| Abstract: |
In the last decade, researchers have attempted to understand the structure of Ancestral Polynesian ritual space through Proto-terms found in lexicons of Proto-Polynesian and Proto-Oceanic. This practice can be seen as a "re-construction" of the marae complex based on linguistic and ethnological data. In this paper I review research that has been done on the Polynesian marae-complex since the late 19th century in order to identify how archaeologists have used words and semantics in their interpretations of this history. Comparing words and meanings of words as a source to gain a deeper understanding of past and present phenomena seems to have been a common practice in Pacific region. In the field of research on Polynesian ritual space, the use of words and reconstructed terms may be described under three headings: a relational approach, concerned with meanings of individual features
a conceptual approach, in which various structures are seen as representing individual concepts
and a lexical approach, which reconstructs the historical development of ritual structures based on interpretations of the semantics of Proto-morphemes. The paper ends with a discussion of these practices and the problems and prospects that they entail.
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