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Stone anvils and beaters

The dried kava root in olden days was easily broken into smaller pieces by beating with a stone on one of the larger stones of the house platform. The pieces were distributed among young women with good teeth and chewed. The chewed material was placed on leaves, and when a sufficient quantity had been so treated, it was collected and placed in the bowl. Young men or boys were also requisitioned for this purpose. The method of chewing prevailed until quite recently. There are many men living, slightly past middle age, who chewed the kava root in their youth.

Chewing was abandoned as a result of European culture influence, and the root is now always pounded on a stone with a smaller one. There are thus no special stone implements belonging to ancient Samoan culture that were used in the preparation of kava. Since pounding on stone commenced, every household has selected some stone to serve as an anvil. Some are flat stones incorporated at the edge or corner of a terrace in the house platform. The most suitable of all, however, are large portable stones that were originally used for grinding stone adzes. The hollows formed by the grinding of the past furnishes a convenient receptacle for the small pieces of kava root. (See Plate VIII A, 5.) Here they are pounded with any rounded, water-worn stone of suitable size and weight and the powdered material is thus prevented from falling over the edges onto the ground. Such stones have been transported from the edges of streams where they were formerly used because of their nearness to water, which was essential to the grinding process (olo). Some of them simply lie on the house platform or have been fixed on the edge of one of the courses, while others lie loose at the back of the guest houses. Many foreigners, and even Samoans, think that the hollows have been formed by pounding the kava root, but though in many the hollows have been roughened and chipped by pounding, careful scrutiny will in most cases reveal parts of the smooth surface originally produced by grinding. Such stones have become regular anvils for pounding kava but the original use which produced the hollow concavities must not be overlooked. They are now in use throughout Samoa.

The stone pounder now used is as stated an ordinary waterworn stone which is kept beside the stone anvil for use in connection with it. A few seem to have been slightly chipped to afford a better grip, but this is unusual. There are no worked stone pounders for this special purpose as any incentive that might have led to their production is of recent occurrence. It has been shown that no such incentive existed in regard to the preparation of foods. Judging from the rough types of the adzes, the attitude of the Samoan toward working stone seems to have been a conservative one. So long as the stone served its immediate purpose, why go to further trouble for aesthetic reasons? The small stone in Plate VIII, A, 4 has been actually chipped out to form a page 153small mortar for pounding a sufficient quantity for one person. It is a freak probably like the person who used it.

The kava root was always pounded outside where the anvil had been located. The pounded material was scooped out of the anvil hollow into a section of banana leaf or a breadfruit leaf, brought in at the back of the house, and handed to the taupou or whoever presided over the kava bowl. The pounding was done by one of the young men connected with the household to whom the chief threw out a piece of root, calling out, "Tu'i le 'ava (pound the kava)."