Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:24:02.835Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The rapid emergence of the archaic Tongan state: the royal tomb of Paepaeotelea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2016

Geoffrey Clark ,
Christian Reepmeyer  and
Nivaleti Melekiola
Geoffrey Clark*
Affiliation:
Archaeology and Natural History, School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
Christian Reepmeyer
Affiliation:
College of Arts, Society and Education, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD 4811, Australia
Nivaleti Melekiola
Affiliation:
Lapaha village, Hahake District, Tongatapu, Kingdom of Tonga
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

New research indicates that the royal tomb Paepaeotelea was built c. AD 1300–1400, more than 200 years earlier than its traditional association with Uluakimata I, who ruled when the Tongan polity was at its greatest extent. The large and stylistically complex tomb marks a dramatic increase in the scale of mortuary structures. It represents a substantial mobilisation of labour by this early archaic state, while the geochemical signatures of stone tools associated with the tomb indicate long-distance voyaging. The evidence suggests that the early Tongan state was a powerful and geographically expansive entity, able to rapidly organise and command the resources of the scattered archipelago.

Keywords

South PacificTongatombstate formation
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 90 , Issue 352 , August 2016 , pp. 1038 - 1053
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aswani, S. & Graves, M.W.. 1998. The Tongan maritime expansion: a case in the evolutionary ecology of social complexity. Asian Perspectives 37: 135–64.Google Scholar
Baines, J. & Yoffee, N.. 1998. Order, legitimacy, and wealth in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, in Feinman, G.M. & Marcus, J. (ed.) Archaic states: 199–260. Santa Fe (NM): School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Best, S. 1984. Lakeba: the prehistory of a Fijian Island. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Auckland.Google Scholar
Bott, E. 1982. Tongan society at the time of Captain Cook's visits: discussions with Her Majesty Queen Salote Tupou (Memoirs 44). Wellington: Polynesian Society.Google Scholar
Burley, D.V. 1998. Tongan archaeology and the Tongan past, 2850–150 BP. World Archaeology 12: 337–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048769 Google Scholar
Burley, D.V. 2007. Archaeological demography and population growth in the Kingdom of Tonga 950 BC to the historic era, in Kirch, P.V. & Rallu, J.-L. (ed.) The growth and collapse of Pacific island societies: archaeological and demographic perspectives: 177–202. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.Google Scholar
Burley, D., Weisler, M.I. & Zhao, J-X.. 2012. High precision U/Th dating of first Polynesian settlement. PLoS ONE 7: e48769. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048769 Google Scholar
Campbell, I. 2001. Island kingdom: Tonga ancient and modern. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press.Google Scholar
Churchward, C.M. 1959. Tongan dictionary. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, G. 2014. Social memory and langi (royal tombs) of Lapaha, Tonga, in Martinsson-Wallin, H. & Thomas, T. (ed.) Monuments and people in the Pacific (Uppsala University: Studies in Global Archaeology 18): 221–43. Uppsala: Uppsala University.Google Scholar
Clark, G. & Reepmeyer, C.. 2014. Stone architecture, monumentality and the rise of the early Tongan chiefdom. Antiquity 88: 1244–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00115431 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, G., Burley, D. & Murray, T.. 2008. Monumentality and the development of the Tongan maritime chiefdom. Antiquity 82: 994–1008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00097738 Google Scholar
Clark, G., Reepmeyer, C., Melekiola, N., Woodhead, J., Dickinson, W.R. & Martinsson-Wallin, H.. 2014. Stone tools from the ancient Tongan state reveal prehistoric interaction centres in the Central Pacific. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 111: 10491–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1406165111 Google Scholar
Fonua, P. 2002. Tu'i Tonga empire builders. Eva Magazine 57: 1–4.Google Scholar
Gifford, E.W. 1929. Tongan society (Bulletin 61). Honolulu (HI): Bernice P. Bishop Museum.Google Scholar
