The Beginning of Chapter 3 - The Methods of Mythology

The mythological narrative plays an important role in the cultural aspects of society by celebrating the development of a people through their stories. When items of material culture or people appear in the stories that are retold over generations, it demonstrates that those objects and individuals are vital to the development of that community’s culture. The inclusion of the adzing-toki in New Zealand (and to the greater extent, Eastern Polynesian) culture as a burial good is representational of the importance placed on environmental control by families in human societies. If this hypothesis is true, there are certain shared conditions we would expect to see in various cultures worldwide.

To test this hypothesis, I have been following a literature based methodological system. So far in this paper I have been scouring academic journals for burial sites, attempting to focus on the Neolithic, but expanding through Iron Age at the latest, in order to match burial sites with the ceremonial burial of tools. This first goal was achieved in chapter two, in which I compiled a Western to Eastern summary of what goods are commonly included in graves along with archaeological interpretations. From these I determined that communities included tools in graves as a type of ornamentation in order to show the others in the community the respect and status that was endowed to the tool. This second section will focus on the tools’ use within the societies’ cultural background by examining mythologies for stories in which the tool plays a vital role. The literature I reference presents an increasing importance as the archaeologists’ interpretations come into play while comparing the tools’ use in relation to the deity who wields it and the link between tools’ power and nature. Once I have presented the continuous thread of logic connecting these ideas in various locations around the world I will show that New Zealand sites follow the same patterns. In building this model I have summarized these aspects in terms of four points, which are as follows:

First: that there is a record of tools and their use within the mythology of a culture.

Second: that these tools are associated with the ability to control and manipulate the environment in which people live.

Third: that this manipulation concerns bringing a piece of nature into the realm of culture.

Fourth: because of the mythological associations these tool types have ideological significance to communities and are often used as grave goods.

This combination of conditions leads to gifting of these materials, especially tools, to the deceased connecting the item’s purpose of use to the person in the burial and the cultural mythology. Through my interaction with various interpretations of those mythological stories I will demonstrate the connection with the innately human idea of taking something from the Earth. The material would be refined to fit a cultural picture, utilizing it as a means of power and control, then, gifting it back to the natural world along with the person who the community is signifying as its wielder. Finally, because we can see these trends 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 in their mythological significance to hypothesize why adzes, as tools, would have been grave goods.

The overall significance is from a cultural identity, showing that the people who are creating the burials have the power to form the chaos of nature into a human context, and thus also have the power to release it. Because many societies contain cultures based in an oral historic context it is vital that we take all of their stories into account. To preface this, I am using mythology, legends, and stories as all-encompassing terms, due to the limiting vocabulary of the English language. In no way am I suggesting that these are all fictional, unimportant, or from an extinct culture or society. Instead, mythology is defined as a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people to explain natural or social phenomena, and typically involves beings or events that tend more to the ‘supernatural’. Legends involve the traditional background of mythology, but are rooted closer to human beings and events of which are based in fact, though not usually proven in and of themselves. Finally, the term story is simply the telling the account of the two formers (Bird, 1997: 336, 345-346).

Across the world societies have commonly held beliefs that they want to demonstrate the communities’ belief using the act of burial and the items buried within will have this purpose. In the next chapter I will be showing that the inclusion of the toki in Māori mythology is directly connected to the meaning that it is bestowed during its life. To compare that inclusion with other mythologically significant tools as burial goods in other cultures, in this chapter, I will demonstrate that the appearance of these tools within burials is a demonstration of control. Within this chapter I will be using mythology as the support for my thesis and thus will be using utilizing many words from outside the English vocabulary, which will be explained the first time they appear in context.