art and architecture, Oceanic

art and architecture, Oceanic

Introduction

      the visual art (art) and architecture of native Oceania, including media such as sculpture, pottery, rock art, basketry, masks, painting, and personal decoration. In these cultures, art and architecture have often been closely connected—for example, storehouses and meetinghouses are often decorated with elaborate carvings—and so they are presented together in this discussion.

      For more general explorations of media, see individual media articles (e.g., painting, sculpture, pottery, and textile). For a discussion of the characteristics, functions, and forms of masks, see mask.

General characteristics

Materials and techniques
      Until the 16th and 17th centuries, when European cultures appeared upon the scene, Oceanian cultures maintained various forms of Neolithic (Neolithic Period) technology. The only exception was in the northwest of New Guinea, where the people living around Geelvink Bay (Teluk Cenderawasih) imported very small quantities of metal from the Indonesians of the Moluccas (Maluku). The technique of forging was jealously guarded, virtually as a cult secret; some tools were traded but only in quantities far too small to have made much impact on normal working conditions.

      Throughout the rest of Melanesia and in Polynesia and Micronesia (Micronesian culture), the basic tool remained the stone blade, which was hafted as an adz or an ax and sometimes interchangeably as both. Tridacna shell was sometimes used for blades in parts of Oceania where stone was in short supply, including Micronesia and the Solomon Islands. When obsidian was available, it was chipped into blades for use as both weapons and tools. Other working materials included bamboo and bivalve shells, which take extremely sharp edges. Some fine cutting and engraving was done with unhafted boar tusks or with hafted shark and rodent teeth. Animal bones served as gouges, awls, and needles. All these tools were employed in working wood, which with rare exceptions was the main medium used throughout Oceania.

       clay was also employed, mainly for sculptures (Western sculpture), for some small musical instruments (whistles), and for pottery in Melanesia and New Guinea. The making of clay vessels was almost exclusively women's work, except in a few small areas in New Guinea and the northern Solomons. The usual method involved spiral coiling of rolls of clay. The decorating (decorative art) of the pot was the work of men.

      Some working of shell and turtle shell was done with simple drilling and abrading equipment. The carving of stone, although obviously presenting far more arduous and time-consuming problems than wood, was undertaken remarkably often and occurred throughout the Pacific Islands; hammering, pecking, and polishing were the main methods. Even so resistant a material as jade was mastered by grinding with abrasives.

       paint and painting (painting, Western) were thought to animate sculpture—often literally, in religiosymbolic terms, as paint was considered to have magical, vivifying powers. Paints were generally ochres, with some vegetable-derived pigments. Water was the usual medium, occasionally supplemented with sap. Brushes (brush) were the fibrous ends of chewed or frayed sticks, small feather bundles, pieces of wood, and sometimes the most elementary applicator of all, the finger. Apart from sculpture, the surfaces used for painting were rock faces, bark, and tapa (bark painting) (cloth made from pounded bark). Rock painting was most common in Australia, where panels of bark were also used. In Melanesia, paintings were made mainly on sago-palm spathes and sheets of tapa cloth. In Polynesia the women manufactured great quantities of tapa, which they then decorated with abstract designs using vegetable dyes. The techniques they employed included painting, stenciling with leaf templates, rubbing over relief-design tables, stamping, and printing with carved bamboo rollers.

      The only areas where weaving was practiced were the Caroline Islands, the Polynesian outliers east of the Solomon Islands, some of the Santa Cruz Islands, parts of Vanuatu, the Saint Matthias Group (northwest of New Ireland), and a few places on the northern coast of Irian Jaya. Spinning was unknown; instead of yarn or thread, strips of banana fibre were used on a simple backstrap loom. Weaving was a woman's craft in the Caroline and Saint Matthias islands but was practiced by men elsewhere. A form of “finger weaving,” as in net making, was used by Maori women in creating textiles from flax fibres.

 The architecture of the Pacific Islands was varied and sometimes large in scale. Buildings reflected the structure and preoccupations of the societies that constructed them, with considerable symbolic detail. Technically, most buildings in Oceania were no more than simple assemblages of poles held together with cane lashings; only in the Caroline Islands were complex methods of joining and pegging known.

      Oceanic artists' quest for media was consummately opportunistic; they regarded almost anything from the lavish natural world that surrounded them as potentially usable. The marine world yielded shells of all kinds, especially conus, cowrie, and nassa shells. Birds gave down, beaks, and plumes (those of the birds of paradise were especially prized); animals provided teeth, tusks, and skins; insects supplied their brilliant wing cases. The vegetable realm was drawn upon for flowers, leaves, and fibres. The assembly of such materials into single objects was rare in Polynesia and Micronesia, but the practice was typical of Australian and Melanesian styles and contributed brilliantly to their more spectacular effects. The most basic medium of all was the human body, which received both removable and permanent decorations, including scarification, enhanced by treatment to raise keloid welts, in New Guinea and tattooing with needles and pigments elsewhere.

Artist and society
      In societies whose members are largely self-reliant, some degree of craft skill is practically universal. Men make their own canoes, build their own houses, and carve simple household equipment such as hooks and stools; individuals are responsible for decorating their own belongings, including their bodies. In the case of body decoration, however, which can be culturally prescribed in form, highly skilled in execution, and dense in symbolism, the more lavish displays usually entail more than the wearer's sole efforts. Tattooing (tattoo) and scarification, usually tokens of ritual or hierarchical status, were the work of esteemed specialists.

      To progress beyond simple skills, a craftsman not only required the will to excel but sometimes was subject, in theory at least, to socially defined restrictions. There seems to have been an inclination to regard artistic talent as passing from father to son, or from mother to daughter when appropriate; but, in cases in which this was true, society's concept of the role of the artist probably played a bigger role than heredity.

      In many societies the artist was—and still is today—expected to begin his career as an apprentice (apprenticeship) to a known master, often working on preparatory tasks or the less-demanding details of a project. In some parts of Melanesia, among the Kilenge of New Britain, for example, or in the Solomons (Solomon Islands), artistic progress is recognized as covering several stages. The apprentice grows into an independent worker with limited skills and eventually, if he has talent and ambition, becomes a master in his turn. In the Solomons the aspirant is actually expected to produce test pieces for approval by his peers and mentors. Elsewhere the process is apparently less formal and, particularly for grandiose projects, less individualistic. Large-scale projects are often an affair of communal effort under specialized supervision. In Papua New Guinea several men at a time may work on a single large architectural carving among the Kwoma, and a whole team may paint one of the huge gables of the Abelam. Individuals, however, may carve major sacred objects when they are inspired by dreams or induced visions. These interventions by the supernatural world can be quite common: if work goes badly, the failure is attributed less to the workers' incompetence than to the displeasure of the spirits concerned.

      In Polynesia, with its more sharply graded societies, the role of artist was more closely related to the religious expert (for instance, the Maori tohunga) than it was in Melanesia. Indeed, in Hawaii and elsewhere carvers formed a special priestly class, and their work was accompanied at every stage with rituals and prayers. The New Zealand Maori considered carving a sacred activity, surrounded by spiritual and physical dangers. Myths of the origins of carving connected it directly to the gods, and its subjects linked it intimately to the ancestors. Carving was one of eight proverbial attainments of a chief, and young Maori of high rank were trained in the formal schools of learning. There were cases of chiefs being captured and enslaved for their talents and, conversely, of slaves celebrated as artists.

      The material rewards were not great. While the carver and painter was preoccupied with his work, it was the business of his employer to keep him well fed. On completion, the artist received agreed amounts of valuables, but he might well give away some of them (among the Kilenge at least) to those who praised him. Praise and esteem were in fact the main rewards and were steps toward the making of a “Big Man” of power and influence in Melanesian communities; in Polynesia, mana—personal prestige and moral authority—was achieved in the same way. Equal or even greater credit often went to the man who commissioned the work, for he was regarded as its true author. His achievement in seeing that the work was first instigated and then carried through to a successful conclusion earned him fame and prestige.

      Pacific languages seem to be deficient in terms to express appreciation of or reactions to art, apart from a few that designate the mastery of individual specialists. Little is understood, moreover, about the islanders' aesthetic concepts. Reactions to works of art seem to range from the pragmatic and rational in the secular realm to the violently emotional in the religious. At a fairly simple level, aesthetic appreciation is expressed as approval of the manner in which a work has been accomplished, of its compliance with possibly unformulated but nevertheless well-understood standards. Craftsmanship and suitability to function are highly valued.

      In general, innovation does not seem to have been highly prized. Nevertheless, changes have certainly taken place in the arts over the long period of Pacific history, even though, in the absence of more than a scattering of archaeological examples, such changes are difficult to document. One technique used by artists to attain success was to copy models of recognized excellence and symbolic soundness; old works were often retained precisely for this purpose. The inevitable introduction of variations in these situations, as a result of variations in individual talent, was largely ignored, and the intention of identity between old and new objects was accepted as always having been achieved. The ideal of the local tradition was thus maintained, even though actual stylistic fluctuations must have occurred over time.

      In some areas the exotic was deeply admired and therefore copied: in parts of New Guinea, for instance, certain items captured in warfare are known to have been duplicated. Such cases were probably comparatively rare, however. More often works displaying special craft techniques (such as work in ivory imported by Fijians from Tonga) were treasured because it was accepted by the importers that the imports were beyond their skills to manufacture for themselves.

      The Maori of New Zealand developed the most precise aesthetic terminology of Oceania, describing both the innate properties of a work and its effect on the viewer. A masterpiece possesses ihi (power), emanates wana (authority), and inspires wehi (awe and fear). The belief that art and religion overlap is widespread in the Pacific, and religious objects are often works of visual art (though not invariably). These objects are not considered sacred in themselves, however; they are humanly worked things into which supernatural beings can be induced for human purposes. These supernaturals are always powerful, unpredictable, and thus dangerous. In New Guinea their destructive power may turn against the object itself, causing a carving to rot, self-consumed; or an object may become so loaded with accumulated power that it has to be buried or otherwise eliminated. It is possible that the practice of abandoning elaborate and painstakingly made carvings after ritual use—as in New Ireland and among the Asmat of Irian Jaya—was inspired by such beliefs. In many societies an uninitiated person who glimpsed the sacred objects would be executed, but it is likely that the offended spirits were considered the killers, not the men who acted for them and performed the execution. Among the Maori, ancestral heirlooms were not to be touched without ritual purification, and mistakes in ritual, especially in the building of meetinghouses, with their powerful ancestral associations, could be fatal. Awe and fear are understandable emotions in such circumstances.

      In areas where religion depends more on ritual dances or oratory than on objects, expression of the visual arts may be channeled (as in Samoa and much of Micronesia) into an exquisite refinement of craftsmanship, often in the making of utilitarian objects. In these circumstances, the quality of an object often becomes a symbolic reference to social status.

      Oceanic visual art, then, although rarely baldly pictorial in a Western manner, is replete with references to both religious and social values. It may even, it has been suggested, be a material means by which values are transmitted nonverbally to those qualified to understand the messages involved, thus becoming a mode of communication that reinforces and is vital to society.

Early styles
      The history of Oceanic art falls into two major phases, corresponding to the periods before and after Western contact. This is due not so much to the changes ensuing from contact—decisive as they have been—as to the preservation of otherwise ephemeral material by Western collectors and researchers. The total loss of early works and the paucity of archaeological discoveries renders the comprehension of ancient Oceanic art fitful and incomplete. In fact, there is not enough known about early Micronesian art to warrant discussion here. Nevertheless, what has survived elsewhere hints at the antiquity of art traditions in Oceania and sometimes illuminates the origins of more recent styles.

      The Australian continent is liberally dotted with thousands of rock-art sites. They include rock shelters, outcrops of rock, and surface sheets of rock and are decorated with painted, pecked, or engraved figurative and nonfigurative forms in a wealth of styles. These are the main testimonials to the prehistoric art of the Aborigines (Australian Aborigine); the only portable works from early periods that have been discovered are some elaborate items used for personal decoration. Long necklaces and chaplets made of animal teeth and lizard vertebrae, bone beads, and stone pendants have been found in burials and elsewhere dating from 15,000 BP (before the present) and later. Long bone pins indicate the existence of garments, probably cloaks made of animal skins.

      The early use of colour for various purposes is attested by the inclusion of red ochre in burials at Lake Mungo in New South Wales, dated 32,000 BP. While this is not necessarily evidence of any specifically artistic activity, it shows the ritual value of the colour and of the material, which was imported from sources many miles away. Paintings for which human blood was the medium have been found and proved to be more than 20,000 years old.

      The chronology of the rock-art styles is established largely by the classic method of tracing the superposition of works in one style over works in another; but current theories are also based on such factors as known climatic and geologic events, the presence or absence in the paintings of certain animals or equipment that are now extinct or obsolete, and the degree to which modern Aborigines are familiar with the sites and the meanings of the art. One factor that decisively marks the end of the early period is the representation of European or (in the north of the continent) Indonesian cultural elements, such as ships and introduced animals.

