Abstract
Particularly prevalent in the star lore of the South Pacific are the great canoes in the sky, which is hardly surprising given their importance as the main method of transport between the many thousands of islands in the area. But the connection between sky and canoe goes far beyond star lore, for the scientific understanding of the way the stars are positioned and the way they appear to move during the night and over the year was essential for the successful navigation of these canoes in the days before the advent of modern technological navigation. This chapter examine how such knowledge of the stars shaped the movement of the peoples of this vast oceanic region.
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Notes
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Artwork commissioned from Cliff Whiting and reproduced with permission of the New Zealand Geographic Board Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa.
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Chadwick, S.R., Paviour-Smith, M. (2017). Navigating by the Stars. In: The Great Canoes in the Sky. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22623-1_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22623-1_5
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