A Geospatial Analysis of Sacred Trees and Archaeological Sites in the Precontact Society Islands (French Polynesia)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Entangled Legacies: Human, Forest, and Tree Dynamics" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological, anthropological, and historical sources speak to the importance of particular tree species for ceremonial and quotidian use in precontact Polynesian chiefdoms. Archaeological studies have largely discussed the spatial association of trees and archaeological sites in an ad hoc manner, thus more refined spatial analyses are needed. I fill this lacuna with an in-depth geospatial analysis of tree distribution and archaeological site distribution from the ‘Opunohu Valley, Mo‘orea, Society Islands. A full coverage survey recorded data on spatial relationships between 39 site complexes and over 1,800 trees. Here, I examine the spatial distribution of five native and Polynesian introduced tree species in relation to residential and ceremonial archaeological complexes. I question if ethnographically and ethnohistorically identified sacred tree species are more often associated with elite residential sites or elite ceremonial and ritual sites, are tree species with more general daily economic use more often associated with residential sites than ceremonial sites, and finally, are sacred trees more often associated with secondary elite political centers than more isolated ritual or specialized sites? The data point toward the complex ways in which the Mā‘ohi intentionally planted symbolically charged tree species in or around secondary ritual centers and specialized ritual contexts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Entangled Legacies: Human, Forest, and Tree Dynamics   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38075.0