Community fishing & the end of TU-4

The highlight of the aumaga holiday weekend came on Saturday when all the men came together for a laga te ika, when everyone takes to the outer reef to form a semi-circle of people and nets to catch a heap of fish. Half of the men held coconut fronds they waved above their heads to scare the fish towards the beach as the circle became smaller and smaller. As the circle collapsed on itself many different types of fish could be seen. The area being fished was a special reserve area saved for special occasions such as this. Rintaro, our fish expert, was excited to see the outcome of the catch.

Later we all met at the Lalopua, the men’s house under the pua tree, where the inati, the traditional distribution of fish takes place. As the fish were counted out, the majority were found to be unicornfish (humu), surgeonfish (ume), and parrotfish (alahi). These are fish typical of the reef that are easily caught by the net. The modern use of motorboats has made trolling a preferred method to netfishing because of the large tuna that is caught. However before the motorboat our excavations show that netfishing was the preferred method based on the composition of fish remains we find. Trolling was done in special occasions because of the intensive sailing the canoes underwent during the process. This switch is an interesting change we are studying by sampling the fishbones in the excavation.

Following the end of the holidays we returned to work on TU-4. Two burials had been found and we carefully covered them and moved our excavation between them so as not to disturb the integrity of the deposit. They will wait until Dr. Frederique Valentin, a specialist in Polynesian burials, who will be joining us on future excavations. It is good to have found something for her to work on, but the discovery of burials put a stop to our work. On Monday at 140 cmbs we found a third burial we could not dig around and the unit was halted for this season. Profiles were drawn and samples will be taken to understand what we can, but we will not be able to dig to the deep layers we were hoping for to sample the oldest cultural layers. When we look at the profile we see a large pit feature disturbing the layers, likely from the burials. Looking at the subsequent pits shows that the three burials appear to date from three different periods. This will be very good for Frederique. But for us it is less exciting. The artifacts we have so painstakingly sampled have all been mixed by the digging of the pits and we cannot get the data we had hoped for. But as we move to the next area are hopes are still high as we look forward to what we shall find next.