Titular disputes and national leadership in Samoa
Abstract The political history of Samoa is principally a contest about matai (titled family head) titles. The significance of matai titles lies in the appurtenant land to which is tied the welfare of most Samoans. The contest for titles translates into the struggle for security of rights and access to land and resources. Four ancient and sacred titles called pāapā stood at the apex of Samoan society and an elite group of orators called tumua ma pule managed the complex political contest. Successful accession to all four titles was rare and contending parties usually spent a good deal of their lifetime in the struggle maintaining this largely ceremonial status. The most eligible contenders came from the Sā Tupuā family and were joined in the early 19th century by the Sā Malietoā family. The title disputes caused endless disruptions and the colonial administrations eventually abolished the titles. But they could not be swept away because the titles provided an ideological superstructure which glued the majo...
Rank, gender and politics in ancient Samoa: The genealogy of Salamāsina O Le Tafaifā
a new focus of rank came into being, and that through a series of female ances tral connexions of such crucial importance that the names of those ancestresses became paramount chiefly titles a young woman, Salamasina, was given highest office in the western islands of Samoa. The supreme titles which Salamasina held were passed on to her chiefly descendants primarily through the daughters of her illegitimate first-born daughter by a low ranking man. Despite these well remembered facts of Samoa's ancient history, Samoa has been described as a male dominated society with laws of inheritance based on 'agnation' or patrilineal succession.1 At least two European scholars have failed to realize Salamasina's sex. Pratt and Ella refer to her as the 'son' of Tui A'ana Tamalelagi, and Shore makes a similar error by referring to Fofoaivao'ese, the daughter of Salamasina, as 'her illegitimate son'.2 The case of Salamasina is unusual since titles and offices associated with formal
Household economy and gendered labor in the 17th centurya.d. on Guam
Abstract The gendered division of labor in household economies is well known in documentary accounts of many societies, although archaeological evidence for it is often elusive. Our study compares ethnohistorical accounts of household organization with archaeological patterns at a 17th-century village on the island of Guam in the Marianas archipelago to determine if these different sources of evidence provide similar insights. We investigated archaeological assemblages from two latte (megalithic) buildings to document their economic activities. Unexpected differences in their assemblages revealed that economic activities varied between the two latte buildings. They were domiciles of a single economically integrated household, but their disparate functions likely signaled a gendered division of labor. This study reveals aspects of gendered labor that documentary accounts do not fully describe. Our findings suggest that the assumption that domestic buildings were functionally redundant in traditional societies must be tested on a case-by-case basis.