Harrison, D.J. 1993. The limestone resources of Tongatapu and Vava'u, Kingdom of Tonga (British Geological Survey Technical Report WC/93/23). Keyworth: British Geological Survey.Google Scholar
Heizer, R.F.A. 1966. Ancient heavy transport, methods and achievements. Science 153: 821–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.153.3738.821 Google Scholar
Hommon, R.J. 2013. The ancient Hawaiian state: origins of a political society. New York: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199916122.001.0001 Google Scholar
Kirch, P.V. 1984. The evolution of Polynesian chiefdoms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kirch, P.V. 2010. How chiefs became kings: divine kingship and the rise of archaic states in ancient Hawaii. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kirch, P.V., Mertz-Kraus, R. & Sharp, W.D.. 2015. Precise chronology of Polynesian temple construction and use for southeastern Maui, Hawaiian Islands determined by 230Th dating of corals. Journal of Archaeological Science 53: 166–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2014.09.025 Google Scholar
LTC Lapaha Town Council Oral History Project. 2012. Traditional history of Lapaha residents collected by Princess Mele Siu'ilikutapu and Nivaleti Melekiola. Manuscript held by the Lapaha Town Council, Lapaha, Tongatapu Island.Google Scholar
McKern, W.C. 1929. Archaeology of Tonga (Bulletin 60). Honolulu (HI): Bernice P. Bishop Museum.Google Scholar
Martinello, C. 2006. Tahitala's revenge: monumental architecture and the Great Canoe, Lomipeau . Anthropological Forum 16 (2): 123–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00664670600768300 Google Scholar
Maurat, L. 1833. Plate 101, Plan des tombeaux des chefs de Tongatabou, in Voyage de découvertes de l'Astrolabe exécuté par ordre du Roi, pendant les années 1826–1827–1829, sous le commandement de M.J. Dumont d'Urville. Volume 1: atlas historique. Paris: Tastu.Google Scholar
Neitzel, J.E. & Earle, T.. 2014. Dual-tier approach to societal evolution and types. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 36: 181–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2014.09.012 Google Scholar
Parate, N.S. 1973. Influence of water on the strength of limestone. Transactions of AIME Society of Mining Engineers 254: 127–31.Google Scholar
Petchey, F. & Clark, G.. 2011. Tongatapu hardwater: investigation into the 14C marine reservoir offset in lagoon, reef and open ocean environments of a limestone island. Quaternary Geochronology 6: 539–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quageo.2011.08.001 Google Scholar
Petersen, G. 2000. Indigenous island empires: Yap and Tonga considered. Journal of Pacific History 35: 5–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223340050052275 Google Scholar
Sand, C. 2008. Prehistoric maritime empires in the Pacific: Ga'asialilil (‘Elili) and the establishment of a Tongan colony on ‘Uvea (Wallis, Western Polynesia), in Di Piazza, A., Pearthree, E. & Sand, C. (ed.) At the heart of ancient societies: French contributions to Pacific archaeology (Cahiers de l'Archéologié en Nouvelle-Calédonie Volume 18): 73–105. Nouméa: Institut d'archéologie de la Nouvelle-Calédonie et du Pacifique.Google Scholar
Sharp, W.D., Kahn, J.G., Polito, C.M. & Kirch, P.V.. 2010. Rapid evolution of ritual architecture in central Polynesia indicated by precise 230Th/U coral dating. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 107: 13234–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1005063107 Google Scholar
Spennemann, D.H.R. 1989a. ‘Ata ‘a Tonga mo ‘ata ‘o Tonga: early and later prehistory of the Tongan Islands. Volume I.2: appendices. Unpublished PhD dissertation, The Australian National University.Google Scholar
Spennemann, D.H.R. 1989b. ‘Ata ‘a Tonga mo ‘ata ‘o Tonga: early and later prehistory of the Tongan Islands. A study in settlement and subsistence patterns, with special emphasis on Tongatapu. Volume I. Unpublished PhD dissertation, The Australian National University.Google Scholar
Stanish, C. & Levine, A.. 2011. War and early state formation in the northern Titicaca Basin, Peru. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 108: 13901–906. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1110176108 Google Scholar
Statham, N. (ed.). 2013. A history of Tonga. As recorded by Rev. John Thomas. Seoul: Bible Society in Korea.Google Scholar
Thomson, B. 1902. Notes upon the antiquities of Tonga. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 32: 81–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2842904 Google Scholar