Oral History of a Polynesian Outlier
Title | Oral History of a Polynesian Outlier PDF eBook |
Author | Richard Feinberg |
Publisher | |
Pages | 361 |
Release | 1993 |
Genre | Anuta (Polynesian people) |
ISBN |
Oral Traditions of Anuta : A Polynesian Outlier in the Solomon Islands
Title | Oral Traditions of Anuta : A Polynesian Outlier in the Solomon Islands PDF eBook |
Author | Richard Feinberg Professor of Anthropology Kent State University |
Publisher | Oxford University Press, USA |
Pages | 306 |
Release | 1998-04-28 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 0195355474 |
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.
Polynesian Oral Traditions
Title | Polynesian Oral Traditions PDF eBook |
Author | Richard Feinberg |
Publisher | |
Pages | 304 |
Release | 2018 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 9781606353394 |
Anuta, a small Polynesian community in the eastern Solomon Islands, has had minimal contact with outside cultural forces. Even at the start of the 21st century, it remains one of the most traditional and isolated islands in the insular Pacific. In Polynesian Oral Traditions, Richard Feinberg offers a window into this fascinating and relatively unfamiliar culture through a collection of Anutan historical narratives, including indigenous texts and English translations. This rich, thorough assemblage is the result of a 25-year collaboration between Feinberg and a large cross section of the Anutan community. 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. The texts themselves have important implications for the relationship of oral tradition to history and symbolic structures, affording new evidence pertinent to Polynesian language subgrouping. Further, they provide insight into a number of Anutan customs and preoccupations, while also suggesting certain widespread Polynesian practices dating back to the precontact and early contact periods. Feinberg's annotations, an essential aspect of this volume, arm the reader with essential ethnographic and historical contexts, clarifying important linguistic and cultural issues that arise from the stories.
Demography of the Western Polynesian Outlier Atolls
Title | Demography of the Western Polynesian Outlier Atolls PDF eBook |
Author | Timothy P. Bayliss-Smith |
Publisher | |
Pages | 64 |
Release | 1972 |
Genre | Demography |
ISBN |
The Cultural Relationships of the Polynesian Outliers
Title | The Cultural Relationships of the Polynesian Outliers PDF eBook |
Author | Donn T. Bayard |
Publisher | |
Pages | 160 |
Release | 1976 |
Genre | Ethnology |
ISBN |
Unearthing the Polynesian Past
Title | Unearthing the Polynesian Past PDF eBook |
Author | Patrick Vinton Kirch |
Publisher | University of Hawaii Press |
Pages | 401 |
Release | 2015-10-31 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 0824853482 |
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.
Prehistory in the Pacific Islands
Title | Prehistory in the Pacific Islands PDF eBook |
Author | John Terrell |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 322 |
Release | 1986 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780521369565 |
How, asks John Terrell in this richly illustrated and original book, can we best account for the remarkable diversity of the Pacific Islanders in biology, language, and custom? Traditionally scholars have recognized a simple racial division between Polynesians, Micronesians, Melanesians, Australians, and South-east Asians: peoples allegedly differing in physical appearance, temperament, achievements, and perhaps even intelligence. Terrell shows that such simple divisions do not fit the known facts and provide little more than a crude, static picture of human diversity.