      One of the earliest known styles is the Panaramittee. It was widespread, mainly through southern Australia, central Australia, and Tasmania, and dates from about 30,000 BP onward. It is characterized by small pecked designs, both figurative and nonfigurative, on rock surfaces. The nonfigurative designs include circles, crescents, and radiating lines; the figurative are almost all of footprints and bird and animal tracks.

      Another early style, dated to 20,000 BC, is represented in Koonalda Cave under the Nullarbor Plain in South Australia. Certain areas of the cave walls, which are composed of a soft rock, are densely covered with engraved or finger-marked geometric designs. Most of the designs consist of no more than parallel lines or herringbone patterns, but they cover several thousand square feet. It is possible that their significance lies as much in their placement at specific points in the cave as in their now undiscoverable symbolism.

      Both rock engravings and paintings in the Simple Figurative style are widely found at sites in the north, east, and west of Australia but rarely in the interior. The style apparently followed the Panaramittee, but it cannot be dated precisely. It is characterized by somewhat loose silhouettes of human and animal forms and has remained influential until recent times.

      In northwestern Australia, in both coastal and hinterland areas, there are at least two sequences of painting styles. In Arnhem Land, rock painting has been divided into a sequence of four styles, partly on the basis of apparent references to environmental changes. The earliest, the Mimi (a clan of spirit beings) or Dynamic style, is notable for linear human stick figures that wear ornaments, carry spears and boomerangs, and are occasionally endowed with animal heads. They are associated with paintings of now-extinct animals, such as the Tasmanian wolf (thylacine). The style is presumed to date from 18,000 BP to pre-9000 BP. It is followed by the Estuarine style, which developed during a period when saltwater conditions prevailed: a situation reflected in the use of crocodiles as subjects in paintings in the X-ray style (in which the internal organs are shown). A subsequent Freshwater phase is characterized by representations of ceremonial fans made from feathers of marsh birds. Finally, there are paintings from a “contact” period, which began with the arrival of Indonesian fishers of trepang (sea cucumber) at the end of the 18th century and continued, after 1880, with the arrival of Australian drovers on horseback. The visits of both are pictured in the rock art.

      A parallel sequence has been traced in paintings from the Kimberly (Kimberley) region, to the west. An early period is manifested by the Bradshaw style of small human figures, mostly in red, perhaps dating from before 3000 BC. The Bradshaw style is succeeded by the wandjina style, which takes its name from the ancestor spirits depicted in the paintings. The large white spirit figures are outlined in black and have mouthless, circular faces that are framed in red, rayed halos. This style has persisted to the present.

Melanesia
 The first indication of the existence of any form of art in Melanesia is shown by the use of pigments, probably for personal decoration, in the eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea by 15,000 BC. Other examples of early art in New Guinea include the stone carvings, including pestles, animal and human figures, and mortars, that have been found in the central Highlands, where most seem to have been made. Some were exported to eastern Papua New Guinea. The carvings are as yet undated, although it is known that plain stone bowls were in use about 2000 BC. Much of the sculptures' imagery has been repeated in the recent art styles of the Sepik area and elsewhere. Rock art, in the form of paintings and petroglyphs, is abundant in Papua New Guinea but also remains undated.

      The most important evidence of art in the early western Pacific is the ceramic (traditional ceramics) style called Lapita, after a site in New Caledonia. It is the most prominent material aspect of a culture that flourished from approximately 1900 BC to the beginning of the modern era and that achieved an astonishingly wide distribution. Lapita sites, or other evidences of Lapita influence, are found from the northern coast of Papua New Guinea throughout the major island groups of Melanesia to Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa in the east. The Lapita culture complex involved intensive exchange (acculturation) of ceramics, stone tools, and other goods over long distances. Obsidian for tools, in particular, was traded from the Admiralty Islands and New Britain as far as New Caledonia.

 The Lapita ceramics include a range of handsome vessel forms: flat-bottomed dishes, shallow and deep bowls, and small-mouthed, carinated vessels. It is their decoration, applied with toothed stamps, that makes them so distinctive. Much of it is applied in stacked horizontal zones; most of the design units are constructed from simple arcs or right angles, but some are intricate interlocking patterns. There are also some complex curvilinear designs incorporating faces that are the earliest dated human representations in the Pacific Islands. The early western ceramics are the most elaborate; designs become increasingly simple to the east until, after about 500 BC, vessels made in the Fiji-Tonga-Samoa area retain some Lapita shapes but lack decoration. Little else remains of this elegant artistic tradition. Wood carving was practiced, judging by the remains of suitable tools, but no examples have survived.

      It is possible that Lapita art was fundamental to the later development of art in the Pacific. Some Lapita design motifs, especially the more complex, can be shown to have survived in Melanesia until the present day, as have Lapita principles of design layout. Lapita art was also in all probability ancestral to early phases of much Polynesian art and even to the tatooing and tapa decoration styles of recent times.

      No other surviving early art from Melanesia approaches the accomplishment of Lapita, but a few contemporary and subsequent prehistoric ceramic traditions deserve mention. Some, as at Sohano on Bougainville Island in the northern Solomons (c. 500 BC) and Yule Island off the southern coast of Papua New Guinea (c. 1000–2000 BP), have incised designs that may derive from Lapita. A more elaborate and impressive style is that of the Mangaasi culture of Vanuatu, which dates from 700 BC to AD 1200. Early Mangaasi ceramics include spherical pots and are decorated with bold triangles outlined with applied fillets, within which are further arrangements of incised triangles. Handles were modeled in bird and animal forms.

      The apparently early New Guinea tradition of stone carving has parallels in other parts of Melanesia. Stone bowls have been found in New Britain, and stone flared ax heads with flanges shaped like birds' and animals' heads have been found in the northern Solomons.

Polynesia
      In the prehistoric cultures of Polynesia, two conspicuous themes figure largely: the ceremonial ground (the marae/ahu complex, known by varying local terms) and personal ornaments. The ceremonial ground was a place of worship. It usually took the form of an enclosure (marae), which was raised or walled or in some other way delineated, with a raised platform (ahu) across one end. A row of upright stone slabs along the ahu were backrests for the gods, while other stones indicated the places of human officiants. The grounds went through various phases of development in the island groups and were the Polynesians' most conspicuous architectural achievements.

      Early Polynesian cultures shared a number of traits deriving from a common tradition. Types of adzes, fishhooks, and certain ornaments recur, including reel-shaped necklace units and pendants (pendant) of whale teeth, unshaped or shaped by carving a sliver from the lower end. Shaped whale-tooth pendants are found in the earliest phase of Marquesan culture (AD 300–600), as are small perforated shell disks that might have been attached to the coronets typical of later periods. A few simple stone figures belong to a “developmental” phase (AD 600–1300); one closely resembles small stone figures from Necker Island, the most northerly of the Hawaiian group. These are posed frontally, have circular faces with clumsily delineated features, and may date from about the 10th century. They would seem to be representative of an ancestral Polynesian carving style and are the earliest sculpture from Hawaii. Monumental stone figures of gods, in a style that persisted into the 19th century, were being carved and installed on marae in the Marquesas about 1500.

  Easter Island, remote and isolated, is the site of the most famous monuments of the Pacific. Among the monuments are some 300 stone platforms, some of which were used for burials and some of which supported the island's spectacular colossi. Work on the statues, which were carved from a soft volcanic stone, seems to have begun about AD 900. The first figures were relatively small, about 2 metres high; later statues were as much as 12 metres high. The statues' heads and torsos are in an extremely rigid frontal style, with the slender arms and elongated hands carved down the sides and across the belly. Necks are barely indicated; the faces have deep-set eyes, long pointed noses, and massive chins. The statues originally had barrel-shaped topknots of red stone and eyes of white shell and black stone. The Easter Island tradition of statue carving came to an end by about 1600, probably as a result of a serious breakdown of the culture caused by internecine wars.

      The earliest New Zealand Maori culture had strong relationships to the contemporary art of eastern Polynesia, whence the Maori migrated about the 9th century. The use of tapa cloth was presumably common, and tattooing was practiced. Fishing lures (some carved as fish), fishhooks, and adzes follow Polynesian types, and the patu type of club in whalebone existed in both areas. In this early phase, the whale-tooth pendants and reel-shaped ornaments of Polynesia became in New Zealand massive stone versions, which were used as pendants or strung as necklaces. Other stone pendants were divided spheres and plaques with stylized fish or zoomorphs carved in relief. Wood carving has not survived, although suitable stone chisels have been found.

      The following phase represented the inception of specifically Maori styles. One indication is an increasing complexity exemplified by the elaboration of whale-tooth pendants. The original simple forms of central Polynesia became, by the 14th century, the so-called chevron pendants, which were probably worn in symmetrical pairs. They retain the tooth form but are flat and bordered with series of chevrons representing human limbs. A few small wood carvings from this period exist, as well as one major piece, the decoration for the roof of a house from Kaitaia. Although the roof decoration shows some Polynesian influence, it also powerfully states a major theme of Maori art: a human figure flanked by figures in profile, prototypes of the later manaia monsters. It is identical in composition to the lintel panels of later Maori art. Among other surviving carvings are a remarkable 16th-century stern piece and a canoe prow cover, both from the North Island; (North Island) the bow cover is the oldest known work to be decorated with pecked spirals—the most dominant feature of later Maori art.

      A series of combs found in a sacred deposit at Kauri Point Swamp on New Zealand's North Island illuminates the development of forms in the 16th to 18th centuries; the combs progress from square panels with engraved geometric designs to rounded forms with near-figurative decoration. Some of the later engraved features have spurs projecting from edges of parallel lines and are highly reminiscent of the carving on a canoe prow and stern post from Doubtless Bay and a relief panel from Awanui, both sites in the far north of North Island. In general, all these objects show a move away from the simple forms and plain surfaces of the earliest Maori art to more complex forms that are variegated with small areas of intensive bas-relief. This trend reached a culmination in a series of chests, for the bones of high-ranking people, carved in human form.

      Following this, a highly vigorous revolution of Maori art took place. Cloaks, the primary garments, were still given geometric patterns on their borders, but otherwise there was a new emphasis on flowing, curvilinear designs and a wealth of surface decoration. Pendants of whale teeth persisted, but only with minimal carving of a human face at the tip; and jade, from the mountains and streambeds of the South Island, became the most prestigious material for blades, weapons, and a wide range of ornaments.

Oceanic art and architecture after European (European exploration) contact

Effects of European contact
      The earliest Westerners to explore the Pacific Ocean undertook their dangerous voyages with firm determination to discover wealth in one form or another. Except in rare cases, they had no lively curiosity about the islanders. They engaged neither their interests nor their skills in recording island life; indeed, their visits were often too brief to leave time for observations. Tense and even hostile encounters were frequent and must have further distorted the mutual views of those involved. The few comments and drawings to be found in the records of the expeditions of Álvaro Mendaña de Neira (1567–68, 1595), Pedro Fernández de Quirós (1605–06), Luis Váez de Torres (1606), and Don Diego de Prado (1606), all in the service of Spain, Jakob Le Maire (1616) and Abel Janszoon Tasman (Tasman, Abel Janszoon) (1642–43) of the Netherlands, and others are thus all the more telling. They reveal that in general the material culture they witnessed was approximately the same as was recorded and collected by the late 18th-century explorers and their successors.

      Thus it seems that, in many parts of the Pacific, material culture had reached a settled state by the 16th century and remained conservative for two more centuries. Then, in the 18th century, contact with European collectors began to stimulate changes in some areas of Oceania, including the outright faking of antiquities and the adaptation of traditional forms to European fancy. The islanders also began the manufacture for sale of favourite collectibles, such as stone adzes and weapons. (Such adaptation of production has continued and remains in practice today.)

      The art styles of the Australian Aborigines (Australian Aborigine) fall into three groups, which follow to some extent the ecological zones of the continent. The first group is identified with the heart of Australia; this region, which covers most of the continent's landmass, is arid desert surrounded by a belt of savanna. The second zone extends from the central desert region to the southeastern coast and includes sections of open eucalyptus forest and belts of tropical jungle. The third zone is similar to the southeastern zone, but it extends to the northeastern and northern coasts (including Arnhem Land and Cape York). It is thought that, at the time of European contact, the Aboriginal population (about 300,000 people) roughly corresponded with these divisions, the north-northeast region having the greatest numbers and the desert the least.

      The material culture of all three groups was limited in types of objects but versatile and highly efficient in its adaptation to the peoples' hunting-and-gathering economy (hunting and gathering culture). All material objects were necessarily portable and often served more than one purpose. For example, wooden bowls were used as both food carriers and cradles; and boomerangs (boomerang), which were used primarily for fighting and hunting, could also be used, in conjunction with shields, to make fires. The most consistently decorated objects were shields, spears, spear-throwers, clubs, and boomerangs of various forms.

The central desert
      The art of the central desert area features arrangements of primarily curvilinear and rectilinear designs engraved on flat surfaces. Stylized depictions of birds, snakes, and human figures occur infrequently. Paint was used sparingly and was usually restricted to red and white.

