Voices on the wind, traces in the earth
Integrating oral narrative and archaeology in Polynesian history
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3634348 |
|---|---|
| Authors | P V Kirch (0000-0003-4264-6689, University of California, Berkeley, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 127 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 275-306 |
| Publication date | 2018-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the Polynesian Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0032-4000 • E-ISSN: 2230-5955 |
| Publisher | Polynesian Society (PUBLISHER • NZ) |
| DOI | 10.15286/jps.127.3.275-306 |
| OpenAlex | W2895711530 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 12 |
| References cited | 7 |
Polynesian societies have long been noted for encoding their histories in the form of oral narratives. While some narratives are clearly cosmogonic or mythological in nature, others purportedly recount the affairs of real persons, chronologically indexed to chiefly and family genealogies. Late 19th- and early 20th-century scholars such as Abraham Fornander and Te Rangi Hiroa relied upon such oral narratives to write the pre-European histories of various Polynesian societies. In the second half of the 20th century, however, archaeologists and cultural anthropologists alike have tended to dismiss the historical validity of oral narratives. Based on four case studies from Futuna, Tikopia, Niuatoputapu and Hawai'i, I reassess the linkages between oral narratives and the archaeological record, finding that in all cases there is strong evidence to support the view that the traditional narratives relate to real persons and events. Such traditional narratives typically do not extend farther back in time than three to four centuries, but for these later time periods they offer an invaluable resource-an indigenous perspective on island histories that complements and augments the empirical archaeological record
Archaeology · Art · Ethnology · Indigenous · Literature · Mythology · Narrative · Oral history · Oral tradition · Perspective (graphical · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Classics · History · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies
Obsidian and volcanic glass artifact evidence for long-distance voyaging to the Polynesian Outlier island of Tikopia
Monumental Architecture in Precontact Polynesia
Monumental Architecture in Precontact Polynesia
Kia kōrerorero tonu ai
Offerings from the land and sea
Archaeology and Kastom
The Colonial Character of the Drug Treatment Superstructure
Ritual Use of Limpets in Late Hawaiian Prehistory
Combining Oral Traditions and Bayesian Chronological Modeling to Understand Village Development in the Gulf of Papua (Papua New Guinea)
Digging Deep
Genealogies and oral histories as chronological networks
Calibrating Holocene human–environment interactions using ancient narratives
Precise chronology of Polynesian temple construction and use for southeastern Maui, Hawaiian Islands determined by 230Th dating of corals
A shark going inland is my chief
Chiefly Tombs, Lineage History, and the Ancient Tongan State
Voices on the Wind
New AMS radiocarbon dates and a re-evaluation of the cultural sequence of Tikopia Island, southeast Solomon Islands
Stone architecture, monumentality and the rise of the early Tongan chiefdom
Monumentality and the development of the Tongan maritime chiefdom
| Citations per year | 1.71 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2019 - 2025 (7) |
| Highly cited | No |