Hope pukerane: a study of religious sites in Roviana, New Georgia, Solomon Islands

Abstract

This thesis focuses on religious sites, one of the poorly explored fields in Melanesian archaeology, in the Solomon Islands. The study is conducted at two scales of analysis: the whole Solomon Islands and the Roviana region of the New Georgia group. At the broader scale, the variability of religious sites in the Solomon Islands is investigated to examine the nature of their diversity. Depending on the degree of similarity among religious sites, it is possible to delineate four levels of cultural areas: language area, major island, interaction system, and island group. Three mechanisms, origin, interaction, and internal differentiation, functioned differently at each level to create this cultural pattern. Their comparison, including cultural and linguistic information surrounding sites, provides a fruitful result. Based on the field data, religious sites in Roviana are analyzed along two dimensions: typology and spatial patterning. The typological analysis illustrates a temporal change in shrine form and content during the 15th century; available radiocarbon dates and ethnohistoric information suggest an early type of shrine was constructed from at least 1300 AD to 1400 AD and the later type shrines were built from 1400 AD to the turn of this century. Spatial data of religious sites is analyzed at three scales: micro, semimacro, and macro level. At each level, different mechanisms were involved in the spatial organization. Further, the function of two types of religious sites in each period is explored with the help of ethnohistoric and ethnographic information. A dynamic transformation in the religious system, which is manifested in the change in the shrine assemblage, is interpreted as part of a socio-political change after the coastal dispersal of inland groups in the late prehistoric period. This study demonstrates religious sites provide useful information to shed light on socio-political and ideological aspects of past society. Key words: archaeology, religious site, Solomon Islands, typology, spatial analysis, sociopolitical transformation