      Curvilinear (curvilinear style) designs mostly appeared in the eastern and central parts of the area in the form of concentric circles, arcs, semi-ovals, and wavelike patterns. Probably the most striking examples are found on the engraved tjurungas of the Aranda tribe. These oval or disk-shaped sacred boards were made of wood or stone and painted with red ochre. Each design element refers to a specific object or situation; but the application of the reference in its context of the general design, and its relation to myth, is known only to its clan proprietors. It is this relationship that is revealed, in whole or in part, at initiation rituals.

      The most elaborate design creations in the central desert area were the settings devised for totemic (totemism) rituals. The ground was painted with large designs featuring the characteristic circles and serpents, in red or black on an ochre field with white dots. Arrangements of decorated poles and symbolic structures completed the settings. The participants had their bodies painted and then were covered with bird down adhered with the wearer's blood. In the northern central desert, headpieces, worn transversely or vertically, were constructed of spears sheathed in red and white bird down and represented totemic fauna and flora. In the south and the west, the totemic emblems were smaller panels of string and down worked on stick frames.

      Objects made for daily rather than ritual use, such as spear-throwers and boomerangs, were typically engraved. The engraved designs are characteristically curvilinear in the central area, but the engraving of the west and northwest tends to consist of angular grooved key or diamond patterns against a background of parallel grooves (which were sometimes painted alternately red and white). Similar key patterns were engraved onto mother-of-pearl shells by tribes living along the coastal waters of the northwest. Highly prized as ornaments, the shells were traded far into the interior.

The southeast
      Living in the immediate path of European colonization, the Aborigines of the southeast were the first to suffer from its effects; their culture was extinguished with some rapidity, and the area was practically depopulated. Their culture had been relatively rich. The temperate climate and the natural resources of the great Murray and Darling river systems stimulated a number of regional variations in art and material culture. In response to the cool winters, the Aborigines built fairly substantial wood shelters, covered with bark sheets and animal skins. They made large cloaks by sewing together opossum pelts incised with decorative patterns on the inner sides. For transport and fishing on the rivers, they built simple bark canoes.

      Throughout the area, the basic designs were geometric. Objects were frequently engraved with dense patterns of solid or dotted zigzags and parallel lines. The rich texture thus created served as a background for other carved geometric designs, such as squares or diamonds, as well as for painted elements. Local variations in style are best seen in shields, of which there were four main types. From roughly north to south, the first type was an elongated oval with a convex surface. The second, used for parrying, was extremely narrow and was triangular in section. In the Murray River area, shields were thin, flat, broad ovals with a projecting tab at each end. The fourth type of shield, found east of the Murray River, was a narrow elongated oval pointed at both ends. Other weapons included long spear-throwers and a remarkable range of club types, with spatulate, hooked, or knobbed heads. In areas where the second and third types of shields were made, decorated boomerangs were also used for fighting, but they were engraved with uncharacteristic designs.

      The ritual art of the northern area included abstract and representational designs channeled into the ground and large-scale earth effigies. Bark effigies and paintings on bark are recorded but have not survived. In the northwest, a unique form of monument was created: the dendroglyph, an engraving on a living tree trunk. Carved in the usual geometric style, dendroglyphs featured clan designs or made references to local myths. They were used to mark the graves of notable men or to indicate the perimeters of ceremonial grounds.

The north
      From the rain-forest country of northeastern Queensland comes an unusual type of shield, a large flat oval with somewhat asymmetrically curved sides. Most have a raised central boss. Designs above and below the boss radiate away from it and are outlined in black and infilled with red, white, and yellow. As usual, they refer to mythological beings and episodes. Paddles and cross-shaped boomerangs were painted in the same manner for ceremonial use.

      The lavish use of colour on these objects is indicative of the emphasis placed on painting among the areas to the north, especially around the Gulf of Carpentaria and on its islands, in Cape York and Arnhem Land, and on Melville and Bathurst islands and Groote Eylandt. In Arnhem Land, paintings on bark sheets included both figurative images and the geometric designs typically used in sacred contexts. Paintings from western Arnhem Land and some adjacent islands were often in the X-ray style, in which animals are painted on dark monochrome backgrounds with their internal organs showing. In paintings of northeastern Arnhem Land the field was completely filled with both representational and geometric images depicted in fine-line cross-hatching. These images referred to ancestral myths and are programmatic, even narrative, in content.

      Unlike the rest of Australia, the northern zone is rich in three-dimensional wood sculpture. The Tiwi people of Melville and Bathurst islands created tall poles in abstract forms by carving, removing, or leaving in their original dimensions alternate sections of a tree trunk. Each pole was then painted in flat areas of colour interspersed with bands of cross-hatching. Such poles were planted in clusters as grave markers in elaborate funerary ceremonies, and boldly painted bark containers for offerings were placed on the poles. Throughout the northern region, small carvings of birds, animals, and plants were typical sacred emblems; but in northeastern Arnhem Land, as nowhere else in Australia, large figures of human beings also were used in ritual and sometimes as grave markers. This use of human figures has been attributed to the influence of Indonesian fishermen who visited the area for shell and sea cucumber, but it is also possible that it resulted from contact with the Torres Strait islanders to the north.

Melanesia (Melanesian culture)
The Torres Strait (Torres Strait Islands)
      The small islands of the Torres Strait, between northern Australia and southern Papua New Guinea, were inhabited by groups of people who, generally speaking, shared a common basic culture. Religious life revolved largely around male initiation cults of various creative and peregrinatory heroes, fertility cults, and funerary ceremonies. Stage settings and decorated masks (mask) were used for all of these rites. The settings were typically screens before which dancers appeared in reenactments of myths.

      On the southern islands the chief material of major works of art was tortoiseshell, which was perhaps nowhere else in the world used on a comparable scale for masks and effigies. The tradition was evidently an old one, having been observed by the Spanish explorers Torres and Prado in 1606. The masks and effigies were built up of small plates of shell lashed together. Masks were painted red, with white details; some sparse decorative engraved detail was filled in with white, and carved wooden accessories, seed rattles, and feathers were added. The masks are of three types. Two, used for the hero cults, were to be worn horizontally on the top of the head and represent fish or combinations of creatures, such as the head of a crocodile or hawk with a fish's tail. Sometimes a subsidiary human face was added on top of the head. The masks for funerary ceremonies were more naturalistic with somewhat elongated faces and slightly elongated earlobes, embellished with wigs and beards of human hair. On the western islands, large shield-shaped human masks may have been worn and were certainly employed as shrines with trophy skulls attached to them. Large effigies of human beings, crocodiles, and sharks—some as large as life-size—were constructed for initiations and kept in sacred fenced enclosures. Only on Saibai Island, off the southern New Guinea coast, were masks consistently carved in wood. They are extremely elongated, with long pierced ears and crescent-shaped, toothed mouths, and were worn in harvest times. Wood sculpture was otherwise restricted to representations of human heads, which were attached to canoe prows, and to small figures of humans, turtles, dugongs (sea cows), and other animals used for sexual and fertility magic. Magic for rainmaking involved small stone figures.

      The visual arts of New Guinea are rich and highly complex. Fortunately, the great number of styles that exist can in many cases be subsumed into larger groupings corresponding to geographic areas. Moving clockwise from the extreme northwest of the island (Papua), the primary style areas are Geelvink Bay; Humboldt Bay (Teluk Yos Sudarso) and Lake Sentani; the prolific Sepik River region, which is subdivided into numerous smaller groups; Astrolabe Bay; the Huon Gulf; the Massim area; the Gulf of Papua (Papua New Guinea); Fly River; the Marind-anim region; and the southwestern coast. The central Highland ranges of the island also constitute a major style area.

      The Geelvink Bay area, including several offshore islands, is located at the northwestern end of New Guinea in the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya. Its style of sculpture seems closely related to those of such eastern Indonesian islands as Tanimbar and Leti, probably as a result of relatively recent influences. The most famous works from the area are the korwar (korwar style) figures, small statues embodying the spirits of ancestors; they were used by shamans to divine the outcome of important ventures, illnesses, and other critical situations. They generally depict standing or seated males with disproportionately large heads, befitting their function as either representations of or actual containers for skulls. The heads are as a rule strongly rectangular, with sharply cut brows, small round eyes, and long anchor-shaped noses. The figures usually incorporate local features, such as subsidiary figures, headgear, figures of snakes, or openwork shields.

 The carved designs of scrolls and spirals found on the korwar shields were also frequently used to decorate the vertical panels forming the prow ornaments of canoes and a multitude of small objects, including headrests and bamboo tobacco containers.

Humboldt Bay and Lake Sentani
 The area around Humboldt Bay and Lake Sentani is one of intensive stylistic interaction. A striking example of this interaction can be seen in the diffusion, in the early 19th century, of a pyramidal type of ceremonial house (architecture) from the eastern coast to Humboldt Bay and subsequently inland to Lake Sentani. The houses had human-shaped finials roughly carved of fern wood and, projecting from their walls, long poles terminating in bird and fish figures. Variations existed, of course, and in general the Sentani ceremonial houses were less elaborate, but the houses of chiefs were equipped with figures standing on short posts protruding up through the floor. The central posts supporting the ridgepole were also carved in human form.

      The western edge of the area is best known for its small carvings of human figures and for its carved canoe ornaments. The figures are squat, even bulbous in limb and body; they have neckless, globular heads, with long projecting, sharply pointed noses. The canoe carvings basically consisted of two horizontal rectangular panels united in a point at the front, on which stood a carving of a human head, sometimes with a bird perched on it. Tied behind the head was a separate carving: a vertical rod with crosspieces terminating in either human heads or bird figures. Relief or incised details were picked out in colour.

      To the east, closer to Humboldt Bay, the prow carvings were S-shaped and depicted the body, neck, and head of a long-billed bird; subsidiary figures of fish and other creatures were arranged on the bird's body. Carved human figures were columnar, with the arms and shoulders in low relief and displaced forward almost to cover the chest. The figures had ovoid heads with down-slanted brows, circular eyes, and toothy crescent-shaped mouths.

      Painting on tapa (bark painting) was common throughout the Humboldt-Sentani area, largely for women's skirts. At Lake Sentani the style was somewhat linear, using double spirals (also a common carving motif) and fish or bird forms with exaggerated V-shaped tails. Humboldt Bay tapas were denser in design, with the entire field covered with larger and bolder forms.

The Sepik River regions
      Roughly 200 separate groups speaking distinct languages live around the Sepik River. As might be expected, the variety of artistic styles found among these groups is bewildering, but three visual elements seem to be basic to nearly all the styles in varying degrees: (1) designs in which two triangular forms are connected at their bases or apexes, often with further design elements in the angles so formed, (2) sculpture based on vertical series of hooklike forms that can be either unidirectional or in opposed groups, and (3) naturalistic representation of natural objects. The interplay of these three elements in various styles suggests that the first two elements preceded the third. The Sepik areas treated in this discussion are, moving clockwise, the northwestern coast, the central coast, the eastern coast, the southern tributaries, the South Sepik Hills, and the upper Sepik.

      The styles of the northwestern Sepik area are closely related to those of its western neighbour, the Humboldt-Sentani area. Forked-tailed zoomorphs, used on canoe prows and paddles, and pyramidal houses are common in both regions. The art of the northwestern Sepik groups, however, is based predominantly on the triangular design described above. Sculpted figures are rare in the area. The most conspicuous works are shields, which show many variants of the triangular design. Among the Olo tribe, for example, the triangles are formed from a group of scrolls. Triangular designs can also be found painted on bark sheets used by various groups for initiations and on huge conical masks used by several groups in healing rituals. The Telefomin carved the designs onto tall boards used as house entrances. Similar boards were used to create whole facades by neighbouring tribes. Some tribes used the triangular motif in conjunction with an S-shaped double-spiral design on tobacco pipes, hand drums, and bark paintings.

      The north-central section of the Sepik region stretches from the coast to Lake Chambri just south of the Sepik River. The major groups in the area are the Boiken, the Abelam, and the Sawos and the Iatmul.

      The Boiken styles, which appear to have been numerous, are relatively little known. Their most conspicuous monuments are the ceremonial houses, which follow on a smaller scale the pattern of Abelam houses to the west. Masks of the coastal Boiken were in a long-nosed style; others were made in basketry. Basketry was also used for a variety of small masks, bird figures, and abstract forms that were attached to large turbo shells used as valuables. Figure sculpture was rare, but the Boiken had rich traditions of pottery making. Food and cooking pots were elaborately decorated with engraved designs and were widely distributed, especially to the river people.

      The art of the Abelam tribe, which lived in the Prince Alexander Mountains, was tied to a vigorous ceremonial life. It thus presents a far more spectacular scene. Their pyramidal ceremonial houses, centres for cults of yam growing and initiation, were built on the grandest scale known in New Guinea. They featured vast painted gables and lintels, to which carvings of hornbills, parrots, and lizards were attached. The carvings were in every instance augmented by paint, which indeed the Abelam considered magical in itself.

