Download or read book Unearthing the Polynesian Past written by Patrick Vinton Kirch and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-10-31 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps no scholar has done more to reveal the ancient history of Polynesia than noted archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch. For close to fifty years he explored the Pacific, as his work took him to more than two dozen islands spread across the ocean, from Mussau to Hawai'i to Easter Island. In this lively memoir, rich with personal—and often amusing—anecdotes, Kirch relates his many adventures while doing fieldwork on remote islands. At the age of thirteen, Kirch was accepted as a summer intern by the eccentric Bishop Museum zoologist Yoshio Kondo and was soon participating in archaeological digs on the islands of Hawai'i and Maui. He continued to apprentice with Kondo during his high school years at Punahou, and after obtaining his anthropology degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Kirch joined a Bishop Museum expedition to Anuta Island, where a traditional Polynesian culture still flourished. His appetite whetted by these adventures, Kirch went on to obtain his doctorate at Yale University with a study of the traditional irrigation-based chiefdoms of Futuna Island. Further expeditions have taken him to isolated Tikopia, where his excavations exposed stratified sites extending back three thousand years; to Niuatoputapu, a former outpost of the Tongan maritime empire; to Mangaia, with its fortified refuge caves; and to Mo'orea, where chiefs vied to construct impressive temples to the war god 'Oro. In Hawai'i, Kirch traced the islands' history in the Anahulu valley and across the ancient district of Kahikinui, Maui. His joint research with ecologists, soil scientists, and paleontologists elucidated how Polynesians adapted to their island ecosystems. Looking back over the past half-century of Polynesian archaeology, Kirch reflects on how the questions we ask about the past have changed over the decades, how archaeological methods have advanced, and how our knowledge of the Polynesian past has greatly expanded.
Download or read book Polynesia in Early Historic Times written by Douglas L. Oliver and published by Bess Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book presents a comprehensive and balanced description of major aspects of Polynesian cultures, using both the accounts of the European "discoverers" and the up-to-date writings of archaeologists and anthropologists".--BOOKJACKET.
Download or read book Oral Traditions of Anuta A Polynesian Outlier in the Solomon Islands written by Richard Feinberg Professor of Anthropology Kent State University and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1998-04-28 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anuta is a small Polynesian community in the eastern Solomon Islands that has had minimal contact with outside cultural forces. Even at the end of the twentieth century, it remains one of the most traditional and isolated islands in the insular Pacific. In Oral Traditions of Anuta, Richard Feinberg offers a telling collection of Anutan historical narratives, including indigenous texts and English translations. This rich, thorough assemblage is the result of a collaborative project between Feinberg and a large cross-section of the Anutan community that developed over a period of twenty-five years. The volume's emphasis is ethnographic, consisting of a number of texts as related by the island's most respected experts in matters of traditional history. Feinberg's annotations, which arm the reader with essential ethnographic and historical contexts, clarify important linguistic and cultural issues that arise from the stories. The texts themselves have important implications for the relationship of oral tradition to history and symbolic structures, and afford new evidence pertinent to Polynesian language sub-grouping. Further, they provide insight into a number of Anutan customs and preoccupations, while also suggesting certain widespread Polynesian practices dating back to the pre-contact and early contact periods.
Download or read book Polynesian Seafaring and Navigation written by Richard Feinberg and published by Kent State University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-24 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After fourteen months of field research in 1972-73 and an additional four months of field work with the Anutans in the Solomon Islands capital of Honiara in 1983, Richard Feinberg here provides a thorough study of Anutan seafaring and navigation. In doing so he gives rare insights into the larger picture of how Polynesians have adapted to the sea. This richly illustrated book explores the theory and technique used by Anutans in construction, use, and handling of their craft; the navigational skills still employed in interisland voyaging; and their culturally patterned attitudes toward the ocean and travel on the high seas. Further, the discussion is set within the context of social relations, values, and the Anutan's own symbolic definitions of the world in which they live.
