Originally published in 1937, this presents a detailed account of religious and mythical structures in Central Polynesia.

Robert Wood Williamson (1856-1932) was a British solicitor and anthropologist who worked extensively in New Guinea and Polynesia.

“Tahiti is far famed yet too little known.” Thus wrote J. M. Orsmond in 1848, and the same assertion can be made in 1972. Thousands of pages had been published about Tahiti and its neighboring islands when Orsmond uttered his judgment, and tens of thousands have been published since that time, but a unified, comprehensive, and detailed description of the pre-European ways of life of the inhabitants of those Islands is yet to appear in print. The present work, lengthy as it is, makes no such claim to comprehensiveness; rather, it is concerned mainly with the social relations of those inhabitants, and it serves up only enough about their technology, their religion, their aesthetic expressions, and so forth to place descriptions of their social relations in context and render them more comprehensible. Volumes 1 and 2 of this work are a reconstruction of the Islanders’ way of life as it was believed to have been just before it began to be transformed by European influence—a period labeled the Late Indigenous Era. Volume 3 covers events in Tahiti and Mo‘orea from about 1767 to 1815—a period labeled the Early European Era.

This 1939 text examines whether the formation of a cohesive ethnology of Polynesia could be possible.

The power of an anthropological approach to long-term history lies in its unique ability to combine diverse evidence, from archaeological artifacts to ethnographic texts and comparative word lists. In this innovative book, Kirch and Green explicitly develop the theoretical underpinnings, as well as the particular methods, for such a historical anthropology. Drawing upon and integrating the approaches of archaeology, comparative ethnography, and historical linguistics, they advance a phylogenetic model for cultural diversification, and apply a triangulation method for historical reconstruction. They illustrate their approach through meticulous application to the history of the Polynesian cultures, and for the first time reconstruct in extensive detail the Ancestral Polynesian culture that flourished in the Polynesian homeland - Hawaiki - some 2,500 years ago. Of great significance for Oceanic studies, Kirch and Green's book will be essential reading for any anthropologist, prehistorian, linguist, or cultural historian concerned with the theory and method of long-term history.

This set collects together in 19 volumes a wealth of texts on Sociology of Religion. An invaluable reference resource, it contains classic books on a wide range of topics, including: religion and violence, religion and family life, religion and society, culture and class.