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Samoan Material Culture

Unworked Stone

Unworked Stone

House platforms. The use of unworked stone in house platforms has already been described (p. 66) together with the loosely paved terraces common in sites where stone was plentiful. The extra terraces, built by a chief in honor of successive wives, must also be remembered. Some of these are built a little out from the completed terraces of the house platform and have no structural connection with it. This lack of continuity was puzzling to me until the reason was explained. A heap of stones, a cairn, or a terrace may thus be used to celebrate some event that has been forgotten or lost with the dead historians. The tendency to ignore the psychological and seek a material use may lead to an explanation far from the real cause.

Stone seats. The stone seats made of a large slab with another set upright or slanting at its back, characteristic of some of the house platforms in the Marquesas and the Cook Islands, were not used on the Samoan house platforms. The open character of the side walls of the houses gave plenty of fresh air and rendered it unnecessary to seek in the evenings the house platforms. From within the house, all that was going on outside could be seen.

Pigeon netting platforms (tia seu lupe). The cleared platforms associated with the chiefly sport of netting wild pigeons were located in the forest usually on some commanding ridge. The ground was levelled off to provide concealment shelters for the fowlers. To obtain the required space, the sides and lower end were built up and faced with stone. One, named Muli-maunga, situated on a ridge at the back of Leone, was 14 paces square, the sides and end towards the lower slope being built up with stone. The end towards the upper slope of the ridge was formed by the ground level. The tia vary, some being raised completely above the ground on all sides. The stones were the available stones scattered about, and built up loosely merely to face the earth page 322which had been leveled off and thrown to the sides. Some tia are famous in local history.

Monumental cairns (tia). Cairns of unworked stone were raised over the graves of the dead. Some of these erected over children and people of lesser importance are merely rectangular patches of larger stones loosely laid on the ground near the houses. Where the loose stone pavement has been continued out from the house platforms, the memorial arrangement can hardly be distinguished at times from the other stones. These are quite common throughout the villages, the Samoans evidently preferring to bury their dead near their houses rather than in detached cemeteries, though a few such are now seen.

For higher chiefs, the cairn is built up in loose rectangular piles that may be stepped as in Plate XXXV, B. These again are quite common throughout the villages. Some cairns were fairly large and high but always of loose stones arranged to maintain the rectangular form.

Commemorative heaps. The people often visited some hilltop or other on a walking trip or malanga. To mark the occasion, stones were carried up or collected in the vicinity and piled in a heap. Some of these heaps may be seen in places where the stones did not occur in nature but were obviously carried by human agency. Mr. Judd remarked this on the large hill in Tutuila called Olomoana. The Chief Faumuina of Aunuu Island said that the hill was often visited by his ali'i predecessors for the sake of the view. The guard (soatau) took stones up on each occasion and piled them in a heap. They served not only as a memento of the visits but could be used as sling stones and throwing stones if they were suddenly attacked while there. Where people of a different culture commemorate a visit by carving their names on rocks and cliffs or defacing historic objects, the Polynesian made a cairn of stones.