Eighteenth century Tonga: new interpretations of Tongan society and material culture at the time of Captain Cook

Kaeppler, Adrienne Lois

article

Eighteenth century Tonga: new interpretations of Tongan society and material culture at the time of Captain Cook

Man, n.s. • 6 (2) • Published In 1971 • Pages: 204-220

By: Kaeppler, Adrienne Lois.

Abstract
This article represents a fresh approach to the study of Tongan material culture through the comparison of artifacts brought back by the Cook expeditions and now located in various museum and private collections with a description of their use as described in the various narrative accounts of the late 18th century. During the period of 1967 to 1970, the author carried out extensive research in the museums of the United States, Hawaii, Fiji, and Europe studying the various artifacts and drawings brought back by Captain Cook during his voyages to the Tongan Islands. Of particular importance were those objects brought back from Cook's second voyage since the represent artifacts relatively free from European influence. Kaeppler found that many of these ethnological collections '...have been almost totally ignored by social and cultural anthropologists for many years and the associated documentation has often been mislaid and in some cases destroyed' (p. 218). The J. R. Forster collection of artifacts and drawings from Cook's second voyage to Tonga at the Pitt Rivers Museum was originally accompanied by a CATALOGUE OF CURIOSITIES, a detailed and numbered list of the collection by provenance. Sometime during the early nineteenth century this Catalogue was mislaid '…but its rediscovery in 1969 has established the Forster collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum as both the best documented second voyage collection and as the only ethnological collection made on Cook's voyages which includes original documentation on provenance and use' (p. 205). By using this CATALOGUE in conjunction with the various artifacts in the Pitt Rivers Museum it has been possible to establish for Tonga '…a list of 'type specimens' of known eighteenth century date, provenance, and in most cases, use. These items establish the end product of purely indigenous lines of development, as well as a base for change which came about because of European contact, making it possible to use concepts of time depth and change in studying this material culture' (p. 206). By comparing these 'type specimens' with other Tongan collections and with the accounts of other eighteenth century voyages, principally Cook's third voyage and those of Malaspina in 1792 and d'Entrecasteaux in 1793, a fairly reliable picture can be built up on Tongan material culture as it existed in the eighteenth century. When these data are interpreted in the light of ethnohistoric and ethnographic research, we can understand how many of the items in the collections were originally used, and how they reflected the stratified social system of Tonga.

Historical and archival research

Status, role, and prestige