      There are three basic styles of Abelam sculpture. The figure sculpture of the north consists of simple, bulbous forms in massive but sketchy conformations, with detail largely supplied by painting in yellow, black, and white over a predominantly red ground. The eastern style is now similar to that of the north, although somewhat less dependent on polychromy. At an earlier period, the eastern sculptures were elongated, with a human head at one end and the rest of the figure consisting of clusters of bird heads. In both the north and east, major sculptures were often monumental in scale, some 20 feet long. Large openwork panels were also carved, showing humans, animals, and birds. Figures in the southern, or Wosera, style are generally standing; they have ovoid heads that are often surmounted by birds.

      Painting styles also varied. Bark paintings found on the ceremonial house gables of the northern Abelam are broad, large-scale depictions of spirit faces, figures, and animals. Paintings by the southern Abelam tend to be smaller in scale and painted not in flat areas of colour but with much fine line and cross-hatching.

      Masks, which were worn for initiations, were generally confined to basketry hoods with elaborate openwork eye panels and noses. Small basketry masks were attached to yams during rituals, and men wore pointed basketry crests as hair ornaments. This pointed form was repeated among the Wosera on a huge scale as a ritual headpiece made of feathers.

      The Abelam made a wide range of small decorated objects, including cups, spoons, whistles, and spinning tops in coconut shell; arm ornaments, daggers, and gouges in bone; spears, digging sticks, hand drums, and stirrers in wood; and pots in clay. All were incised with human faces or with closely spaced, complicated designs incorporating the typical Abelam scroll and oval patterns.

      The Sawos and the river-dwelling Iatmul, who historically derive from the Sawos, worked in styles totally different from those of the people to the north. Their ceremonial houses were long rectangular structures, with upper stories elevated on posts often carved with ancestral faces and figures. The gables were not of exaggerated size but had masks in wood or basketry. King posts, which had female figures carved at their bases, extended high above the house roofs and were topped with carvings of human beings grasped by eagles.

 Human-figure sculpture was a major theme in Iatmul and Sawos art. Human figures and faces and a wealth of curvilinear ornament adorned numerous sacred objects, including flutes, slit gongs, trumpets, drums, and an array of less familiar musical instruments that simulated the voices of spirits. They were also to be found on such mundane equipment as stools, headrests, bowls, palettes, tools, weapons, and canoes. As a rule the figures were naturalistic within the limits of certain standard conventions, which varied between the eastern (Parambei) and the western (Nyaura) Iatmul. The figures of the east tended to be more gracile than those of the west, which were frequently stocky and burly. The profiles of faces on eastern Iatmul figures often had a graceful S-curve, while those from western Iatmul and the Sawos had heavy jaws, high cheekbones, and sunken eyes under horizontal brows. These same features characterized the long-nosed wooden mei masks of the Iatmul. Other types of masks, however, represented mythological birds, crocodiles, fish, and other animals. These were generally constructed of basketry and painted bark and were often of great size.

      Perhaps the most striking material used in Iatmul-Sawos art was human skulls (skull). These enthusiastic headhunters covered the skulls of victims and ancestors with clay and painted them in the patterns used in life. The skulls were then displayed on racks made of painted bark sheets or were mounted on puppets for use at initiations and funerary ceremonies.

      In the far-eastern section of the Sepik region, around the Ramu River, the peoples living along the coast and on offshore islands engaged in extensive cultural exchanges, trading dances, masks, slit gongs, and carvings. The Murik people at the mouth of the Sepik River were particularly active in this regard. Tribal styles thus spread widely. In some areas local styles incorporated or were supplanted by imported styles, but in many localities a multitude of distinct styles existed side by side.

      Although styles vary, most figure sculpture from the eastern Sepik depicts standing males (females exist but are unusual). The figures range in size from miniature to larger than life. They have ovoid heads that droop forward and limbs that are slightly flexed. Some are fitted with actual human skulls. Both figures and masks frequently feature enormously exaggerated noses, which signify masculinity (females have short noses). Besides ritual objects, a wide range of utilitarian equipment, from canoe prows to bowls, was decorated with carved representations of humans, birds, and animals. The carvings were often augmented by the tight geometric patterning that was characteristic of Murik art in particular.

      Through the flat, swampy country west of the eastern coastal hills, several tributaries flow northward to the lower Sepik, each associated with a particular artistic style. These rivers are, from east to west, the Porapora, the Keram, and the Yuat. The art of the Porapora area is related to lower Ramu styles but is less elaborate and profuse. Ceremonial house posts were carved with figures in a plain, almost geometric style—a style that was also used in carving stafflike figures with dishlike receptacles for ancestral skulls.

 The Kambot tribe of the Keram River, on the other hand, combined sculpture and painting in complex, ambitious designs to decorate their ceremonial houses. The houses' long, horizontal gables were filled with painted compositions of an ancestral hero with his wives and animals. Paintings also adorned the interiors, and the gable painting was often replicated on a grand scale in feather (featherwork) mosaics on wood slabs—a unique technique in the Sepik. Sacred objects included large panels of basketry that had human skulls attached and were decorated with clay, shells, and boar tusks. Small versions of the panels were attached to sacred flutes. Wood carvings included rectangular shields, which were engraved and painted, and small-featured hemispheric or oval masks. Huge figures of crocodiles were constructed of painted bark sheets for initiations.

      The Yuat River people, especially the Biwat (Mundugumor), carved slit gongs, shields, masks, and various types of figure sculpture. Masks, like those of the Kambot, were usually hemispheric. Small figures used as flute stops had grossly enlarged heads that projected forward; they were often carved in conjunction with parrots and other creatures. Masks, as well as wood snakes used in sorcery and other such objects, often bristled with spike forms, which are a common motif in Biwat art. In relief carving, such as can be seen on shields, almost every line or band is serrated, creating a dazzling effect. The same technique was used in enormous paintings of crocodiles that were displayed at yam-harvest ceremonies.

      The opposed-hook style of Sepik sculpture was predominant along the middle reaches of the Sepik River and among the hills ranging across the southern border of the Sepik valley, including the Hunstein Mountains. The most spectacular works in this style were figures carved by the Alamblak in the eastern Sepik Hills. The figures, known as yipwon, represent patron spirits of hunting and war. They are topped by a downcurved hook; directly beneath this is a human face, and below that is a vertical series of downcurved hooks. An oval element, representing the heart, appears next at about the centre of the figure; below the heart is a series of upturned hooks, and the whole is supported on a single leg. Small examples of these yipwon were personal amulets; larger figures, up to two metres high or more, were clan-owned property kept in ceremonial houses.

      A second type of carving has also been recovered, usually from burial rock shelters of the Ewa, a now much-diminished group south of the Alamblak. These figures are related in general form to the yipwon, but their bodies are expressed as panels and scrolls rather than hooks. Other flat figures are of females in frontal positions with raised arms and hands.

      The Bahinemo west of the Alamblak carved opposed-hook objects with no head or leg. They also made masks, for display only, which incorporated hooks and human features; these represented bush and water spirits. Groups farther west made hook carvings of the Bahinemo type and also carved hook patterns on shields and slit gongs. Other hook carvings are of uncertain provenance. They often have right-angled rather than curved hooks.

      That the hook style was once predominant throughout much of the Sepik area is suggested by traces of it in still other styles. South of the river, masks of some Yuat, Keram, and middle Ramu rivers groups are framed in series of hooks. More remarkable, from far north of the Sepik, a number of the Abelam's carvings incorporated opposed hooks in the form of bird beaks.

      A number of small groups lived along the upper reaches of the Sepik River. The most productive were the Kwoma. Like the Abelam, they celebrated yam cults in ceremonial houses that were basically roofs supported on posts, without walls. The ridgepoles of the houses were carved with mythical characters, human and animal. The ceilings were covered with bark paintings with semiabstract designs recalling characters and incidents in myths; the finials on the gables were also carved with mythical figures and birds. Similar designs were used on pottery feast bowls and on daggers made from human bones.

      The main nonarchitectural carvings—yena, human heads; mindja, long boardlike carvings with a head at one end; and nogwi, figures of women—were made for the three main rituals of the yam cult. The carving style is simple and massive, with heads having straight brows above a slightly concave facial place on which appear conical eyes, a long, heavy nose, and a small V-shaped mouth.

Astrolabe Bay
      The people of Astrolabe Bay, southeast of the coastal Sepik-Ramu area, carved as their most important works large ancestor figures, few of which now remain. Most of the figures are standing males, posed frontally. Their shoulders are hunched well forward of the torso, their arms hang straight down, and their hands are placed horizontally on the hips. The face is triangular with the chin extending below the chest; ornaments project downward from the mouth. A long, narrow nose hangs down from rigidly horizontal brows; the protruding eyes are round and staring.

      Other works from the area include oval masks with teardrop-shaped eyes, enormous arched noses, and elaborate openwork ears. Shields were disk-shaped and were decorated with relief carvings of X-shapes and circles. Bowls, arm shells, drums, and bull-roarers were incised with small geometric patterns. The same angular patterns were used for tapa paintings.

      The cultures and art styles of the Huon Gulf have strong links to those of both Astrolabe Bay and southwestern New Britain, especially in architecture and carving, which was made in large quantities. The main theme, the human figure, was expressed in blocky, almost cubist forms, with the nearly rectangular head sunk deeply between the shoulders. Large freestanding examples of such figures can be found in both standing and kneeling positions. Smaller figures were used as supporting poles for ceremonial houses, as the shafts of suspension hooks, as ladle handles, and as the supports for headrests and betel mortars. Masks, in bark cloth or wood, used the same convention. Other types of objects, however, were decorated with geometric patterns.

      The most famous products of the area are the large, shallow, basically oval bowls that were made on Tami (Tami style) Island and traded to the mainland and New Britain. Most have a human face carved at one end, with the rest of the bowl serving as an elaborate headdress; others were carved in the forms of birds and fish. The designs were incised and filled in with lime to stand out against the black background.

The Massim area
      The islands off the extreme southeastern tip of New Guinea were linked by the kula trading cycle, which distributed not only shell valuables—the ostensible motive of the transactions—but also quantities of other goods. Notable among these were carvings in dark hardwood, which was the special product of Kiriwina, the largest of the Trobriand Islands.

      The great variety of design motifs ranged from abstract shapes to both stylized and naturalistic bird, human, and animal forms. Incised designs most frequently featured curvilinear patterns, which could be easily adapted to represent stylized snakes or birds; the incisions were usually filled in with lime to make the design stand out. Among the items carved were mortars and spatulas used to prepare betel nut; long, flat war clubs; splashboards and decorative panels attached to the prow and stern of seagoing canoes; and dance paddles (two semicircular panels connected by a handhold bar). Dance paddles were sometimes painted, but, in general, painting of wooden objects was minimal. Painting was mainly used to decorate the gables of yam storehouses and on convex oval war shields.

The Gulf of Papua
      The succession of cultures situated along the vast Gulf of Papua (Papua, Gulf of) and in the deltas of the rivers flowing into it produced one of the richest complexes of art styles in New Guinea. In general, the people believed that they owed much of their basic culture to Kiwai, the large island at the mouth of the Fly River to the west, even though their societies showed important local variations. The groups who lived in the swamplands of the west were cannibalistic and practiced orgiastic rites; those who dwelt on the beaches of the east were not given to either practice. All, however, built huge longhouses (longhouse)—in the west these were communal dwellings, in the east they were reserved for men. Most of the groups shared certain types of masks, as well as carved sacred boards with ancestral or supernatural representations in relief. Much of the carving is, indeed, two-dimensional.

      At the far west of the western area, the art of the Bamu and Turama rivers is largely a somewhat geometrized version of Kiwai sculpture, including some oversize human figures. Two other types of objects were universal in the area from the Bamu River to Goaribari Island at the midpoint of the gulf. They are a dome-shaped basketry mask, which was usually covered with clay and painted and featured a long protruding nose, and sacred boards in quasi-human form. The oval-shaped sacred boards have a face at the top, the indication of a neck, and vertical slots on the body that suggest arms flanking vertical uprights or drawn-up legs. The boards were kept in shrines, as male and female pairs, with human skulls suspended from the uprights. Three-dimensional works from the western gulf had simpler forms—often retaining the natural shape of the wood—but they were carved in elaborate relief.

      Farther east, around Wapo Creek, the Era River, and Uramu Island, sacred boards had faces, but, instead of bodies, the field shows a vertical sequence of floating abstract designs, which can be read as extremely stylized anatomic elements. The small silhouetted human figures had upraised arms but were not used as skull racks. Masks in the area were sometimes dome-shaped, but, unlike those from the Bamu-Turama section, they had protuberant jaws. The eastern section of the gulf also developed a flat, oval mask made of basketry covered in bark cloth; the masks were almost identical in shape with the sacred wooden boards and were painted with similar designs.

