Abstract
Oceanic art, the indigenous art of the Pacific region, has been the focus of many glossy volumes in recent years (e.g.,D’Alleva 1998, Dark and Rose 1993, Thomas 1995). I find it interesting to note that although examples of decoration from early Lapita ceramics dating from c. 3500 BP to 3,000 BP are invariably included in the introductory chapters of such volumes, the rich corpus of ‘ancient’ rock drawings is neglected and apparently not regarded as worthy for inclusion. Lapita pottery surface decoration has been compared with that found on human skin (tattoos), barkcloth (tapa) and wooden artefacts from insular Melanesia and Polynesia (Green 1979, Kirch 1997: 142–3). Similarities between the ancient Lapita design elements and the decoration found on much more recent media may illustrate continuities in design for up to 3,500 years in the western Pacific. Lapita decoration is often created by comb-like dentate stamping and Kirch (1997: 142) has proposed that the technique for tattooing, piercing the skin, was extended to decorating these ceramics. Further, there is a clear relationship between Lapita ceramics and the human body. A stylised human face is a consistent, if not common, feature of Lapita decoration (Green 1979: 21–3, Spriggs 1990, 1993) and a ceramic human figurine from a Lapita pottery context has decorated buttocks thought by the excavator to represent tattoos (Green 1979: 16–17). This interpretation is supported by the more recent recovery of a baked Lapita period clay head bearing typical dentate decoration that would not be inconsistent with facial tattooing (Summerhayes 1998). In this chapter I will consider the connection between different media, but leave the ceramics and tapa, and explore possible links between Oceanic tattoing, which is normally included in collections regarding ‘art’, and that comparatively neglected facet of Pacific societies, the motifs produced on ‘living’ rock.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Athens, J. S., J. V. Ward and G. M. Murakami (1996) ‘Development of an agroforest on a Micronesian high island: prehistoric Kosraean agriculture’, Antiquity 70: 834–46.
Ayres, W. S., A. E. Haun and C. Severance (1981) Ponape Archaeological Survey: 1978 research. Micronesian Archaeological Survey Report, 4, Saipan: Historic Preservation Office.
Ballard, C. (1992) ‘Painted rock art sites in western Melanesia: locational evidence for an “Austronesian” tradition’, in J. McDonald and I. Haskovec (eds) State of the Art (Occasional AURA Publications, 6), pp 94–106.
Bellwood, P. (1978) Man’s Conquest of the Pacific Auckland: William Collins.
Bradley, R. (1997) Rock Art and the Prehistory of Atlantic Europe. Signing the Land London: Routledge.
Bernart, L. (1977) The Book of Luelen trans, and ed. by J.L. Fischer, S.H. Riesenberg, and M.G. Whiting, Canberra: Australian National University Press.
Christian, F. W. (1899) The Caroline Islands: Travel in the Sea of the Little Islands London: Methuen.
D’Alleva, A. (1998) Art of the Pacific London: Caiman and King.
Dark, P. J. C. and R. G. Rose (eds) (1993) Artistic Heritage in a Changing Pacific Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Dening, G. (1995) The Death of William Gooch: a History’s Anthropology Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Gell, A. (1993) Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gell,A.(1995a) ‘Closure and multiplication: an essay on Polynesian cosmology and ritual’, in D de Coppet and A. Teanu (eds) Cosmos and Society in Oceania, pp. 21–56, Oxford: Berg.
Gell,A.(1995b) ‘The language of the forest: landscape and phonological iconism in Umeda’, in E.Hirsh and M. O’Hanlon (eds) The Anthropology of Landscape: perspectives on place and space’, pp. 232–53, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Geertz, C. (1983) Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology New York: Basic Books.
Green, R. C. (1979) ‘Early Lapita art from Polynesia and Island Melanesia: continuities in ceramic, barkcloth and tattoo decorations’, in S.M. Mead (ed.) Exploring the Visual Art of Oceania. Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, pp. 13–31, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Green,R. C.(1991) ‘Near and remote Oceania - disestablishing “Melanesia” in culture history’, in A. Pawley (ed.) Man and a Half: essays in Pacific anthropology and ethnobiology in honour of Ralph Bulmer, pp. 491–501, Memoirs of the Polynesian Society, 48, Auckland: Polynesian Society.
Hage, P., Harary, F., and Milicic, B. (1996) ‘Tattooing, gender and social stratification in Micro-Polynesia’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 2: 335–350.
