VARIETIES OF ECOLOGICAL ADAPTATION IN THE SOUTHERN COOK ISLANDS

Abstract

T^XPRESSED in the most simple terms, the aim of this paper is to examine the -*-' relationship between ecology (i.e. that aspect of the environment directly relevant to the functioning of a cultural system) and the two cultural sub-systems of economy {i.e. utilization and distribution of resources) and social organization, in the three islands of Rarotonga, Aitutaki and Mangaia. Technology, and the historical origins of the peoples concerned in this case the peoples of late prehistory immediately prior to the beginning of European influence will be taken as constants, and the three relevant variables mentioned above will be examined as part of an intercommunicating network of attributes or entities forming a complex whole (Clarke 1968: 46). Of the three islands to be discussed, each is small (under 26 square miles), and each was dominated in prehistoric times by a chiefdom type of social organization (Sahlins, 1968 : 20). Rarotonga and Aitutaki both expressed diversified economies, while Mangaia, with its apparent dependence on wet taro cultivation, suggests a more highly specialized strategy. Explanations will be sought for these phenomena, in the course of fulfilling the wider aim of demonstrating the considerable flexibility of the chiefdom type of social organization in its ramified Polynesian forms (Sahlins, 1958), and the ability of the latter to survive in situations of considerable environmental diversity. The definition of the term ramage in this paper is that used by Sahlins in his 1958 study of social stratification in Polynesia. Polynesian ramages are nonexogamous, internally stratified patrilineal descent groups, within which succession to positions of leadership is by distance from the main line of descent and primogeniture.