Social Gathering Places Research Articles

Research Items

Stone Circles in Tongareva.—In an account of the ethnology of Tongareva, commonly known as Penrhyn Island (Bull. 92, Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu), by Te Bangi Hiroa (Dr. P. H. Buck), reference is made to two roughly circular arrangements of limestone pillars. Nothing is known of their uses and no name is applied to them by the islanders. It has been stated that stone circles of a Stonehenge type are present in Tongareva—an erroneous interpretation of the word ‘encircled’ used by Lament loosely in describing a marae which in reality was rectangular. The stones are not to be ascribed to an archaic civilisation; they are of the same type as those used in marae construction, and sun worship was unknown to the Tongarevans. The pillars, including the bilateral notched pillar of the Atutahi ellipse, are trimmed in the same way as the marae pillars. They must have been made by the ancestors of the present population. They are in fact extra-marae pillars set up near the marae for some subsidiary purpose which, it is suggested, were social gathering places on the way to or from the marae. Women and children were not allowed to enter the marae. The secular use of the circle may be borne out by the discovery of a partly worked shell fish-hook in one enclosure. The circle may have been used as the place in which was performed the dance and the wailing ceremony, an accessory performance outside the marae that required a clear space not far away. The circle probably arose from a desire to embellish the clear space where such dances were held. In function it would be subsidiary and complementary to the marae and not taboo.