This hypothesis fits in with Elbert's linguistic conclusions that the parent Eastern Polynesian language came from Western Polynesia, and that the speeches of Hawaii, Rarotonga, New Zealand and the Tuamotus were among the youngest of Eastern Polynesian tongues.ĭuff's assumption that accidental settlement implies a “chaotic pattern of culture traits” is inconsistent with the fact that the winds and currents of the Pacific themselves follow well-defined patterns. On the other hand there is a simple hypothesis whereby they could be explained in terms of accidental settlement, namely that after Eastern Polynesia was accidentally settled from Western Polynesia, the art of tanged adzes was developed in Eastern Polynesia and conveyed by accidental settlers to the peripheral islands which were then uninhabited, whereas any accidental voyagers from Eastern Polynesia who might have come to Western Polynesia, being a mere handful of migrants among a widespread existing population with an established technique of making tangless adzes, would be absorbed without making any noticeable impact. These facts are hard to explain in terms of deliberate long voyaging. Does Duff think that by some sort of deliberate zoning arrangement the tanged adzes were carefully restricted to Eastern Polynesia and the tangless ones to Western Polynesia? Duff's logic in citing the fact that tangless adzes were confined to Western Polynesia and tanged adzes to Eastern Polynesia, as if it were more of an argument for deliberate than accidental settlement, is beyond me. I should have thought myself that the divergence between Western and Eastern Polynesian adze forms was the reverse of evidence of deliberate contact.
Finally I note the tendency for the distribution pattern of distinctive types in Eastern Polynesia to correspond with concentric zones, implying radial diffusion from a centrally placed group, here seen to be the Society Islands. "With regard to Sharp's theory of drift within Polynesia with its implication of a chaotic pattern of culture traits, I draw attention first to the clear cut distinction in adze types as between Western and Eastern Polynesia, where not one tanged adze has been established for the former, while not one group of Eastern Polynesia is without the tanged adze.
Long lasting it continues to provide information & argument on Polynesian migration and settlement.ġ. The Pacific adze felled trees, hewed timbers for canoes and canoe parts, household furnishings & goods, bowls, clubs and migrated across the vast ocean. The stone & shell adze was the most important Polynesian tool. The adze is part of the MoST teaching collection.Pacific Argonauts tool par excellence. The Langda adzes were widely traded to groups that lacked suitable stone, and were used to chop down trees to clear land for gardens. The finished stone ax was lashed with lengths of split cane directly to a wood handle cut from the trunk and side branch of a small tree. The unground scars were sometimes filled with red ochre pigment to enhance the asthetics of the tool. Grinding extended to the faces and edges of the blank, although the flake scars were not entirely eliminated. At the village, final retouching was carried out and the cutting edge was ground on one end. Women carry the refined blanks back to the village in a carrying net slung over the back with a loop around the forehead. There the blanks were refined by further flaking, using hammerstones of different sizes and hardness. These were shaped into roughed-out adze blanks there, before carrying them to a field hut on a terrace above the river. Exceptionally large flake blanks were first made at the stone quarries on the side of the local river. The adze blanks were made by male specialist stoneworkers. Langda adze blanks were mostly bifacial, but sometimes flakes were struck off the prominent ridge down the centre of one face, creating a trifacial blank.
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