400 Years of History and Cross-cultural Interactions in a Ritually Mounded Landscape of South Tanna, Vanuatu

Summary

A mounded landscape in south Vanuatu provides archaeological evidence relating to chiefly performance, voyaging, and ritual transformation during a period of cross-cultural contacts spanning 400 years or more. The site of Kwaraka is located at the southern end of Tanna Island. The area has a view on clear days of the neighbouring islands Futuna and Aniwa, and there is ethnohistoric evidence of long-term patterns of interaction between Tannese people and the people of these nearby islands. Kwaraka is somewhat unique on Tanna for its large-scale stone constructions, which are rare elsewhere on the island, though common on Futuna and Aneityum. The site is also notable as the location where the first Christian missionaries, recent Samoan converts settled in the 1850s. This arrival brought about a new wave of mound construction, this time in the form of house mounds built by the ritual specialists. The Kwaraka mounds provide interesting material for thinking about long-term patterns of communal rituals, including feasting, exchange, and magical practices on Tanna.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Global Perspectives on the Archaeology of Ritually Mounded Landscapes

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 13203