The lower Fly River
      On Kiwai, the large island at the mouth of the Fly River, initiation was marked by the display of naturalistic, almost life-size figures of ancestral men and women. Their heads were virtually identical with the masks made on Saibai Island in the Torres Strait. Small pendant figures from Kiwai were, however, extremely stylized and flat and were covered with a chevron pattern. Much the same facial design was used on canoe splashboards. Large figures were also carved on the coast along the river in a distinctive style in which faces have squared-off jaws. This style of face was repeated on the shafts of the great numbers of arrows made for trade.

The Marind-anim
      The people of the coast and hinterland areas of New Guinea northwest of the Torres Strait and east of Frederik Hendrik Island (Pulau Yos Sudarsa), in what is now the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya, included the large tribe of the Marind-anim. Their material culture was limited, except in one respect: the ephemeral art produced for the celebrations of their initiatory cults. The most elaborate performances of the three main cults were held by groups living along the coast.

      The central figures of Marind myth are the dema (dema deity); these were considered not only the ancestors of the present clans but also the creators of all the elements of the world. The dema were represented at initiations, which could take from several days to many months to perform, by costumed men and by effigies. The costumes were, if not naturalistic, highly allusive accumulations of objects that recalled the dema and their creations. The wearer's basic disguise was a fibre costume. He carried on his back or head at least one large effigy carved in softwood; the effigy was partially painted, but it was mainly decorated with white, red, and blue seeds. The costume was also hung with flat semiabstract panels covered with seeds. Small masks and feather headdresses completed the assembly.

      This complexity of style did not carry over into Marind sculpture, which was simple, sometimes crude. The largest works were tall posts with animals and geometric designs carved in high relief; these were used for temporary feast houses. Sometimes large posts, with upright winglike projections on either side, were erected as grave markers. These may be akin to carved forked posts on which the Marind hung head-hunting trophies.

The southwestern coast
      The two main groups living on the southwestern coast of New Guinea between the Vogelkop Peninsula (Jazirah Doberai) and Frederik Hendrik Island are the Mimika (Kamoro) to the west and the Asmat to the east. Their styles have much in common.

 Carving was the major art among the Mimika and was usually closely associated with initiatory and other rituals. Human figures were the primary subject. They were typically depicted standing with slender limbs. The legs were usually slightly flexed; the hands were held at chest level or under the chin, and the head was a short cylinder with minuscule features. Incised designs were used to decorate the figures, but the repertoire of patterns was limited. The most important design element was a pointed oval, representing the navel, a symbol of birth and, by extension, of life itself.

      The largest works of the Mimika are tall poles carved as funerary memorials. These generally consist of a vertical series of figures, with the uppermost figure holding a large triangular panel that projects outward and is carved with the standard designs in openwork. Larger-than-life-size figures of pregnant women used in rites devoted to increasing human fertility were usually displayed at the ceremonial house during a ritual celebrating the creation of the cosmos.

      Canoe prows, hand drums, boards, and other objects were decorated with openwork or low-relief carving for ceremonial purposes. Masks were not carved but were made of netting. They were usually conical or hoodlike and sometimes had wooden eyes attached but were generally featureless. The netting section was attached to cane epaulets and bands around the chest. Painting and the decoration of domestic objects were relatively uncommon among the Mimika.

      Asmat art, including the art of some neighbouring groups, presents a similar, but somewhat richer, picture. Four style areas can be distinguished, two on the coast (northwest and central) and two inland, with many local variations. During the 20th century an increasing naturalism has affected figure sculpture, particularly among the central Asmat; size, too, has tended to increase. Sculpture is the primary art form; indeed, it has a mythical character in that humanity itself is said to derive from carvings made by a creator hero. Most carvings are made in conjunction with a cycle of feast-ceremonials held in a set sequence. Painting is unknown except on carvings, where white tends to predominate, with some red and black. Seeds of various colours are used decoratively, particularly on the skulls preserved by these cannibalistic headhunters.

      The central Asmat are known for their large memorial poles, called mbis or bisj (bisj pole). The poles are similar in design to those of the Mimika. The openwork carvings on the triangular projections incorporate crescent shapes, S-shapes, stylized hands, birds' heads, and other symbols of head-hunting. The figures on the poles represent or commemorate clan members who were killed by enemy tribes. Smaller versions of the poles were used in the interiors of the ceremonial houses as supports for crossbeams. The poles have a symbolic relationship to canoes and sometimes stand on a canoe-shaped base. Canoe prows were often decorated with large carved figures and head-hunting motifs similar to those on the bisj poles. Head-hunting symbols were also frequently carved onto the sides of canoes and onto memorial carvings in the form of stylized crocodiles. Wooden war shields in the central Asmat area are rectangular in shape, with a small phallic projection at the top. The front surface is carved with a bold design of crescent shapes, outlined in low relief by narrow bands.

      In contrast, the shields of the northwestern Asmat are rounded at the ends, with a human face, or sometimes an openwork human figure, carved at the top. The front is carved with a vertical row of symbols (usually flying foxes), and the field is densely covered with small subsidiary designs. The largest works by the northwestern Asmat are enormous “soul ships” displayed at initiations. They follow the general form of canoes, except that they do not have bottoms. They do have elaborate prow and stern carvings, and a number of carved figures representing water spirits sit in the body of the canoe.

      Asmat masks, like those of the Mimika, are woven. They often feature wooden eyepieces or are crowned with a flat wood silhouette of a tortoise. They cover not merely the head and shoulders but also much of the torso. The rest of the body is screened with a bushy mass of fibre strips. The masks were particularly used in a ceremony to expel spirits of the dead from the village.

      Carving in the inland areas was restricted; it was used for the ornamentation of spears and digging sticks but was prominent only on shields. The designs are more geometric but are otherwise similar to those of the central Asmat.

The Highlands
      The central cordillera of New Guinea is inhabited largely by agriculturalists. Although the area has the highest population density of the island, it is also the least productive of works of visual art of a permanent nature.

      In the eastern Highlands in Papua New Guinea, shields are painted with geometric designs related to those of the Telefomin and other groups to the north. Figure representations are limited to images made of coiled basketry. Such figures are carried at festivals in the southern Highlands. The most remarkable are the squat fertility figures (yupin) of the western Enga. Thin boards carved in openwork are used to represent the dead in festivals farther east.

      Masks are fairly common throughout the area, especially in the eastern Highlands. They are generally made of gourds, with hair, feathers, teeth, and other materials applied for features. The Asaro River “Mudmen” are particularly well known for the grotesque imagination they display in making their clay masks.

      The most important manifestation of art in the New Guinea Highlands is body decoration. Although decoration usually involves an individual's entire body, the main focus is the head, which is adorned with a great variety of hats and wigs. The most striking materials used are feathers. The area is famous for its many species of birds of paradise, and it is their magnificent plumage that the Highlanders exploit. Each major tribal group has its own local style, which is rich in symbolic content.

      The traditional culture of the Admiralty Islands, which lie northeast of the Sepik River area of New Guinea and are administratively part of Papua New Guinea, is now practically extinct. Although the population consisted of many different language groups, the people have been popularly divided into three artistic style groups: the Usiai, who lived in the interior of Manus Island (Great Admiralty Island), the largest of the Admiralty Islands; the Matankor, who lived on the small islands to the north, east, and southeast of Manus; and the largest group, the Manus, who lived on the southern coast of Manus as well as on some offshore islands. Each group relied on the others for some items of food and manufactures; trade was active and frequent.

      The Matankor produced wood carvings and decorated objects, each island having its own specialties. For example, the people on Baluan made bird-shaped bowls, ladles, and spatulas; on Lou, obsidian was carved into great hemispheric bowls; on Rambutyo figures and anthropomorphic lime spatulas were common; and the people on Pak made beds (used nowhere else in Melanesia) and slit gongs. Although the Matankor were neither culturally nor linguistically homogeneous, their art style shows a considerable uniformity. Surface designs consisted largely of repeated triangles, diamonds, rectangles, and opposed curves, often in bordered bands, sometimes in openwork or relief. These busy, if repetitious, patterns were often accented in black and white on expanses of red background; generally they were employed as strips or in small areas rather than covering an entire object.

      Human or crocodile figures are common themes and were used to top house ladders, bed frames, and bedposts and to decorate canoe prows and sterns. Freestanding oversize male and female figures, probably of ancestors, were placed on either side of the doors of men's houses. Human figures also appeared on slit gongs, with the upper body carved as one projecting lug and the legs at the gong's other end. The human figure was usually shown standing, with the arms hanging straight down and the hands either free or placed on the hips. The torso and limbs tended to be square in section, but the calves were angular. The head was ovoid in shape, and the mouth was often set at a right angle to a prognathous, muzzlelike face. A characteristic male hairstyle consisted of a cylinder capped with a sphere rising from the top of the head.

      Among the most impressive Matankor objects are the hemispheric bowls on four short legs. These were equipped with a pair of spiral handles representing crocodiles' tails, and bands of designs were carved around the rims. The standard repertoire of abstract and representational motifs was also adapted to small carved objects, such as ladle handles. A favourite ornament was the kapkap, a breastplate consisting of a carved tortoiseshell plate mounted on a giant clam shell.

      The long, narrow island of New Ireland shows three distinct style areas: the northwest, the centre, and the southeast. The first area is celebrated for its malanggan (malanggan style) carvings and masks, which share their name with a series of religious ceremonies held primarily as funerary celebrations but also (by extension) for the validation of land claims, the establishment of subclans, and other important events. In this most elaborate style of Oceania, the usual form of the face has horizontal brows, with the deep-set eyes inlaid with bright sea-snail opercula; the nose is strongly arched and massive; and the jaws, broad horizontal rectangles, show a formidable array of serrated teeth. The fully three-dimensional figures usually have added attributes, including bird and animal forms; they often clutch frameworks of rods, which enclose them. Flat areas are pierced in intricate patterns, a technique that was probably fostered when the islanders acquired steel tools. All works were painted for fullest effect in sharply defined areas of black, white, red, and yellow; small sections of black cross-hatching and other patterns often further enhanced the design.

      Malanggan carvings on poles display either individual figures or several figures stacked vertically. Freestanding carvings often illustrate mythological incidents and can be of great size. Pigs, birds, and fish are the subjects of other carvings. Seated figures used for rainmaking ceremonies were constructed from tree trunks, bamboo, and other materials; they had raised hands and were fitted with carved heads.

      Some malanggan masks are almost indescribably complicated, with the basic style of carved face adorned with long vertical tusks and other protrusions, fitted with openwork side panels of birds and fish, surmounted with birds, snakes, and figures, and enclosed within a lattice of bars. Some simpler types have seminaturalistic faces.

      Other malanggan carvings are horizontal panels. There are several types, including one with a fish head at each end and human figures between them, another with apertures in the middle through which men put their heads, and one with representations of the moon. One type of carving that depicted a bird struggling with a snake was sometimes mounted on the head of a figure.

      In central New Ireland the primary objects of mortuary cults were carvings known as uli. These are standing figures with female breasts and male genitals; they sometimes have raised hands and may support smaller figures in front of them or on their shoulders. The head is usually large and is topped by a thin, upright crest; the eyes are inlaid with shell, the nose is hooked, and the wide mouth exposes the teeth above a triangular chin. The body of the uli, like that of the malanggan, is often enclosed in sweeping bands. The intricate polychromy of the malanggan is absent, however; white is the main colour, with touches of red and black. Small uli were perched on conical constructions; large ones were housed in similarly conical huts. The ceremonies associated with the uli were elaborate, but their significance—apart from a relationship to fertility and warfare—is obscure. Wood figures in the same powerful style were topped with skulls over which clay had been modeled; these were used in rainmaking as well as in mortuary ceremonies. Among some central groups, mortuary ceremonies also featured a large bark and cane disk with a central aperture framed by petallike projections. The disk was painted red and yellow and was kept in a hut with posts carved with the same emblem, apparently of the sun. Skulls were displayed in the disk's central aperture. The design was echoed in the kapkaps, which were worked with exquisite delicacy in central New Ireland.

      The southeastern style area of New Ireland includes small nearby islands and the northern Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain. In the north of this area, figure sculpture takes the form of small chalk figures of males and females, with rounded faces, round eyes, straight noses, and wide, toothy mouths. The hands are joined in front of the torso. The white chalk is accentuated with touches of black and red—a colour scheme prevalent throughout southeastern New Ireland. Sometimes said to have been made for mortuary ceremonies, the chalk figures more probably were used by secret societies such as those on the Gazelle Peninsula.

      Several types of masks were made in the area. The masks of the Tanga Islands were ephemeral constructions of bark and fibre over bamboo frames. They were semiconical in shape, with long backswept ears, thin upturned noses, and extended chins or beards. On the neighbouring mainland, masks were made of the same materials but were more naturalistic. Masks from the southwest were made of wood and had faces similar to those of the chalk figures. The end walls of houses were frequently screened with planks that were incised or painted with small and sparse units of design, often showing stylized animals and fish. Architectural sculpture, however, was rare except in the Tanga Islands and on the southwestern coast.

