Mythological Burial Tools
Using Legends and Burial Artifacts from Around the World to Explain the Appearance of Adzes in New Zealand Burials
Chapter One – Finding the Dead
What would you have buried with you after death? What would you want reflected about you in the minds of future generations? From the sands of Egypt to the Emperors’ tombs in China, humans have wanted to be prepared for the next life and exit this mortal with as much power as possible by filling the tomb with offerings. “Offerings may exist but never reach the tomb for two main reasons, either because they are destroyed before burial, or because they are 'symbolically' there, in other words they are thought to be there” (Ucko, 1969: 266). But for those without seemly infinite resources, what is the reasoning behind sacrificing tools that could still be useful. Was it about displaying power and taking goods with them to the afterlife? What if a society’s view of the afterlife was completely different than the ancient Egyptian version of life continuation? Was there a purpose to bring a piece of nature, to meld it into something humankind can use only to put it back before it had been completely used up? In this thesis, the research compiled and analyzed has shown that while the majority of people did not have access to the riches of kings there was still an importance placed on the rituals and ceremony surrounding burials. Within the mythologies of each society are found these rites that describe the importance of, or the origin for the use for each societies’ general tools. The New Zealand adze, as one of these tools, appearing in graves is a reaction by the society to meld a piece of nature into something of use by the human culture for control.
Cemetery sites, such as the ones found within and under great temples are valuable for researching archaeologists because they give a broad painting of a society’s cultural beliefs. As one of the most well-known examples of this we can examine the tomb of the King Tutankhamun. Although he was only nineteen years of age when he passed his tomb contained one of the largest, if not the largest, collections of grave goods ever found. According to news from the Smithsonian the newly built Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza will house all 50,000 artifacts of which were found by Howard Carter in 1922 (Keyes, 2016). Artifacts such as clothing, art, weapons, tools, furniture, make-up, games, and walking sticks were found tightly packed together surrounding the boy king’s sarcophagus give archaeologists an extensive look into how the pharaoh might have spent his time during his life; what was most important to him and the people who buried him. Artifacts also reflected the importance of trade; objects made from materials like ivory were only garnered through exchange with other peoples south of Egypt’s borders.
In the centuries before mass production manufacturing goods was an expensive task, both from the raw materials and the labor hours that went into creating the items. The wealthiest among citizens could easily replace anything that had broken or that they wanted to ‘bring to the afterlife’. King Tutankhamun’s tomb may be an extreme example because any number of artifacts can be of use when attempting to uncover the connections of ancient cultures. But because one can compile more data from a larger sample size, this is why royal tombs are generally the most used in our understanding of past societies. This, of course, does less to further the knowledge about how the majority of the population lived. Their graves would most likely be small and have few, if any, grave goods, as anything with use value could continue to be used by the deceased’s relatives.
Cemetery sites are rarer finds in the East Polynesian islands and New Zealand partially due to mythological ideas of the afterlife, as well as the environmental conditions of the ground, cost, and then continuing tradition. These will be discussed more in the following chapters with the main focus here stating that while they were less common, the ones that are known can tell archaeologists a great deal about the society. Cemeteries with artifacts included and a distinguished layout tend to be dated earlier and there are changes in structural form and stylistic layout through time. Cemetery sites within Polynesia became smaller; both in terms of the number of graves included and the graves themselves became smaller in size, with fewer goods buried alongside the bodies (Pearson, 1999: 132-133). Throughout the book How Chiefs became Kings Kirch shows that later grave sites are described as more distinguished, with a greater variation of effort between the wealthiest and the common people (Kirch, 2010). Kirch’s focus was on the cemetery sites in Hawai’i so there will inevitably be differentiation within and between the societies creating the cemeteries of which I am discussing. The remnants of what they left behind are the markings of the important aspects of the people’s culture because it follows the tradition of a kin grouping and according to Pearson, the “act of burial serves to physically ‘plant’ the dead … [a] fixed part of that land” (Pearson, 1999: 17).
