Description
Book SynopsisReflecting in 1769 on the manners and customs of the South Sea islands, Joseph Banks remarked that ‘in every expedient for taking fish they are vastly ingenious.’ Hence the title of this book on Pacific material culture, past and present, with broad themes of origins, the movement of peoples and the development of their technologies.
Table of ContentsIntroduction; Early Maori disc pendants; Gourd artefacts from the Kohika lake village; Cooking with pots -- again; Metal Pa Kahawai; A cache of fishhooks from Serendipity Cave; Horticultural site complexes on stony soils of the eastern North Island; Arthur of HMS Adventure and Veryan, Cornwall; Me'a lalanga and the category Koloa; Ancestral Polynesian fishing gear; Reading Pacific pots; The rise of the Saudeleur; A study of gorges from the Gogna-Cove Beach Site, Guam; The role of fishing lure shanks for the past people of Pohnpei; Shell fishhooks of the Lapita cultural complex; The material culture of Makira; Shaft-hole stone implements of New Britain; Pottery styles at Wanelek, Papua New Guinea; Still vastly ingenious? Globalisation and the collecting of Pacific material cultures.
