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Showing papers by "Kailash C. Malhotra published in 1990"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider whether social development in New Zealand was following a different path from that of its eastern Polynesian ancestry, partly because of greater isolation from it.
Abstract: many archaeologists favour a first settlement of Hawaii from the Marquesas, Hawaiian traditions relating to \"Kahiki\" are interpreted as evidence of possible secondary settlement from Tahiti. These, however, may actually record much more recent contacts of a kind which is apparently predictable from study of variables affecting inter-island voyaging frequency. By European contact, small and isolated Easter Island may already have experienced some decline in social complexity, while large and more recently settled New Zealand was perhaps still at a relatively early stage of elaboration. It is interesting, also, to consider whether social development in New Zealand was following a different path from that of its eastern Polynesian ancestry, partly because of greater isolation from it. Given that New Zealand was probably settled only i,ooo years ago, a curious absence in its archaeological record is some more conspicuous variant of the eastern Polynesian marae. By contrast with eastern Polynesia, however, when history interrupted prehistory in the region centred on Tonga, Samoa, and Fiji, elements of political integration and social complexity were still (or once again) being expressed through the added dimension of overseas voyaging. A sphere of Tongan influence was expanding, and this marks a trend which, in one region, may have begun to reverse the contraction of Polynesian interaction that followed colonisation.

20 citations