      Knowledge of art in New Britain has largely been limited to the coastal areas and to the Gazelle Peninsula in the northeast. Masks, dance shields, and other ceremonial objects are the primary works.

      The Tolai people on the coast of the Gazelle Peninsula probably emigrated from southeastern New Ireland and thus share certain style characteristics, such as boomerang-shaped canoe prows, with that area. The human figure is a common subject of Tolai art and is almost always depicted standing, with arms bent and hands held to the ears. Carved faces are naturalistic, sometimes with long beards, but in paintings the face is often reduced to round eyes and a crescent-shaped mouth. Other common motifs are disks with long triangles below them and spirals.

      Much Tolai art was incorporated into the ritual of two male secret societies, the Iniet and the Dukduk. Iniet initiations were held in walled enclosures lined with paintings of human figures. Long panels of openwork carving showing human figures, animals, and abstract designs were carried in one initiation dance, while the frontal bones of human skulls, which had been over-modeled, painted, and embellished with hair and beards, were worn as masks in other dances. Wooden human figures of various sizes, as well as small chalk or soft stone figures (usually human but sometimes of an animal), were also used.

      The Dukduk society used male (dukduk) and female (tubuan) masks. Both types are cone-shaped and were constructed of cane and fibre. The dukduk is taller than the tubuan and is faceless. The tubuan has circular eyes and a crescent-shaped mouth painted on a dark background. Both masks have short, bushy capes of leaves.

 The mountains south of the Tolai's coastal area are inhabited by the Baining, who consist of several groups of seminomads. Virtually their only works of art were masks and other objects carried in dances; these, however, being constructed of light materials (bamboo covered with bark cloth), were often of great size. The most remarkable came from the Chachet (northwestern Baining), who constructed figures up to 40 feet high for daytime mourning ceremonies. The Chachet figures had essentially tubular bodies with rudimentary arms and legs and tall heads with gaping mouths and painted eyes. Among other Baining groups, the best-known type of mask consisted of a flat upper panel, which was either circular or divided into two lobes, and a gaping mouth, from which hung a chinlike or tonguelike form. Two enormous circular eyes were painted on the flat panel. All the Baining groups used, in addition to masks, dance headpieces made of painted vertical panels or poles topped with images painted on bark cloth. The masks and the painted designs represented many items of the natural world.

      The masks of the small Sulka group on the southeastern coast of New Britain were, like those of the Baining, made of ephemeral materials—in this case, narrow strips of pith bound together into a cone shape. The colour scheme of the Sulka masks is brilliant: white, black, yellow, and green designs over a bright pink background. On masks representing the human head, a swelling at the top indicates the brow, while the eyes, nose, mouth, and chin are indicated with paint or attached elements. On featureless masks, the main cone supports either another cone with a painted underside or a large, flat, painted disk. The Sulka used wood to carve female figurines; headpieces in the shape of dogs, praying mantises, or women; and convex, oval battle shields.

      The western part of New Britain presents a scene of overlapping styles influenced both by other areas of the island and by nearby New Guinea. The wood-carving style of the Kilenge, for instance, was almost identical with that of the Siassi and Tami islands in its themes and patterns. Carvings on drums, a number of small objects, and, in particular, the most important type of wooden mask exemplify this affinity.

      The Solomon Islands lie southeast of New Ireland. The most important islands artistically are Buka and Bougainville in the west; Choiseul, Vella Lavella, Santa Isabel, and the New Georgia group in the centre; and Guadalcanal, Malaita (Mala Mara), Ulawa, and San Cristobal in the east. Although there are various regional and local styles, in general the art of the Solomon Islands is characterized by the predominant use of the colour black, with white and red used primarily for details; the use of borders or patterned bands of design; the use of mother-of-pearl inlay; and an emphasis on the human head.

      Figures on the Solomon Islands were usually depicted in a sitting or squatting position, but on Buka Island standing figures can be found. The Buka figures are somewhat perfunctorily carved, with squared-off forms and engraving on the faces. Females have slightly flared, flat-topped coiffures, while those of males are mitrelike and pointed. The human figure was a common subject on Buka. Ceremonial houses were built with posts shaped like human figures, and forked posts carved with human heads stood in front of the houses to receive the corpses of war victims. Buka-language speakers living on the northern coast of Bougainville Island sculpted comparable figures but in a more naturalistic style. These were painted glossy black, with some red and white detail representing scarification.

      A constant motif in Buka-Bougainville two-dimensional art is the kokorra, a silhouette of a squatting or standing human figure with upraised hands and the male mitrelike coiffure. This figure—or the head alone—was painted and carved in bas-relief upon a great variety of objects, including canoes, paddles, slit gongs, dance clubs, and architectural elements.

      The central Solomon Islanders were vigorous headhunters, building canoes of great size for their expeditions. The general model throughout the archipelago had tall, upcurved prow and stern posts, which were decorated with rows of shells and, at the waterline of the prow, a small carving (musumusu) of the head and arms of a guardian spirit. The musumusu sometimes incorporated bird characteristics. Human figures were usually depicted with the lower half of the face jutting forward boldly. Shields in the area were normally made of plain wickerwork and had a tapered oval outline. Some were decorated with shell inlay outlining elongated anthropomorphic beings and other motifs. In New Georgia (New Georgia Islands), dancing human figures, rings, and other designs were carved in openwork on panels made of tridacna shell. The panels were used to enclose small shrines for ancestral skulls.

      A major focus of southern Solomon culture was bonito fishing, with its symbolic relationship to sea spirits and ancestors. The roofs of canoe houses, which were the centres of male activities, were supported on huge posts carved with full-length figures of bonito, sharks, and ancestors. Model canoes and large carvings of bonito were kept in these houses, and ancestral skulls were enshrined there. Fish and animal motifs can also be found on a variety of smaller objects, including finials, finely worked kapkaps, and bowls. One of the most common forms of bowls, which were made in large numbers for both religious and daily use, represents a bird holding a fish in its beak and standing on a shark. Figures that combined human and animal features, such as a shark with human legs, were also common, especially on Malaita and Ulawa. Some human figures and heads featured the prognathous face characteristic of central Solomon sculpture, but the general style in the southern islands was more naturalistic in human proportions and features. Shell inlay was applied to bowls and other objects, including ceremonial clubs and dance staffs, though less lavishly than in the central Solomons.

      Following great disruption and depopulation in the 19th century, practically nothing remains of the cultures of northern and southern Vanuatu. The central islands of the archipelago—the large island of Malakula, Pentecost (Pentecôte) to the northeast, and Ambrym to the east—are the most significant artistically. Although this group comprises several distinct style areas, it shares certain cultural characteristics. The major socioreligious institution of Vanuatu was the graded society, a hierarchical system of ceremonies performed by men and women to attain greater prestige. The number of grades and their names, as well as the name of the system itself, varied from place to place, but in all areas the grade ceremonies included the sacrifice of pigs or boars, feast giving, and the production of physical memorials. The memorial sculpture was prescribed in form and was made in wood or from the trunks of tree fern, an easily worked material resembling compacted pine needles.

      On the northeastern Malakula coast and on some small neighbouring islands, large dance grounds surrounded by stone monoliths and dolmens were set up at stages of the grade ceremonies. The stones were covered by simple shelters with the main wood post carved into human form. The head on such figures was half the height of the whole post; it was shaped like an elongated diamond and had circular eyes, a long nose, and a crescent-shaped mouth. These posts supported a ridgepole consisting of a tree trunk, the spreading roots of which were roughly shaped into the likeness of a hawk. The same image was also used for the ridgepole of ceremonial houses and on huge ceremonial banners of bark and bamboo. The bodies of these hawks are shaped like diamonds, their wings are triangular, and their heads resemble the stylized carvings of birds made for canoe prows.

      The eastern coast of Malakula, Pentecost Island, and Ambrym Island together form another style area. The slit gongs (slit drum) of Ambrym are the largest and most elaborately carved of any in Vanuatu. As in all parts of Vanuatu where they were used, the Ambrym slit gongs were set around the dance grounds, standing upright or at a slight angle. They are found in two main forms. In the north of the island, the gongs terminate in huge three-dimensional heads with puny arms below them. The forehead and the back of the head are scored with deep cross-hatching; the eyebrows are arched, with disk-shaped eyes filling the space below them; and the concave oval facial plane is almost filled by a massive carved nose. The slit gongs of western Ambrym, on the other hand, taper upward to an even greater height and have two to three faces in the elongated-diamond style carved on them in relief. The northern Ambrym style of face is also found on the fern-wood figures made for grade ceremonies. These figures were sometimes of humans, with oversize heads, globular torsos, and slight limbs, but they could also have human heads with zoomorphic bodies. All were originally coated with clay and painted with vivid polychrome body-painting designs. Masks from the area include one type carved in hardwood that was common to both Ambrym and southern Pentecost; it has a bulging forehead, prominent cheeks, pierced eyes, a grinning mouth, and a huge, arched nose. Brilliantly coloured masks made from softwood were apparently usually comedic in intent.

 The southern coastal peoples of Malakula, including some in the southern mountains, employed a wealth of objects not only for grade ceremonies but also for farming and initiation rituals. A major technique involved the use of a vegetable compound moistened with coconut milk to model heads or oversize seated figures over coconuts, bamboo frames, or other hard materials. The skulls of important men were also covered with the compound and then mounted on bodies of fern wood and bamboo adorned with beaded armlets and the tusks of sacrificed pigs. Smaller heads were sometimes fastened to the shoulders of these figures. All the modeled works were fully painted, with a great use of deep blue, white, red, and yellow. Most of the modeled heads, figures, and masks have boars' tusks protruding from their mouths. Helmet masks are janiform or have quadruple faces or are surmounted with seated figures. Carving was less significant in the southern areas than in the rest of Vanuatu, and figures were somewhat flat and squat, with broad faces indicated only by a summary series of horizontal grooves.

      In the mountainous northern region, sculpture appears to have been confined to large heads in fern wood and small janiform heads on spear shafts. These were carved in a powerful geometric style; the deeply cut, sharp-edged ridges and hemispheres approach total abstraction.

      The art of New Caledonia consists almost entirely of wood sculpture; painting was used only to accentuate, in red and white, details of the carvings, which were otherwise entirely blackened. The central feature of every village was a circular ceremonial house with low walls and a towering conical thatched roof. These houses were equipped with a wealth of architectural sculpture. On either side of the door stood a massive jamb (doorstop) with a stylized face at the top; the rest of the jamb was ornamented with geometric designs. The jambs were spanned by a lintel with abstract patterns, while a carved head stood between them as a sill. Inside the house, opposite the doorway, additional large figures served to demarcate special areas. The roof was crowned with a tall finial, which combined a face with stylized elements representing limbs and a headdress. Independent heads and figures of ancestors were carved on the tops of stakes planted in the ground near the ceremonial houses, at spots where their commemorative rituals had been carried out. All these architectural carvings could be claimed and carried off by the maternal relatives of the clan for which they were made; consequently, both the actual objects and their styles were widely dispersed.

      The north of New Caledonia is the richest area of the island in sculpture. The masks made there are particularly striking. The long wooden faces have strongly arched eyebrows, glaring eyes (sometimes round but usually bean-shaped), and grinning, crescent-shaped, toothy mouths. The nose springs forward from between the cheeks like a great parrot beak. Other masks of the same general style have equally prominent bulging and rounded noses.

      Masks from farther south are almost square; the features are flatter and angular, and the horizontal, slotted mouths are edged with red seeds. A beard of human hair hangs from the chin, and a cylindrical basket topped with a mop of human hair crowns the head. A cloak of black feathers completes the ensemble. The dancers who wore these costumes are said to have impersonated ancestral water spirits.

      Similar faces and clothing can be seen on some of the figures carved onto the posts of ceremonial houses. Other figures have faces in the same styles but have domed, neckless heads; their bodies and limbs are cylindrical or ovoid and are markedly nipped in at the joints. A few small carvings show infants lying on baby carriers; they were used in magic for human fertility. Small carved heads used as a kind of currency and small heads carved on spear shafts complete the New Caledonian range of figure sculpture.

      War clubs had stylized phallic, tortoise, and bird-head ornamentation. The ceremonial adz, an object unique to the island, consisted of a nephrite disk mounted on a decorated shaft; it served both as a symbol of chiefly office and as a cosmic symbol.

Polynesia
      By comparison with the art of Melanesia, Polynesian art appears modest in scale and relatively simple in both form and imagery. This is a somewhat deceptive impression, however; the rapid adoption of Christianity in Polynesia led to the obsolescence and destruction of many types of objects now known only through the records of early explorers. The conception of Polynesian art that is gained from extant objects is therefore incomplete and must be corrected and amplified through the study of early writings and drawings. These make it clear that large-scale works were common and that Polynesian imagery was at times as dynamic and creative as Melanesian.

