Linguistic evidence for the Tongan Empire

Geraghty, Paul

doi:10.1515/9783110883091.233

Cited by 17 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…In the fourteenth century AD, a powerful chiefdom under the paramount Tu'i Tonga line united the islands of Tonga under a centralised authority and, according to tradition, extended its influence to neighbouring island groups in the Central Pacific (Kirch 1984;Geraghty 1994;Neich 2006). Complex societies developed in many parts of Oceania at the same time, particularly in the Hawaiian Islands (Flannery & Marcus 2000;Kirch 2010), but only Tonga developed a political system that encompassed an entire archipelago, and it has recently been considered, like Hawaii, to be a primary state (Hommon 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stone architecture, monumentality and the rise of the early Tongan chiefdom

Clark¹,

Reepmeyer

2014

Antiquity

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Monumental construction is commonly associated with the rise of complex societies and frequently supported the ceremonies and ideologies that were instrumental in the creation of the new social order. Recent fieldwork at Heketa in eastern Tongatapu recorded stone-built platforms for houses and seats, and a three-tiered tomb and trilithon. Tongan tradition and archaeology combine to show that these were the setting for new ceremonies instituted by the emergent Tu’i Tonga lineage in the fourteenth century AD as they laid the foundations of the early Tongan chiefdom. Key to their success were activities that emphasised the sacred origins of the living Tu’i Tonga, including the drinking of kava and the presentation of first fruits to the chiefs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stone architecture, monumentality and the rise of the early Tongan chiefdom

Clark¹,

Reepmeyer

2014

Antiquity

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“…The transportation of stone materials from Kosrae and Ponape Islands to Kapingamarangi supports the existence of a sphere of high mobility between the eastern Caroline Islands and the northern Outliers of Nukuoro and Kapingamarangi. Such interactions have been suggested based on similarities in material culture (shell adzes and fishhooks) and a number of linguistic features loan words that were shared at a later stage of the cultural sequence (15,37,84).…”

Section: The Polynesian Outliers In Regional Exchange Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Artifact geochemistry demonstrates long-distance voyaging in the Polynesian Outliers

et al. 2023

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Although the peopling of Remote Oceania is well-documented as a general process of eastward migrations from Island Southeast Asia and Near Oceania toward the archipelagos of Remote Oceania, the origin and the development of Polynesian societies in the Western Pacific (Polynesian Outliers), far away from the Polynesian triangle, remain unclear. Here, we present a large-scale geochemical sourcing study of stone artifacts excavated from archeological sites in central Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and the Caroline Islands and provide unambiguous evidence of multiple long-distance voyages, with exotic stone materials being transported up to 2500 kilometers from their source. Our results emphasize high mobility in the Western Pacific during the last millennium CE and offer insights on the scale and timing of contacts between the Polynesian Outliers, their neighbors in the Western Pacific, and societies of Western Polynesia.

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“…Historical descriptions of the road match measurements made from lidar point clouds. Arterial roads, described as six to twelve feet wide (approximately two to three metres)(Wilson, 1799) branch from this trunk to connect inland locations and neighbourhoods with each other and to the wider maritime transport networks maintained by TongansGeraghty 1994;Hermann et al, 2019;Kaeppler, 1978).Forti cations (kolotau) are common built environment features in Tongatapu and many can be linked to a period of intense warfare during the nineteenth century(Parton et al, 2018). A small selection of forti cations may have been constructed long before the nineteenth century.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Low-Density Urbanisation: Prestate Settlement Growth in a Pacific Society

Parton,

Clark

2023

Preprint

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The recognition of low-density urbanisation has been important in documenting how diverse human settlements generated enduring social and economic change. In tropical regions, the key challenges to studying low-density urbanisation have been the difficulty in acquiring past built environment data and integrating the frameworks that illuminate the social behaviours intrinsic to urbanisation. The introduction of lidar mapping and urban science methods has proven revolutionary in our understanding of low-density urbanisation as demonstrated by emerging research on settlements and states in Mesoamerica and Southeast Asia. These studies draw on urban theory to highlight patterns in the built environment associated with profound societal changes including the rise of social institutions, agglomeration effects and ongoing settlement growth. Here, we present an approach that combines lidar survey and archaeological fieldwork with recent developments in urban science to understand the built environment of Tongatapu; the location of an archaic state whose influence spread across the southwest Pacific Ocean between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries a.d. Quantitative results show—for the first time—that settlements on a Pacific island were urbanised in a distinct low-density form, and that the processes of urbanisation began prior to state development. This study highlights the contribution of Pacific landscapes to urban science and the low-density settlement phenomena given the presence of large populations, hierarchical societies, and vast distributions of archaeological built remains on many island groups.

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Linguistic evidence for the Tongan Empire

Cited by 17 publications

References 0 publications

Stone architecture, monumentality and the rise of the early Tongan chiefdom

Stone architecture, monumentality and the rise of the early Tongan chiefdom

Artifact geochemistry demonstrates long-distance voyaging in the Polynesian Outliers

Low-Density Urbanisation: Prestate Settlement Growth in a Pacific Society

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