Work days & dancing nights

Work has begun on the first test unit of this season. Following the three units of the previous field season it has been labeled TU-4. It was placed a couple meters away from one of Simon Best’s previous units as described by a local friend who worked with Best. It was here that the only pieces of ceramic yet found on the island were unearthed and the potentially oldest dates my be located. Best obtained a radiocarbon date of 1000 BP from this unit, however, the error range was too great to be very trustworthy. The goals of our excavation are to obtain a more precise date from the deepest cultural layers, as well as to look for additional pottery samples that can be sent to labs for analysis of the sand temper to assess from which type of island the sand could have come. Additionally we will be collecting a sample of fishbones within a 1/8 inch screen sieve to look at the early fishing practices and collecting all other artifacts to look at cultural change.

Thus far we have dug approximately one meter and passed through the modern cultural layers marked by round nails and clear glass, and through the historic layers marked by square nails and opaque glass. We were just making headway into the prehistoric layers when the aumaga holidays began and put a temporary stop to our work. During this time we are not allowed to work and must engage in feasting, singing, dancing, and cricket playing.

The holidays began yesterday with a march by the aumaga, the men’s group, from the meeting house (lotala) to the church for a special ceremonial service. This was followed by festive dances by the men and women’s group and the presentation of the feast that had been prepared by the aumaga all of the night before. For the feast a dozen or so pigs were slaughtered, four large bags of taro imported from Samoa were cooked in the umu, along with pulaka (swamp taro) grown on the island and eaten only on special occasions, as well as the full range of everyday fare: raw fish in coconut cream (ota), chicken curry, rice, cassava, fish soup, skipjack tuna (atu), sprouted coconut (uto) cooked in sweet water, corned beef (poisupo), and more. The bounty will provide for every family throughout the holiday time and only a small portion could be sampled at the time of its presentation.

That night the dance for which everyone had been practicing over the following week was to occur and one of us, Adam Thompson, was fortunate enough to be invited to participate having attended a majority of the practices. Two teams of dancers would be performing face-to-face presenting dances that neither of the other team had yet seen. Once night fell the teams gathered together and marched into the lotala, chanting, to take their positions. The feeling upon entering from out the darkness into the well lit meeting house while everyone’s voice became an reverberating force will not be forgotten. Opening speeches were made and then first one team then the other took turns in performing the dances on which they had practiced so hard. Adam was nervous that he wouldn’t be able to remember the dances but had warmed up a bit before hand. The other team was also very good. But as the first song started and he stood up on cue and the moves came back to him he began to put more emphasis and more emotion into his performance following the fellow dancers around him until the group danced as one and he knew perhaps for a bit what it was like to be Tokelau, even if this bit were all he could obtain.