Monumentality and ritual behaviour in South Polynesia

The prominence of archaeologically-recognizable ritual monuments in East Polynesia and their virtual absence in South Polynesia, a region colonized from East Polynesia, requires explanation. Circumstances contingent upon the timing of colonization, or the resources available in South Polynesia have been proposed as significant, but it is argued here that the pa (fort) complex included important ritual functions which could not be separated safely, and represented monumentally in the open landscape, in prevailing conditions of low population density and endemic warfare at familial and clan levels of social organisation. Only at around the period of European arrival were those conditions changing in northern New Zealand and beginning to manifest separate monumental ritual structures.