Download or read book Developments in Polynesian Ethnology written by Robert Borofsky and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2019-03-31 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Development in Polynesian Ethnology assesses the current state of anthropological research in Polynesia by examining the debates and issues that shape the discipline today. What have anthropologists achieved? What concerns now dominate discussion? Where is Polynesian anthropology headed? In a series of provocative and original essays, leading scholars examine prehistory, social organization, socialization and character development, mana and tapu, chieftainship, art and aesthetics, and early contact. Together these essays show how history, anthropology, and archaeology have combined to give a broad understanding of Polynesian societies developing over time--how they represent a blend of modernity and tradition, continuity and change. This book is both an introduction to Polynesia for interested students and a thought-provoking synthesis for scholars charting new directions and posing possibilities for future research. Scholars outside Polynesian studies will find the perspectives it offers important and its comprehensive bibliography an invaluable resource.
Download or read book Encounters The Creation of New Zealand written by Paul Moon and published by Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited. This book was released on 2013-07-24 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Throughout its human history, New Zealand has been interpreted and experienced in often radically different ways. Each wave of arrivals to its shores has left its own set of views of New Zealand on the country – applying a new coat of mythology and understanding to the landscape, usually without fully removing the one that lies beneath it.' Encounters is the wide-ranging, audacious and gripping story of New Zealand's changing national identity, how it has emerged and evolved through generations. In this genre-busting book, historian Paul Moon delves into how the many and conflicting ideas about New Zealand came into being. Along the way, he explores forgotten crevices of the nation's character, and exposes some of the mythology of its past and present. These include, for example, the earliest Maori myths and the 'mock sacredness' of the All Blacks in the twenty-first century; the role of nostalgia in our national character, both Maori and Pakeha; whether the explorer Kupe existed; the appeal of the Speight's 'Southern Man'; and ruminations on New Zealand art and landscape. What results is an absorbing piece of scholarship, an imaginative and exuberant epic that will challenge preconceptions about what it means to be a New Zealander, and how our country is understood. Lyrical, breathtaking and provocative, and illustrated with artworks throughout, Encounters offers an extraordinary insight into the beginnings of our country.
Download or read book Ethnographic Artifacts written by Sjoerd R. Jaarsma and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2000-06-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnographic Artifacts: Challenges to a Reflexive Anthropology examines anthropological practice and product, confronting issues of representation and the power of discourse in the lives and practice of both those doing research and of those being researched. Using eight case studies by ethnographers who share extensive research experience in the Pacific, the volume outlines "the trouble with ethnography" so representative of the end of this century, where ethnography itself is perceived as a codification of contested relations. Ethnographic Artifacts takes a unique approach to the social life of ethnography. The editors identify three domains in which ethnographic artifacts are given meaning: as text, as object, and as a historically contrived representation of the community in the public sphere. By allowing that analysis of the life of ethnography is important in all three of these domains, appreciation moves beyond narrow rhetorical and textual concerns. The volume provides a multi-faceted means for the reflexive understanding of the production, distribution, and reception of ethnography. Its goal is not mere documentation but rather the assessment of the ethical dimensions of the discipline's practice in a globalizing world. By melding ethical concerns with reflection on the text and the object itself, Ethnographic Artifacts adds dimension to the now well-established reflexive literature. Contributors: Niko Besnier, Jonathan Friedman, Michael Goldsmith, Sjoerd R. Jaarsma, Grant McCall, Mary N. MacDonald, Judith Macdonald, Toon van Meijl, Marta A. Rohatynskyj.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Anthropology written by H. James Birx and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2006 with total page 3138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses on physical, social and applied athropology, archaeology, linguistics and symbolic communication. Topics include hominid evolution, primate behaviour, genetics, ancient civilizations, cross-cultural studies and social theories.