      Ethnogeographically, Fiji is usually considered to be the easternmost island group of Melanesia. As a result of trade links and direct migration in both prehistoric and historic times, however, it has much in common culturally and socially with its Polynesian neighbours to the east, Samoa and Tonga. In fact, the arts of these three island groups can be discussed together.

      The endemic nature of warfare in Fiji led to the production of great numbers of wooden clubs (club), which were the principal weapons. At least 10 types of clubs were made, each with several subtypes. Considerable care was lavished on the engraved designs that decorated the clubs; sometimes the designs were even inlaid with whale ivory, probably by Tongan (Tonga) craftsmen. Fewer types of clubs were made in Tonga, but they were often completely covered in fine geometric patterning interspersed with tiny silhouettes of human or animal figures. Samoa shared a few club types with Fiji but is more notable for its wooden spears (spear), which have graceful, elaborate barbs.

      Tapa (bark painting) cloth was made in vast quantities and in lengths up to hundreds of yards. It was generally left plain white for daily use and decorated for special occasions. But in Fiji black, brown, and reddish dyes derived from various barks were used to decorate even everyday cloth with bold, dense geometric designs. Several techniques were used; stenciling was the most prevalent in Fiji, but freehand drawing, rubbing, and block printing were also practiced.

      In historic times, pottery was made only in Fiji. Bowls carved out of wood usually had four legs in Fiji but a dozen or so in Samoa. Fijian bowls, in particular, show considerable variety of form. Large food bowls were often in the form of turtles. Small, shallow, footed dishes used by priests were usually shaped like hearts, crescents, or abstract forms, but a few resemble canoes or highly stylized humans or flying ducks.

 Surviving examples of figure sculpture from all three island groups are extremely rare, and all known examples are small in size. Wooden deity figures from Tonga generally have a stocky torso, which is set well forward of protruding buttocks and short sturdy legs. The arms are stiff and straight. The head is disproportionally large; the face is flat, with the features barely indicated. The whole surface is smooth. The Tongans also carved small female figures in whale ivory; the earliest examples known are tiny, indicating a sparing use of rare material. Some small examples were strung in groups as necklaces. Later pieces, probably carved after whaling made ivory more common, are somewhat larger. A few double figures were made as suspension hooks, and some were exported to Fiji. Wooden figures from Fiji and Samoa are in much the same style, but they are less clearly defined in form.

      The Cook Islands group includes Aitutaki, Atiu, Mitiaro, Rarotonga, and Mangaia, among others. Religious effigies are the main surviving works from the area, and both abstract and semirepresentational sculptural styles can be found on all the islands.

      On Mangaia, the surface of virtually every decorated object was incised with the so-called K-motif, a dense pattern of cross-hatching interspersed with zigzags and concentric diamonds. Mangaian deities were represented by long cylindrical shafts with flared ends cut to form a group of vertical fins. The fins were pierced and carved into a series of arches, each perhaps representing a human figure with an arched back.

      Similar emblems of divinity were made on Aitutaki (Aitutaki Atoll), but in a simpler style; instead of having flared ends, the shafts were topped by flat panels that were engraved and partially pierced with geometric designs. The edges of some panels were serrated. Sacred staffs from Atiu and Mitiaro were topped by a dome flanked by pointed ovals, the lower end of the staff was spatulate or cylindrical, and the shaft itself supported vertical rows of arches. Gods in human shape were also carved on Aitutaki; they resemble Tahitian figures in posture, but their hands are more oval, their features are mere slits, their bellies droop and protrude, and their limbs are puny and square in section.

      Some of the finest examples of Polynesian sculpture are from Rarotonga. Small figures of gods, originally placed on the prows of canoes, were depicted in a deep squatting stance. Their heads make up about half the total height, with the facial features reduced to simple forms—the nose is expressed only by the upper lip. The figures all have exaggerated phalli, and some were painted with black geometric designs. Rarotongan staff gods have similar facial features, but their heads are flattened into essentially two profiles. The midsection of the staff god consists of alternating full-face and profile figures. Below this is a long shaft, which is swathed in a quantity of painted tapa and terminates in a phallus.

      The few remaining examples of traditional art from the Society Islands come mainly from Tahiti, the largest island of the group. Figure sculptures, all in wood, resemble Tongan forms in general, but they exhibit a flowing curve of the back and buttocks rather than the Tongan rigidity and protuberance. The head tends to be longer and is somewhat broader across the cheeks, the jawlines more sharply defined.

      Figures of the gods took several forms; most were kept at the marae (sacred enclosure), often in special wooden containers housed in portable shelters. Hollow, life-size figures made of basketry or wood were used to hold red and yellow feathers, which were highly valued—even sacred—in these islands. Smaller divine emblems include shaped lengths of wood that were partly wrapped in braided sennit; lengths of sennit were sometimes sewn onto these figures to indicate features and limbs. Large numbers of thin, tall wooden slabs were set up on the marae; they were carved with openwork geometric designs and topped with figures of birds, human beings, or spiked projections. They closely resemble the god symbols of the Cook Islands.

      Small figures were also used to decorate the prows and high, upward curving sternposts of smaller canoes. Large war canoes, which were up to 100 feet long, were equipped with towering sternposts carved with a vertical series of human figures. Carved posts of a similar model were also set up as boundary markers, as were small, crude stone figures.

      As a rule, personal property and household equipment in the Society Islands were simple and unadorned, but fly whisks, which were necessary to keep off the swarms of flies that plagued and disgusted the islanders, usually had some ornamentation. The handles were generally carved of wood and were frequently topped with a single figure, which was sometimes depicted perched on one leg. A few handles were assembled from ivory segments that had been carved in openwork and tied together with sennit; these usually terminated in an arched-back (“acrobatic”) human figure.

 Garments (dress) worn on the Society Islands, including large ponchos, were of painted or printed tapa. In battle, men of high status wore tubular headdresses with protruding crests and gorgets decorated with bands of feathers, shark teeth, and dog hair. The most extraordinary costumes were those of mourners (mourning); they consisted of masks and aprons made of mother-of-pearl, crescent-shaped breastplates decorated with mother-of-pearl shells, and feather cloaks.

The Austral (Tubuai) Islands
      The surfaces of works from the southern Austral Islands (Tubuai Islands) were often incised with dense patterns of triangles, crescents, stars, and cross-hatching. The edges of such works were often notched in rows. Such lavish decoration covers carvings from Raivavae, including a few female figures with extremely summary facial features and indications of gorgets and headdresses. The same motifs cover small bowls, long-handled ladles, and broad-bladed ceremonial paddles—which exist in such numbers as to make it likely that many were made for sale soon after the arrival of European collectors. The most remarkable carving from Raivavae is found on tall and slender standing drums (drum). The lower halves of the drums are carved in openwork, with rows of minute dancing figures alternating with rows of crescent shapes, which in some cases represent the dancers' skirts. The same repertoire of patterns was also used on tapa and to ornament wooden elements of houses.

      The style of Rurutu, to the north of the group, uses the star design and chevrons but is otherwise less ornate. Some objects were traded to other islands, the most common being fly-whisk handles, which were exported to Tahiti. Each handle was topped by a pair of figures placed back to back. The shaft below was incised with chevrons or, more characteristically, consisted of a vertical series of spools. Slender spearheads were carved with miniature stylized pigs, resembling phalli. The same images, as well as stylized testicles, birds, and geometric forms, were carved in ivory and strung as necklaces exported to Mangaia. Carved wooden shafts partly covered with woven sennit were sacred objects on Rurutu, as elsewhere in Polynesia.

      Perhaps the only surviving example of figure sculpture from Rurutu is one of the most impressive Polynesian sculptures: an image of the god A'a in the act of creating men and other gods. The primary figure, in Society Islands style, has 30 small stylized figures arranged symmetrically on its torso, limbs, and face, 10 being placed as the facial features. The figure has a hollow back and when found contained 24 small figures (now lost).

The Marquesas (Marquesas Islands) (Marquises) Islands
      The most characteristic feature of Marquesas art is a strict conventionalization of the human face. It has huge eyes (circular or pointed ovals), with a continuous curved brow line that is connected to a nose shown as two small, broad semicircles; the mouth is shaped like a horizontal oblong. The design is admirably suited to works in both two and three dimensions.

      Marquesan figure sculpture, in wood and stone, represented deified ancestors. The head on such a figure was typically shaped like a dome or a vertical cylinder; the almost featureless torso showed the familiar Polynesian forward arch of the back but placed no emphasis on the buttocks; the legs were ponderous, carved rather than bent, and the arms were slight, with the hands resting on the stomach. Life-size and oversize figures were kept on the platforms of the sacred enclosures. The walls of such platforms also often incorporated stone slabs with faces carved in relief. Stone figures appear to have been used as votive offerings or in fishing magic.

      Other small figures in wood, usually engraved with tattoo patterns, were lashed as steps to stilt poles used in competitive races at commemorative festivals for the dead. Tiny figures in the same convention also appear on the various types of ivory ear ornament, on small bone cylinders worn in the hair or used as toggles, on the wooden or ivory handles of semicircular fans, which were plaited from coconut leaflets or pandanus leaves, or on small ivory tobacco pipes. Two types of spectacular head ornament were worn by men. One was a headband with a mother-of-pearl shell supporting an openwork tortoiseshell plaque, somewhat analogous to a Melanesian kapkap, the other a coronet of concave strips of white shell alternating with engraved strips of tortoiseshell.

      The usual Marquesan weapons were spears and clubs, the latter having flared semicircular upper ends carved with faces and geometric designs. Decorated household objects included engraved bowls and gourds with engraved lids; stone pounders had shafts carved with human heads.

      Besides the great prehistoric stone figures already described, the Easter Islanders in more recent times created a remarkable body of small sculpture in wood. The best-known are two types of male figures (moai figure) and one type of female figure, presumably all of ancestral significance. Some of the male figures are naturalistic, with an upright stance and somewhat slack and paunchy bodies; the hands, placed at the hips, have the typical elongated fingers of the stone colossi. The second, better-known type is one of the more extraordinary images in Oceanic art: it represents a bowed, skeletal figure with sunken abdomen, protruding rib cage and spine, and emaciated limbs. The face is skull-like, with a jutting nose and bared teeth. Both the naturalistic and the skeletonic male figures were worn ceremonially as pendants (pendant). In contrast to these fully three-dimensional figures, the female figures are frontal and flattened, except for the head; they have one arm placed across the torso and the other across the belly. All the figures wear goatee beards and have mythical creatures carved in low relief on the craniums. A few of both the male and the female figures have the double heads found elsewhere in Polynesia (e.g., Tahiti). As in all Easter Island wooden sculpture, the glaring eyes were indicated by tiny disks of obsidian set in rings of bird or fish bone. Other carvings are of bird-headed human figures associated with the cult of a bird-god; still other human figures have the heads of lizards. Besides these there is a range of small, largely inexplicable grotesques.

      Crescent-shaped wood carvings with a bearded human head on each tip were worn as pectorals; carvings of fish worn in the same manner served as emblems of authority. Women wore small spheres carved with relief designs as charms.

      For commemorative funerary ceremonies, enormous bark-cloth effigies, painted with tattoo designs, were set up in front of the image platforms. Only a few miniature bark-cloth figures of this type have survived.

      Long clubs with human heads carved at one end were used for fighting. Graceful paddlelike objects, actually extremely stylized human figures, were carried in dances.

      Easter Island abounds in works engraved on exposed rock surfaces, including outlines of turtles, fish, and above all the bird-headed men of the bird cult. In addition to the petroglyphs, paintings of birds, dance paddles, and other subjects exist in caves or on the interior surfaces of stone house walls.

      It is estimated that by the beginning of the classic period of Maori art and culture about 90 percent of the population lived in the North Island of New Zealand. The smaller groups of the South Island were apparently more conservative, and it was thus largely in the north that a spectacular florescence of sculpture and architecture took place.

      Two major carving styles existed. The northwestern style (especially in reliefs) featured undulating, serpentine shapes; human bodies and limbs were tubular or triangular in section and often intertwined. Heads were peaked, with gaping mouths that often had hands and arms looped through them. Large areas of surface remained smooth, while small sections and details, such as lips and eyebrows, were finely patterned. The eastern style of human figures was basically naturalistic, apart from oversize heads; the stances of figures resembled those of central Polynesia, with short legs, swaybacks, and hands on the torso, but the neck was well defined. Some faces were naturalistic portraits; others were ferociously stylized, with slanting oval eyes, distorted mouths, and outstretched tongues. Both styles of faces were usually covered with tattoo designs, while scrolls and other designs accentuated the shoulders, hips, and knees.

      The northwestern style is thought to be older than the eastern, partly on the basis of oral tradition and partly because the “central-Polynesian” aspect of the eastern style suggests that it may have developed as a result of later immigration. There was a considerable mobility of local styles. Innovation, however much desired, was nevertheless restrained to some extent by the existence of a recognized repertoire of named patterns, predominantly scrolls, which sustained a continuity of style.

