| Abstract: |
The life history of houses interrelates the physical changes experienced by the structures with the life cycles of their inhabitants
this is especially the case with the common practice of placing the dead (or objects that represent them) within the house itself. Having become ancestors, representing origins, precedence, and a concentration of spiritual power, the dead sanctify the house, increasing its value and status. Patrick Kirch pursues the material manifestations of the ritual aspects of Polynesian structures as part of a study on the evolution of Austronesian house societies. First, drawing upon Tikopia as a type case for Polynesia, he reviews Raymond Firths ethnographic work to argue that the Tikopian <i>paito</i>, house, fits the defining criteria of Lévi-Strausss house, and as such has significant utility for interpreting the islands archaeological remains, providing a more complete and continuous picture of Tikopian social and architectural forms. Combining historical linguistic and archaeological data, Kirch goes on to demonstrate that the well-known Polynesian temple complex evolved out of an older and more widespread Austronesian pattern whereby ordinary dwellings were sacralized over time by the interment of the dead within their walls. In the process these holy houses, embodying ancestral origins of the high-ranked groups, diverged as a separate form from residences, and usually included additional features, such as open spaces, raised platforms, and upright posts that are visible archaeologically. Significantly, the transformation from house to holy house in eastern Oceania differed in its architectural configurations from its counterparts in the west. Archaeology thus provides good evidence for the regional transformations of social configurations, just as ethnographers have determined for living house societies.
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