Bulletin

Issue: March 2005

Research in Action

Sweating for science in the Pacific

Success often comes from 90 per cent perspiration and 10 per cent inspiration.

This certainly applies in the case of a major project on which archaeologists from La Trobe University and New Zealand’s University of Otago are working in the Pacific.

Their objective is to improve knowledge of the Tongan maritime empire, the most widespread and
complex socio-political entity known
in prehistoric Oceania.

A collaboration between La Trobe University archaeologist, Professor Tim Murray, historian, Professor Alan Frost, and Dr Geoffrey Clark from Otago University, their work has received a five-year ARC $365,000 Discovery Grant.

Professor Murray says the project goes beyond the usual single-island / archipelago-based research and aims to understand the dynamic past of the entire Central Pacific over the past 1,000 years.

‘Spanning the ethnological boundaries of Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia, the Tongan maritime empire was organised by a pair of paramount chiefs who brought under Tongan influence Pacific Islander populations living far beyond the Tongan archipelago – an
event unique in Polynesia.

‘At its height, from AD 1000 to AD 1500, Tongan influence extended to the neighbouring archipelagos of Fiji and Samoa, as well as to the islands of Rotuma, Futuna and ‘Uvea, an area of more than three million square kilometres of ocean.’

Monumental architecture, including large burial and house mounds, platforms and forts, built of earth, volcanic stone or limestone, are associated with the Tongan presence.

One such mound is at Pulemelei in Samoa, the largest stone structure in Polynesia. With base dimensions of 60m by 50m and a height of 12m, it incorpo-rates 30,000 cubic metres of stone.

An archaeological team led by Dr Clark, comprising up to three archaeologists, several post graduate students, specialists, and 20 local workers, has worked at the Pulemelei mound for three years.

The team does its field work for four to five weeks in the dry season. A large part of each season has been spent clearing vegetation, exposing rocks and surrounding stone features. With plant cover removed, the sun heats the mound, a monumental structure radiating enormous amounts of heat, which acts on some days like a solar-powered oven.

Since the mound has been cleared it has again became a place where ceremonies and socio-political rituals take place. It is now considered by the former Prime Minister of Samoa, Tupua Tamasese, as a place central to Samoan culture. Plans are afoot to hold a festival at Pulemelei celebrating the common heritage of Polynesians.

Says Dr Clarke: ‘Through our archaeological investigations, the mound has again become a living monument connecting the voiceless prehistoric past of ancestors with the aspirations and lives of descendents.’

The project has a number of aims. It will provide the first comprehensive radiocarbon chronology of the extensive network of monuments in the Central Pacific, and obtain detailed stylistic information for major field monuments through excavation and mapping.

It will also improve understanding of indigenous cross-cultural contact. If the spread of Tongan monuments indicates imposition of Tongan authority, the transformative effect of culture contact between Tongans and other indigenous peoples will be in the record of inter-personal encounters away from imperial infrastructure.

Another aim is to build up a comparative picture of empire that can be used to help understand the development of maritime empires elsewhere in the world, from antiquity (Mycenaean, Norse) and from history, like the Portuguese in Asia, the Indian and Arab empires of the Indian Ocean and European colonial expansion in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.