      The continual quest for prestige in Maori society encouraged men of high status to commission and own important works. The choice of such works changed throughout Maori history. It appears that war canoes were the most prestigious works in the 18th century. Communal war canoes, which were up to 100 feet long, were lavishly decorated with carving and painting. In most parts of the country the attached prow carving had a figure leaning forward with arms stretched behind it; a thin panel carved with openwork spirals ran from the figure to a transverse slab, on the back of which was yet another figure, which looked down the length of the canoe from a squatting position. The sternpost was a high vertical slat with openwork scrolls and a small figure seated at the foot. More figures were carved in relief along the hull; their eyes were sometimes inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The whole canoe was painted red, with black-and-white details, and had feather streamers hung from the sternpost.

      In the first half of the 19th century, following population changes resulting from intensified tribal warfare, the introduction of firearms, and the spread of Western diseases, a number of local styles were extinguished, and, after the European suppression of fighting, the decorated storehouse came into prominence. As a precaution against vermin, these food storehouses were elevated on posts, which were often in human shape. The houses had pitched roofs and deep porches. The outer gable was fitted with bargeboards, usually carved with a complex mythological scene of several figures hauling ashore a whale (a symbol of plenty), which was represented by an abstract pattern of spirals indicating its jaws. At the peak of the gable stood a mask or small figure, and at the foot of the bargeboards were sills with reliefs of ancestors. In some large storehouses, vertical panels between the ends of the sill and the bargeboards were carved with copulating figures—another reference to fertility—while still more figures were carved on a small door and on panels at the back of the porch.

      Largely because of the influence of the artist Raharuhi Rukupo, the meetinghouse subsequently became the central object of local tradition and pride, as it remains to this day. The meetinghouse follows the same principles of design as the storehouse, but it is built at ground level. The exterior carvings stress not the aspect of abundance but ancestral power: indeed, the whole building symbolizes the tribal founding ancestor, with the gable mask representing his face, the bargeboards his arms, and the ridgepole his spine. The porch is undecorated, except for large lintels above the door and the frame around a single window. The interior, however, is fully furnished with relief panels of frontal ancestral figures alternating with panels of laced reed in polychrome geometric patterns. The lower sections of the house posts are carved as small ancestral images. Beams and rafters are painted in prescribed red, white, and black designs.

      The prevalence of warfare in the later phases of Maori history led to the construction of defensive (fortification) earthworks and palisades around hilltop villages. The gates were massive planks, carved above the entrance with major ancestral figures. The palisades incorporated posts with further ancestral figures, often much bigger than life-size.

      Maori material culture differed from that of the rest of Polynesia in the absence of certain types of objects (such as stools and neck rests), in the addition of others, but above all in its ornateness. Images of divinities are rare outside of architecture, except for “god sticks” (rods with heads at the upper end). Weapons included a range of short hand- club types, in wood, nephrite, or whalebone, reflecting early Polynesian models. Some had human figures carved in relief near the grip (overall engraving of the blade was a late development). Staff clubs had ends carved as faces with sharp protruding tongues. Chiefs owned carved adzes with fine nephrite blades as insignia of status. Lavish relief carving covers the entire surface of small flutes, paint cups, and, above all, lidded treasure boxes.

      The highly valued nephrite, classed in several grades of beauty, was employed not only for clubs and hooks but also for a variety of pendants. The best-known depict small frontal human figures in contorted poses. Cloaks, the usual garment of both sexes, were woven of flax, bordered with geometric patterned bands. Feathers (pigeon and kiwi) and dog's hair ornamented others. Like other Maori arts, weaving was a highly ritualized process.

The Hawaiian (Hawaii) Islands
      Like those of the Marquesas Islands and Easter Island, the artists of the Hawaiian Islands developed their own variants on Polynesian style. This resulted partly from isolation, partly from the structure of religious belief, and partly from the existence of a warlike aristocracy. featherwork, for example, was made and used in other parts of Polynesia, but no other group produced anything as spectacular as the feather cloaks (dress), capes, and helmets of Hawaiian chiefs. These were worn not only for important ceremonial occasions but also for actual combat. In fact, the relatively small trapezoidal capes, thought to be an early form, were designed so that the fit of the straight edge around the neck would afford some protection from attack. Larger cloaks have rounded necks and rounded lower edges with flaring sides; they were constructed of mostly red and yellow feathers, with some black and green. The feathers were attached in bunches to a netted base. The cloaks were decorated with triangles, lozenges, circles, squares, and sweeping crescents. With the cloaks, chiefs wore wicker helmets, shaped as caps with crescentic crests, which were also covered in feathers. Heads of the war god were also made of wickerwork covered with red feathers; the mouths on such heads were set with dog's teeth, and the eyes were made of large mother-of-pearl plates with wooden knobs for the pupils. Some were equipped with locks of human hair, others had crests resembling those of the helmets. These formidable images were carried into battle on long poles.

      Wooden figures of divinities fall into several types and styles. The largest formed part of the settings of the sacred enclosures. Posts, carved at the top with rudimentary human forms, including heads with slanting eyes, wide mouths, and chevron-shaped brows, were parts of fences. Flat figures or faces topped with panels decorated with chevrons or silhouettes were kept inside the enclosures. Three-dimensional, full-length figures or busts on posts stood at the gate of the enclosure, at points within it, and in a semicircle facing a sacrificial altar. They were often well over life-size. The majority that survive are in the so-called Kona-district style dating from the late 18th to early 19th century; like the feathered war-god heads, they are associated with the reign of Kamehameha I (1782–1819). The bodies of the figures are massive assemblages of swelling conical or tubular segments, often sharply demarcated. The heads are proportionately large and have thrusting chins; the extremely exaggerated horizontal mouths are shaped like a figure eight and are filled with menacing teeth and outlined with ridges. The heads are crowned with voluminous knobbed coiffures; plaits sweep down and back, incorporating the ridged eyes.

      The conventions of Kona-style bodies occur in some earlier figures, including smaller figures of gods mounted on props, apparently personally owned by chiefs. Many differences in detail exist. Some of the figures have crested helmets, while others have elaborate tiered headdresses, triple-peaked headdresses, or none at all. Several were clearly made as pairs. Small figures without props were privately owned by families. Many of these have Kona-style bodies, helmets, crests, and other such features, but some female figures were carved in a fleshy, naturalistic style and were adorned with human hair. The small figures embodied protective gods and spirits and were used as containers for sorcery materials. Human figures adorn a number of other items, including bowls and racks for spears and poles. They are sometimes positioned with raised hands or in a headstand.

      The Hawaiians made many types of personal ornament. The best-known is probably the hook-shaped whale ivory pendant, which was traditionally strung on coils of human hair. For clothing, especially for loincloths, skirts, and cloaks, the Hawaiians impressed and painted tapa (bark painting) with geometric designs in red and brown; the manufacturing tradition continued long after Western contact, with subsequent changes in designs and use of colour.

The Polynesian outliers
      Small populations speaking Polynesian languages live within the geographic areas of Melanesia and Micronesia, on islands in the Caroline, Solomon, and Vanuatu groups. They are apparently immigrants, largely from western Polynesia, who arrived at various times in the latter 1st millennium AD. Although in many cases the culture of these groups is generally Micronesian, their art often resembles Polynesian works. Figure sculpture (Western sculpture), for example, often exhibits the characteristic protruding buttocks. Some figures have flat faces with horizontal brows and pointed chins similar to those found in western Polynesia.

      A marked feature of decorative design in much of this area is the repetition of small triangles in rows. This theme is also expressed in three dimensions as rows of pyramids or truncated pyramids. The design is found on dance paddles, canoe prows, house posts, bowls, headrests, stools, and other small objects.

Micronesia (Micronesian culture)
      Micronesia can be divided into two style areas. Western Micronesia consists of the island groups in the western Caroline archipelago, including Palau and the states of Yap and Truk (Chuuk (Chuuk Islands)). Eastern Micronesia includes the eastern Caroline Islands, the Marshall Islands, and Kiribati. The Mariana Islands, which lie north of the Caroline Islands, do not figure in this account, because of the obliterating effects of late 17th-century Spanish occupation on their population and its culture.

      Throughout Micronesia, forms are exceedingly basic; decorative detail is largely geometric, consisting of bands of solid colour and rows of triangles in various patterns. Zoomorphs and anthropomorphs are relatively rare and are often expressed as silhouettes. The most frequent use of even this amount of decoration is found in the western Carolines (Caroline Islands), diminishing to none in eastern Micronesia.

      The most frequently decorated items in the western Carolines were buildings and canoes (canoe), reflecting their importance in Micronesian society. Indeed, double-hulled canoes with crescent-shaped sterns and prows served as models for shrines constructed in Palau, Truk, and other smaller islands. Carved birds were sometimes placed in the shrines. The actual canoes of Truk were given elegant prow and stern ornaments with highly stylized sea swallows standing beak to beak. The most impressive buildings (architecture) in the western region are the men's houses of Palau, which incorporate the greatest incidence of representational art in Micronesia. The gables were screened with horizontal planks that were engraved and painted (painting, Western) with mythical and historical scenes. A life-size figure of a seated woman was often attached at the lower centre of the gable. The carved face of a god appeared at the peak of the gable. Other architectural elements, including the posts and beams, featured relief carvings similar to those on the gable. Palauan carving was otherwise restricted to large ceremonial bowls and covered boxes in avian form and to stools. The wood was treated to produce a dark red surface and was inlaid sparingly with tridacna shell in abstract patterns. Some modeling was used to decorate ceramic oil lamps.

      In Yap (Yap Islands) the ceremonial houses were less lavishly adorned. Posts and beams were painted with silhouettes of dugongs and with black-and-white patterns of triangles or were carved with human and animal figures. Crude figures of birds and animals were hung in front of the house gables. The houses stood on platforms of coral blocks, onto which faces were sometimes carved. A trident, sometimes with a bird perched on the central prong, was a characteristic feature of Yapese art and is found on prow and stern canoe carvings, headdresses, and house decorations (decorative art).

      Eastern Micronesia produced no significant carving, apart from paddle-shaped dance staffs and plain, fan-shaped canoe prows. Material culture as a whole was simple and utilitarian. Kiribati warriors wore armour—trousers and jackets with high protective panels at the back of the neck. These suits were woven of sennit and embroidered in human hair with geometric designs.

       weaving of banana and hibiscus fibre on backstrap looms was practiced throughout the Caroline Islands, except in Palau. The fine yarns, which were dyed black, brown, and red, were woven into loincloths, sashes, skirts, and burial shrouds. Their geometric patterning paralleled the designs used in carved decorations and tattooing. In the Marshall Islands, pandanus and coconut strips were plaited into square mats worn as clothing. These were decorated with borders of checks, stripes, and rectilinear designs, which were closely related to social rank and degrees of sanctity.

Douglas Newton

Additional Reading
Well-illustrated studies of the region as a whole include Jean Guiart, The Arts of the South Pacific, trans. from French (1963); Alfred Buehler, Terence Barrow, and Charles P. Mountford, The Art of the South Sea Islands: Including Australia and New Zealand, rev. ed. (1968); Carl A. Schmitz, Oceanic Art: Myth, Man, and Image in the South Seas, trans. from German (1969); Sidney M. Mead (ed.), Exploring the Visual Art of Oceania: Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia (1979); George A. Corbin, Native Arts of North America, Africa, and the South Pacific (1988), a general introduction to aboriginal art; and Peter Gathercole, Adrienne L. Kaeppler, and Douglas Newton, The Art of the Pacific Islands (1979).The Aboriginal art and architecture of Australia is examined in Dacre Stubbs, Prehistoric Art of Australia (1974); Robert Hughes, The Art of Australia, rev. ed. (1970); and Ronald M. Berndt and E.S. Phillips (eds.), The Australian Aboriginal Heritage: An Introduction Through the Arts, 2nd ed. (1978).Surveys of Melanesian art and architecture includeWaldemar Stöhr, Kunst und Kultur aus der Südsee: Sammlung Clausmeyer Melanesien (1987); and Douglas Newton, New Guinea Art in the Collection of the Museum of Primitive Art (1967). Polynesian art and architecture as a whole is treated in Edward Dodd, A Pictorial Peregrination Through the Shapely and Harmonious, Often Enigmatical, Sometimes Shocking Realms of Polynesian Art (1967; also published as Polynesian Art, 1969); Allen Wardwell, The Sculpture of Polynesia (1967); and Terence Barrow, Art and Life in Polynesia (1972). Smaller regions within Polynesia are discussed in J. Halley Cox and William H. Davenport, Hawaiian Sculpture, rev. ed. (1988); Terence Barrow, The Art of Tahiti and the Neighbouring Society, Austral, and Cook Islands (1979); and Sidney M. Mead (ed.), Te Maori: Maori Art from New Zealand Collections (1984).Micronesian traditions are discussed in Jerome Feldman and Donald H. Rubinstein, The Art of Micronesia (1986), a brief catalog with informative essays and a bibliography.Douglas Newton

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Universalium. 2010.

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