With a closer examination of the Pacific Islands there are great distinctions from the kings of the Old World, two of the most notable are their location and the Neolithic state of technology. Traveling between and living on scattered islands changes how any group of people would interact with their environment. These adaptations include learning to use different types of raw material, adapting to various patterns of ecology, and the populations of particular groups would be smaller as some of the islands may not have the resources available to sustain as high a population as a city such as Giza. The difference in technology is also notable because with the use of Bronze or Iron Age technology, materials, like stone, are easier to work with. This leads to craftsmen reducing labor hours and their need for a higher specialization, making goods less expensive and therefore easier to fix or replace. Tools, such as adzes, are expensive in both time spent in their production and the material used to produce them and were commonly used for multiple specialty tasks around the Polynesian Pacific. Because they were so useful it is a bit of a mystery as to why they would have been buried along with their owners if still functional.
Across the expanse of the Eastern Polynesian archipelagos there are hundreds of islands, reefs, and atolls, the three stages of island formation. Each one will have varied environments that would lead the colonizers to adapt in a certain way. If we first look at large islands such as in the Hawai’ian chain; Kihea, Hawai’i, Maui, Oahu, etc. there are sand beaches, rocky shores, fertile garden areas, and the igneous mountain ranges formed directly from the volcano. This grants the local population many different places and ways to honor and then dispose of the dead. To name a few various areas the deceased are buried in; the soft ground under houses, in sand, and in caves. Depending on the environment the bodies are entombed within, the artifacts and the body itself may have disintegrated or simply shifted in location, making identification and building meaningful connections more difficult.
One of the elaborate burials is in the island group Vanuatu, illustrated in the map of figure 1 below, historically placed in the cultural family of Melanesia rather than Eastern Polynesia. The famous grave of Roy Mata was on Retoka Island, which is known for being a Polynesian Outlier, as the people living there demonstrate more relation to Polynesian cultural practices than Melanesian (Kirch, 2017). As Kirch argues, the linguistic and cultural connections between Melanesia and Polynesia are a matter of generations passing as the colonists continue to explore eastward (Kirch, 2010: 133-134, Pawly & Ross, 1993). The burial, which has obtained the greatest attention, belongs to the Polynesian Chief Roy Mata’s exquisite burial plot. Unlike the burials located on the islands nearby Malekula, which are both Lapita and post-Lapita burials, Roy Mata’s burial on Retoka is definitively post-Lapita, because it is dated to the 13th century (Garanger, 1997:328-329, Bedford et al., 2011: 25-27).
Figure 1 - Map of Vanuatu with locations of excavated burial sites near the islands of Efate and Malakula (Valentin et al, 2011; 50)
According to oral tradition, Roy Mata was a hero and a great chief who is remembered for social reforms and is honored by his multilevel grave (Garanger, 1997; 326). More effort was put into his burial, not only based on the form and the goods that were buried with him, but also in terms of the location. Instead of being buried on the major island of Efate Chief Roy Mata was entombed on the small coral island Retoka [figure 1]. His funeral ceremonies were said to have lasted days and the grave goods that were sacrificed were not only items but also people and pigs, demonstrating the lasting impression of him (Garanger, 1997; 326-327). Looking more closely at the inanimate objects rather than at the skeletons of couples, Roy Mata was adorned with conch shells, tusk bracelets, necklaces, pendants and ornaments, large eggshells, and tools made of stone, shell, and coral (Garanger, 1997: 325). A common practice on the atolls of the outlying Polynesian Islands and Micronesia has been reflected in the grave’s collection of the conches, which, through passed down oral history of the mythology, says that the shells are a way of speaking to the dead once they have passed over (Garanger, 1997: 328). Following set actions as precedent by mythology demonstrates a strong influence that we will continue to explore in later chapters. But initially the examination is on the tools, made of both local and imported material. Garanger suggests that the variety of material found in the tools and ornamentation is indicative of different clans coming together under Roy Mata’s leadership (Garanger, 1997: 325). The question remains, what was the long-term purpose, mythologically or otherwise, of sacrificing all of these extremely useful items and people to the dead? Because that question is a bit too broad, this thesis will focus on the tools that are found in graves, as they are most easily described as an item, that can continue to be used and reused.