Hambruch, P. (1936) Ponape, vol. 3, Ergebnisse der Südsee Expedition, 1908–1910 (ed. G. Thilenius), Hamburg: Friederichsen, De Gruyter.
Hanlon, D. (1988) Upon a Stone Altar: a History of the Island of Pohnpei to 1890 Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Hanlon, D.(1989) ‘Micronesia: writing and rewriting the history of a nonentity’, Pacific Studies 12: 1–21.
Kirch, P. V. (1997) The Lapita Peoples Oxford: Blackwell.
Lebot, V., M. Merlin and L. Lindstrom (1992) Kava: the Pacific drug New Haven: Yale University Press.
Mason, L. (1986) Introduction, in The Art of Micronesia, pp. 11–13, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Art Gallery.
O’Connell, J. F. (1972) [1836] A Residence of Eleven Years in New Holland and the Caroline Islands Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
O’Hanlon, M. (1989) Reading the Skin. Adornment, Display and Society among the Wahgi London: British Museum.
Petersen, G. (1982) One Man Cannot Rule a Thousand: Fission in a Ponapean Chiefdom Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Petersen, G.(1990) ‘Lost in the weeds: theme and variation in Pohnpei political mythology’, Center for Pacific Studies Occasional Paper, 35, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Petersen, G.(1993) ‘Kanengamah and Pohnpei’s politics of concealment’, American Anthropologist 95: 334–52.
Petersen, G.(1995) ‘The complexity of power, the subtlety of kava’, Canberra Anthropology 18: 34– 60.
Rainbird, P. (1994) ‘Prehistory in the northwest tropical Pacific: the Caroline, Mariana, and Marshall Islands’, Journal of World Prehistory 8: 293–349.
Rainbird,P. (1997) ‘Interpreting Pohnpei Petroglyphs’, paper presented to the Australian Anthropological Society Annual Conference, Magnetic Island, Queensland, Australia.
Rainbird, P. in press ‘Making sense of petroglyphs: the sound of rock-art’, in B. David and M. Wilson (eds), Inscribed Landscapes: approaches to place making and place marking University of Hawaii Press: Honolulu
Rainbird, P. and Wilson, M (1999) ‘Pohnpaid Petroglyphs, Pohnpei’, unpublished report for the Federated States of Micronesia Office of Archives and Historic Preservation.
Riesenberg, S. (1968) ‘The native polity of Ponape’, Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, 10, Washington: Smithsonian Institute Press.
Specht, J. R. (1979) ‘Rock art in the Western Pacific’, in S.M. Mead (ed.) Exploring the Visual Art of Oceania, pp. 58–82, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Spriggs, M. (1990) ‘The changing face of Lapita: transformation of a design’, in M. Spriggs (ed.) Lapita design, form and composition: proceedings of the Lapita Design Workshop, Canberra, Australia - December 1988, (Occasional Papers in Prehistory 19), pp. 83–122 Canberra: Australian National University, Research School of Pacific Studies.
Spriggs, M.(1993) ‘How much of the Lapita design system represents the human face?’ in P. J. C. Dark and R. G. Rose (eds) Artistic Heritage in a Changing Pacific, pp. 7–14, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Spriggs, M.(1997) The Island Melanesians Oxford: Blackwell.
Steager, P. W. (1979) ‘Where does art begin on Puluwat?’ in S. M. Mead (ed.) Exploring the Visual Art of Oceania. Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, pp. 342– 53, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Summerhayes, G. R. (1998) ‘The face of Lapita’, Archaeology in Oceania 33: 100.
Taçon, P. S. C. (1994) ‘Socialising landscapes: the long-term implications of signs, symbols and marks on the land’, Archaeology in Oceania 29: 117–29.
Thomas, N. (1989) ‘The force of ethnology’, Current Anthropology 30: 27–34.
Thomas, N.(1995) Oceanic Art, London: Thames and Hudson.
Ueki, T. and Nena, M. T. (1983) ‘Rediscovering Ponapean petroglyphs’, Journal of the Polynesian Society 92: 537–9.
Wilson, M. (1998) ‘Pacific rock art and cultural genesis: a multivariate exploration’, in C. Chippindale and P. S. C. Taçon (eds) The Archaeology of Rock-Art, pp. 163–84, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rainbird, P. (2002). Marking the Body, Marking the Land. In: Hamilakis, Y., Pluciennik, M., Tarlow, S. (eds) Thinking through the Body. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0693-5_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0693-5_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-5198-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-0693-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive