Austronesian Speakers and Hereditary Leadership in the Pacific

Journal of Pacific History, 1979

Anthropological Forum, 2019

This paper reviews previous attempts to characterise the nature of social differences among the Austronesian speakers of Taiwan and the theoretical roots of these efforts, including the contrast Marshall Sahlins's drew between Melanesian Big-Men (achieved status) and Polynesian Chiefs (ascribed status). This contrast was later applied to the diverse social organisations found among the Austronesian speakers of Taiwan. However, linguistic research over the past three decades has suggested that Proto-Austronesians may have already developed chiefdoms and social hierarchies and that Taiwan was one of the key sites for the origin of Austronesian speakers. Some scholars thus concluded that the 'egalitarian' type of societies among the Austronesian Taiwan must have been the result of Japanese colonial policies. This paper intends to re-think this dichotomy with ethnographic material from Austronesian Taiwan, especially the Paiwan; to distinguish the ideological and practical dimensions of this historical reconstruction; and to examine the viability of the analytical tools which have been widely adopted in the anthropological literature on other Austronesian societies.

The study of chiefdoms and states is a complex and constantly changing discipline, in which archaeologists are equally adding and retracting notions of what constitutes as a hierarchical or stratified society. Processualists argue that although chiefdoms and states differ radically around the globe, the underlying characteristics are the same (Carneiro 1970). Therefore, middle range theory can be applied to these civilisations in order to recognise key political, economic and social structures (Johnson 2010). However, Post-processualists argue that each chiefdom and state must be analysed independently and within the context of those societies, in order to make adjustments to their specific circumstances and structures (Johnson 2010). Today, there is still no universal mechanism which can be applied to chiefdoms and states, however theorists such as Earle, Carneiro and Peebles and Kus have put forward some main qualities which could potentially identify societies that were ruled by a paramount chief or king. For example the presence of a stratified elite, specialised administration, division of labour, monumental architecture, burials and the spatial patterning and size of settlements (Carneiro 1970). Scholars argue that the presence of monumental architecture and wealth monopolies within the Pacific Islands such as Tonga and Hawaii are clear indicators that they were stratified or hierarchical societies governed by an elite ruler. I will review the nature of theses economic, political and social structures in Tonga and Hawaii and how the presence of monumental architecture reflects a complex society.

The form of exchange seen in the potlatch is gift reciprocity which validates position in systems where ranks realign over the generations. Improved understanding of movement in hierarchy within a relatively centralized system from Polynesia stimulates fresh comparison between the Northwest Coast and Oceania. The complex stratified polity of Tonga entails rivalry and competition for title between members of the ranking elite. Competitive exchange is part of wider relations between titleholders and their supporting groups though it does not itself determine rank. Calculations to lift rank.are made through marriages and warfare which bring control over the accumulation, distribution and acceptance of gifts.

Asian Perspectives, 2002

EVER SINCE THEIR DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC SOCIETY ISLANDS, Europeans have identified cultural differences between the populations living in the different islands of the great ocean (Beaglehole 1974). Arriving for the first time in Tahiti in 1769, Bougainville thought he had found the "nouvelle cythere," prompting generations of writers to describe Polynesia as a "Paradise on Earth." In contrast, frequent violent encounters with darker-skinned populations in the Western Pacific (Bonnemaison 1984; Spriggs 1997) led to a contrasting perception of "savagery" for the societies that occupied the region named "Melanesia" by Dumont d'Urville . This dichotomized schema of indigenous oceanic cultures, with a divide between Melanesian and Polynesian societies, has been maintained in much of the literature on the Pacific. The classic work in this genre was that of Marshall Sahlins, concerning Melanesian Big-Men and Polynesian chiefs. Basing his synthesis on ethnographic data, Sahlins (1963) differentiated the tribal societies of Melanesia, with their supposed low level of hierarchical differentiation in small territorial units, from the large, complex multilevel Polynesian polities. To be sure, anthropologists and ethnohistorians have themselves critiqued Sahlins' (1963) model as one that was overly simplifying (e.g., Douglas 1979; Thomas 1997); nonetheless, aspects of the model persist in current theoretical conceptions in Oceanic anthropology. This paper-which was written to stimulate discussion at the Eastern Polynesia Mo'orea conference-aims to draw attention to recent archaeological fieldwork carried out in several parts of Island Melanesia (see Fig. ), which has begun to yield a rather different picture of late prehistory for this part of the Pacific. 1 This is by no means a complete review, a task which must be left to another occasion. In order to facilitate comparison between the data from Island Melanesia to Polynesia, my presentation is divided into six major topics. These demonstrate that the cultural distinction, first imposed by the early European explorers, between the complex "nearly civilized" Polynesian societies and the simpler "savage" Mela-

Anthropological Forum, 2019

In this paper I will compare and contrast the Austronesian symbolic elements of the two social formations within which I have conducted extensive ethnographic and archival research, that of the highly egalitarian Buid of Mindoro, Philippines and that of the equally hierarchical Makassar of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. I will demonstrate both that their cosmological structures are built out of common symbolic elements and that these structures could be used to legitimate vastly different political systems. The common symbolic elements included a gendered cosmos inhabited by a series of parallel societies composed of animal, human and spirit subjects; the conceptualisation of human sociality as generated by shared experience within a nested series of bounded spaces; and the ability of certain agents to move between these spaces by way of specialised training, vehicles and portals.

Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1963

With an eye to their own life goals, the native peoples of Pacific Islands unwittingly present to anthropologists a generous scientific gift: an extended series of experiments in cultural adaptation and evolutionary development. They have compressed their institutions within the confines of infertile coral atolls, expanded them on volcanic islands, created with the means history gave them cultures adapted to the deserts of Australia, the mountains and warm coasts of New Guinea, the rain forests of the Solomon Islands. From the Australian Aborigines, whose hunting and gathering existence duplicates in outline the cultural life of the later Paleolithic, to the great chiefdoms of Hawaii, where society approached the formative levels of the old Fertile Crescent civilizations, almost every general phase in the progress of primitive culture is exemplified.

2012

The Journal of Asian Studies, 1997

Chapter 13. The Politics of Marriage and the Marriage of Polities in Gowa, South Sula Wesi, During the 16th and 17th Centuries F. David Bulbeck The Wider Background Background to Gowa Methodology Makassar Titles and Their Wider Equivalents Correlations in Titulation Across Next-Of-Kin Horizontal Links Between the Royal Cores Makassar Status Lineages Makassar Lineage Groups Gowa's Initial Expansion (c.1500-1593) The Golden Period of Greater Gowa (1593-1667) The Survivors (Post-1667) Conclusions Acknowledgments References Chapter 14. The Cultural Construction of Rank, Identity and Ethnic Origins in the Sulu Archipelago Charles O. Frake