Download or read book The Wet and the Dry written by Patrick Vinton Kirch and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars and researchers have long believed that the ability to irrigate is crucial to the development of civilizations. In this book, archaeologist Patrick Kirch challenges this "hydraulic hypothesis" and provides a more accurate and detailed account of the role of "wet" and "dry" cultivation systems in the development of complex sociopolitical structures. Examining research on cultural adaptation and ecology in Western Polynesia and utilizing extensive data from a variety of important South Pacific sites, Kirch not only reveals how particular systems of production developed within the constraints imposed by environmental conditions, but also explores the tension that arises between contrasting productive systems with differential abilities to produce surplus. He shows that the near total neglect of short-fallow dryland cultivation, as well as arboriculture, or tree-cropping, has seriously distorted the picture that archaeologists and anthropologists have of agricultural intensification and its relation to complex social structure. This work, likely to become a classic, will be central to all future discussions of the ecology and politics of agricultural intensification.
Download or read book The Journal of the Polynesian Society written by Polynesian Society (N.Z.) and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vols. for 1892-1941 contain the transactions and proceedings of the society.
Download or read book Double Ghosts written by David A. Chappell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This narrative recounts the 18th and 19th century shipping out of Pacific islanders aboard European and American vessels, a kind of counter-exploring, that echoed the ancient voyages of settlement of their island ancestors.
Download or read book Making History written by Robert Borofsky and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making History begins with a puzzle. In 1976 the inhabitants of Pukapuka, a Polynesian island in the South Pacific, revived a traditional form of social organization that several authoritative Pukapukan informants claimed to have experienced previously in their youth. Yet five professional anthropologists, who conducted research on the island prior to 1976, do not mention it in any of their writings. Had the Pukapukans 'invented' a new tradition? Or had the anthropologists collectively erred in not recording an old one? In unraveling this puzzle, Robert Borofsky compares two different ways of 'making history', two different ways of constructing knowledge about the past. He examines the dynamic nature of Pukapukan knowledge focusing on how Pukapukans, in the process of learning and validating their traditions, continually change them. He also shows how anthropologists, in the process of writing about such traditions for Western audiences, often overstructure them, emphasizing uniformity at the expense of diversity, stasis at the expense of change. As well as being of interest for what it reveals about Pukapukan (and more generally Polynesian) culture, Making History helps clarify important strengths and limitations of the anthropological approach. It provides valuable insights into both the anthropological construction of knowledge and the nature of anthropological understanding.
Download or read book Leadership and Change in the Western Pacific written by R. Feinberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-01-07 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ethnographic exploration of the rise of new forms of leadership at community and national levels with islanders are synthesising traditional and Western models.
Download or read book The Translation of Culture written by T. O. Beidelman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences. This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library: Classics from the Tavistock Press. Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1971 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.
Download or read book The Essential Edmund Leach Anthropology and society written by Edmund Ronald Leach and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains a selection of Edmund Leach's writings on society, taken largely, though not exclusively, from the early part of his career. It includes such essays as Rethinking Anthropology and extracts from Political Systems of Highland Burma.
Download or read book The Essential Edmund Leach Culture and human nature written by Edmund Ronald Leach and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brings together a representative selection of the writings of Edmund Leach.
Download or read book Island Societies written by Patrick Vinton Kirch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1986-10-09 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concentrating their attention on the Pacific Islands, the contributors to this book show how the tightly focused social and economic systems of islands offer archaeologists a series of unique opportunities for tracking and explaining prehistoric change. From the 1950s onwards, excavations in such islands as Fiji, Palau and Hawaii revolutionised Oceanic archaeology and, as the major problems of cultural origins and island sequences were resolves, archaeologists came increasingly to study social change and to integrate newly acquired data on material culture with older ethnographic and ethnohistorical materials. The fascinating results of this work, centring on the evolution of complex Oceanic chiefdoms into something very much like classic 'archaic states', are authoritatively surveyed here.
