Voices on the wind, traces in the earth: Integrating oral narrative and archaeology in Polynesian history

Abstract

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.