Property Regimes, Resource Protection, and Sustainability in the Remote Pacific

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Property Regimes" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The tradition of resource-use prohibition known as rahui is found throughout the Pacific Islands. Rahui typically involves placing certain resources or areas of the land and sea under the protection of a central authority. For rahui to exist the concept of collective resource exploitation must also exist. This appears antithetical to the traditional and current land tenure practices on many islands where individuals and families hold control of traditional territories. However, concepts of centralized authority and rahui appear to supersede concepts of individual or lineage-based resource control. The ubiquity of rahui and similar practices in East Polynesia suggests a long antiquity perhaps stretching back to the first colonization of uninhabited islands by Polynesian voyagers. Through archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic data from the Northern Cook Islands I demonstrate how past concepts of rahui interact with property regimes and the development of sustainable resource use practices as well as how rahui is conceptualized, enacted, and viewed today. I argue that the tradition of rahui may have influenced, and strengthened, the development of flexible political institutions that promote centralized authority and population sustainability above individual or lineage-based control.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeology of Property Regimes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38174.0