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Te Kai Paka-Anuta: Food in a Polynesian Outlier Society

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Te Kai Paka-Anuta: Food in a Polynesian Outlier Society Journal de la Société des Océanistes 114-115 | Année 2002 En hommage à Jacques Barrau Te Kai Paka-Anuta: Food in a Polynesian Outlier Society Patrick V. Kirch Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/jso/1404 DOI: 10.4000/jso.1404 ISSN: 1760-7256 Publisher Société des océanistes Printed version Date of publication: 1 December 2002 Number of pages: 71-89 ISSN: 0300-953x Electronic reference Patrick V. Kirch, “Te Kai Paka-Anuta: Food in a Polynesian Outlier Society”, Journal de la Société des Océanistes [Online], 114-115 | Année 2002, Online since 26 May 2008, connection on 22 March 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/jso/1404 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/jso.1404 Journal de la société des océanistes est mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. Te Kai Paka-Anuta : Food in a Polynesian Outlier Society par Patrick V. KIRCH * RÉSUMÉ ABSTRACT En reconnaissance aux contributions fécondes de J. In recognition of Jacques Barrau’s seminal contribu- Barrau à l’ethnographie et à la préhistoire de la nourri- tions to the ethnography and prehistory of food in Ocea- tureenOcéanie, cet article présente un compte rendu nia, this paper presents an ethnographic account of food ethnographique sur l’alimentation d’une société polyné- in one of the most isolated and traditional of Polynesian sienne parmi les plus isolées et les plus traditionnelles : societies : the tiny « Outlier » of Anuta, in the eastern la minuscule île « outlier » de Anuta dans les Salomon Solomon Islands. Based on fieldwork carried out in orientales. Utilisant comme base une enquête menéeen 1971, the paper reviews the underlying economic system 1971, l’article réexamine le système économique sous- of food production, food storage, and the cooking pro- jacent de production, stockage et préparation de la nour- cesses which constitute the « structures of everyday riture qui constitue la structure quotidienne (habitus) life » (habitus) within Anutan oven-houses. The mate- des abris-cuisines de Anuta. La culture matérielle de la rial culture of cooking, oven-house activity, gender rela- cuisine, l’activité de l’abri-cuisine, les relations entre tions within the cookhouse, and the range of actual hommes et femmes dans la cuisine ainsi qu’une série de recipes are discussed. In addition, the paper discusses recettes concrètes sont abordées. De plus, l’article dis- the folk taxonomy of raw and prepared foods. cute de la taxonomie traditionnelle des nourritures crues et préparées. K : food, ethnography of food, oven house, Anuta, East Solomon, Polynesian Outlier. M- : alimentation, ethnographie, abri-cuisine, Anuta, îles Salomon orientales, « outlier » polyné- sien. Introduction kinship, and ritual. More prosaic aspects of cul- ture — such as the procurement of food, and When serious ethnographic work — in the more particularly indigenous concepts and pro- Malinowskian sense — began in Polynesia in the cesses of cuisine — were largely accorded only first few decades of the 20th century, the priori- passing treatment, perhaps because they were ties were widely agreed to be such rapidly chan- considered less interesting, or perhaps because ging aspects of culture as religion and belief, they were thought to be less susceptible to * Department of Anthropology and P. A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 114-115, année 2002. 72 SOCIÉTÉ DES OCÉANISTES change. Moreover, one suspects an unstated Anuta : The Island and its People colonialist bias that Polynesian cooking was unsophisticated and underdeveloped in Anuta must certainly rank as one of the smal- comparison with classical European or Asian lest permanently occupied volcanic islands in the cuisines. The early — 20th century « museum Pacific, with a land area of only 0.4 square kilo- ethnographies » such as those of the Bishop meters, and a resident population (in 1971) of Museum (to use Thomas’ [1989] term) typically 177 persons. This population density of approxi- devote a few pages to the material culture of mately 432 persons/square kilometer is amazin- cooking and cookhouses (e.g., Hiroa, 1930), but gly high for an isolated population sustaining rarely give any ethnographically « thick » itself under a traditional subsistence economy, description of cultural categories of food, or of with no cash cropping or significant food the techniques and processes used to prepare imports 2. The high density level is sustained foods. through a remarkably intensive and complex A rare exception is Firth’s (1936 : 94-116) food production system (Yen 1973), by exploita- fairly detailed account of Tikopian food prepa- tion of rich reef, benthic, and pelagic marine ration, a section of We, The Tikopia curiously resources surrounding the island, and by buffe- omitted in later reprint editions of this now- ring of periodic risk from cyclone and drought classic work. In this paper — written in memory through the use of food preservation and sto- of Jacques Barrau — I consider the foodways rage. and cuisine of the closely-related Polynesian As part of our 1971 project, I mapped the Outlier society of Anuta, located some 112 km entire island using telescopic alidade and plane from Tikopia. The paper is based on original table at a scale of 1:750, plotting in all major ethnographic fieldwork carried out on Anuta for garden features, dwellings, cookhouses, and two months in 1971, during which I was a mem- other cultural features (see Kirch and Rosendahl ber of the first anthropological expedition to 1973 : Fig. 1 for a reduced version of this map). visit the island 1. Geomorphologically, Anuta may be subdivided Jacques Barrau devoted much of his life to into : (1) the low volcanic hill (maximum eleva- investigating and reporting on the ethnobotany tion 80 m asl), whose summit is cloaked with a and indigenous horticultural production sys- mosaic of short-fallow, mulched gardens domi- tems of Oceania. Linked to his interest in crop nated by taro, manioc, and formerly also Diosco- plants and the environment was his concern with rea yams ; (2) the hillslopes which are utilized for food processing and storage, revealed in more tree crops such as breadfruit and betel palm ; than one publication (e.g., Barrau, 1963, 1965 ; and, (3) an accretionary beach terrace of uncon- Barrau and Peeters, 1972). Although we were solidated calcareous sands much of which is also both born in the islands, I met Jacques Barrau under arboricultural production. Habitations only a few times, the first in his Noumea office at are clustered in small hamlets arrayed along the the Commission du Pacifique Sud, where he gra- southern coastline, while the cookhouses are ciously received Yosiho Kondo and me in 1968, situated inland of the dwellings, some cookhou- during our malacological expedition to the ses dispersed well into the arboricultural zone. Loyalty Islands. Although I never had the The Anutans cognize their insular landscape in opportunity to discuss with him in detail our terms of several lexically-marked spatial divi- mutual interest in the anthropology of food, I sions that roughly correspond to these geomor- believe that he would have appreciated this phic and production zones : (1) Te Maunga, the modest addition to the ethnographic record of hill and its gardens ; (2) Te Roto Penua, literally the remote and neglected Polynesian Outliers, « the middle land », which is the interior portion which I present here in his memory. of the arboricultural zone, where the main Cyr- 1. Anuta, which is extremely isolated as well as diminutive, up through the 1970s had extremely limited contacts with the outside world. The island had been visited for a few hours by the 1933 Templeton Crocker Expedition of the Bishop Museum (McGregor, 1934), which had collected a few objects of material culture. Raymond Firth had also visited the island for a single day, using the information collected to author a short description of the island and its people (Firth, 1954). Our 1971 expedition was a part of the Bishop Museum’s 1970-1971 Eastern Solomon Islands Culture History Project, under the overall direction of Roger Green and Douglas Yen. Together with D. Yen, and P. Rosendahl, I spent the period from October 30 to December 22, 1971 on Anuta, carrying out archaeological and ethnographic work. The research was supported by NSF Grant GS-2077 to Bishop Museum, Honolulu. 2. In 1971 there was no evident importation of food stuffs to the island, no trade store, nor was there any exportation of copra or other products. A few Anutans did work from time-to-time in the Russell Islands on the copra plantations, and when they returned brought with them such Western material items as cloth, small kerosene lanterns, metal kettles which they used to hold drinking water, metal fishhooks, and so forth. TE KAI PAKA-ANUTA : FOOD IN A POLYNESIAN OUTLIER SOCIETY 73 F. 1. — The intensive hill gardens with a taro garden in the foreground. tosperma pits are situated ; and (3) Te Aropi of an as-yet unclearly defined « Futunic » Penua, the seaward part of the coastal terrace subgroup of Nuclear Polynesian languages where the habitations are concentrated. Other (Marck, 2000), are mutually intelligible despite landscape divisions mark the steep cliffsonthe some phonological and other distinctions (Fein- northern side (Te Tua Penua), the eastern part of berg, 1977) 3. the island (Te Tu Tereva), and the western area Socially the island’s people are segmented into where the island’s only permanent freshwater four named descent groups or kainanga : the source (a small seep) is situated (Te Uo Vai). Kainanga i Mua, Kainanga i Muri, Kainanga i Archaeological evidence (Kirch and Rosen- Pangatau, and Kainanga i Rotomua (Feinberg, dahl 1973, 1976) reveals that Anuta was first 1981). Two hereditary chiefs (ariki) and their occupied around 900 B.C., by a population retainers or maru form the overt political lea- which used plainware pottery and other artifacts dership.
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