The research question for this thesis; is why are adzes [toki] are found as grave goods in Eastern Polynesia, and specifically New Zealand? To answer this question, I will be developing a model by pulling from literary sources from a range of cultural backgrounds.
The hypothesis I am developing is that toki are found as burials artifacts in New Zealand because the community wanted to ritually portray their own control over the chaotic environment by bringing an element of nature into human culture and then releasing it as part of its mana cycle.
To test my hypothesis, I will show that we can expect to see shared traits in the various societies, which are outlined in the model that I am building.
First, that various cultures have a set of specific tools recorded within their mythology.
Second, those tools have been interpreted to represent the ability to control and manipulate the environment in order to bring it into the realm of human culture.
Third, there is a tradition of laying grave goods alongside people of importance in the community of global societies in the late Paleolithic onwards.
Fourth, to the deceased and the community these tools would connect with their original use in the cultures’ mythology.
Through interaction with various interpretations of those mythological stories I will demonstrate that the human idea of taking something from the Earth turns it into a symbol. Refining the tool to fit into the cultural picture and utilizing it changes its nature into a means of power and control before returning it to the natural world with the person who the community signifies as its wielder. Following this evidence of societal ritual, because we can see this trend repeating time and again in other societies around the world, the same would be able to withstand scrutiny in Eastern Polynesia, and specifically New Zealand. In short, I will use examples from worldwide literature about burials in other Neolithic societies and the interpretation behind tools of mythological significance to state that adzes, as tools, would have been grave goods for the purpose of displaying symbolic mythological power over the environment.
This is the model I will be building upon in Chapters Two and Three and demonstrating its viability in Chapter Four based on its lay out in other chapters. When specifically discussing New Zealand:
Number one, demonstrating that there is a record in New Zealand of the adze tools and their use within the society and its mythology.
Number two, that the use of the adze in Polynesian mythology is associated with the ability to control and manipulate the environment in which the people live.
Number three, demonstrated by the burial of the tool showing up as a grave good and the completion of the cycles of mana, as put forth by the Atua.
Number four, that because of these mythological associations these tool types have ideological significance to communities based on the burial sites, which contain toki as grave goods, around the major human populated islands of New Zealand.
In this chapter I have given a description of what the main hypothesis of this thesis paper is and how I will be addressing each step within the logical process I am following. I gave introductory summaries of the importance of cemetery sites for archaeological research, discussed some examples of the types of burial styles that are seen in the Pacific islands, and gave a synopsis of the UNESCO recognized historic site of Chief Roy Mata in Vanuatu. In the following chapters I will be building up evidence, which will allow me to analyze the mythological connection between a tool used in everyday life and its purpose as a grave good.
Chapter Two will be the literature review, cold hard facts with an in-depth look at the question: ‘what are grave goods?’ The most general definition is material culture found within a burial that are thought to represent an important aspect of influence of the person they are buried with through wealth, fear, trade, or religiousness. Chapter Two will also examine burial sites around the world, mostly focusing on areas with Neolithic technology, being at a similar level of technology to Polynesia. I will also continue to narrow down the comparisons between various societies’ burial practices and the common artifacts that are found as grave goods. This will then lead to what materials were available; what they would keep vs. what they would sacrifice.
Chapter Three will be a worldwide study of the mythology of tools. I will be exploring both written and oral histories and mythology from around the world to find mentions of specific tool use. I will be reporting on the more commonly used tools and the gods of which appear more often and shape the stories in which they are featured. There will also be specific focus on the tools that have their own names and are used to shape the world in a significant way as this connects directly to my hypothesis.
Chapter Four will follow the same research as in Chapters Two and Three but done on the New Zealand perspective. There will be a general explanation as to what adzes or toki are, followed by, like in chapter three, the linking myths and oral history of the Māori, and then examples of burial sites from both islands. Within this chapter there will be a certain amount of comparisons between New Zealand and Hawai’i because of the similar origins between the Eastern Polynesian islands and their similar connections to the use of the adzing toki, although they have different cultural traditions and are rightfully distinct societies. Lastly, in Chapter Five, I will make my final analyses, summaries, and conclusions, linking theoretical scholarship of meanings of death and ritual with the practical work in this paper, closing out this thesis in a succinct manner.