 1994).
Background
The area usually referred to as West Polynesia includes Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, 'Uvea and Futuna, which were all colonized by Lapita people some 2900-2800 years ago. Rotuma and Niue can also been included, although archaeological evidence suggests they may have been settled later at 2000-1000 BP (Figure 1). 'Monumental architecture' is a term that can potentially include all substantial built structures and features in a landscape, but is preferable to 'monument', which implies a structure that has a purpose to evoke memory (Elliott 1964). In Polynesia the distinction between 'monument' and 'monumental architecture' has significance for understanding the spatial structure of chiefly societies, with the distribution of monuments demarcating a territorial boundary, whereas monumental architecture can mark the central place of a descent group (Kirch 1990; Burley 1996; Shepardson 2005). There is no agreed method for gauging whether a prehistoric structure has 'monumental' proportions, and scale is often assigned relatively, by comparison of area or volume (Buist 1969; Davidson 1974; Kirch 1988; Spennemann 1989; Anderson and Walter 2002, see below).
A functional division can be made between types of monumental architecture linked to production (field systems, terraces, fish ponds, quarries), infrastructure (roads, wall, canals, docks), and defence (fortifications, defensive walls and ditches), and special-function monumental structures, such as temples, elite habitations and burial places (Trigger 1990)--the focus of this paper. In post-processual conceptions of landscape, infrastructure, production and defence structures have symbolic significance, yet special-function monumental sites were frequently the locus of intense socio-political activity, particularly when located within a ceremonial precinct or community settlement.
There have been relatively few in-depth archaeological studies of special-function monumental architecture (as defined above) in West Polynesia, although a number of structures have been surveyed and interpreted in the light of ethnohistorical and subsequent ethnographic information (Burley and J. Clark 2003). The following is a necessarily brief overview of special-function monumental structures, particularly large platforms/mounds, in West Polynesia.
Tonga and Samoa
In Tonga, large mounds associated with burial (langi, faitoka, malae), pigeon snaring (sia heu lupe) and sitting/resting/public audience ('esi) have been examined by McKern (1929), Kirch (1980, 1988), Spennemann (1989) and Burley (1996). All large mound structures are linked to the traditional chiefly system (Burley 1998), and: "display hierarchical distributions that correspond to the political hierarchy itself" (Kirch 1990:218).
Large house mounds are rare in Tonga, and the largest earth mound in Samoa, and probably West Polynesia, known as Lapule, was according to traditional history associated with the despot Tupuivao (ca. 1615-1640AD), who is said to have built his house on the mound (Freeman 1944; Green1969a:102). Lapule and other nearby earth mounds have not been excavated, but several large mounds investigated at Vailele revealed they were built in several phases, with a change from non-residential to residential use (Davidson 1974:226). Other large mounds of stone and earth have been reported on Upolu at the Mulifanua Plantation, Leulumoega and Sa'anapu'u (Epling and Kirk 1972), and on Savai'i...
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