Contenu du sommaire

Marriage is of major traditional and contemporary importance for the Western Desert people of Australia, and more specifically for the Ngaatjatjarra, because it contributes to establish bonds of solidarity throughout, and even beyond the desert. But marriage is not the unique feature satisfying this objective. It is interesting to note that, among other mechanisms, betrothal produces identical affinal bonds as does marriage without union being either a condition nor a consequence.

New Caledonia enjoys one of the biggest Gross National Products per person in the Pacific, amounting to $US 16 000. The distribution of this wealth, however, is very unequal. A great portion of the population, mainly the Kanaks, is denied access to it. Inequalities are also important within the active population between private enterprises which strive for dynamism and an overdeveloped administration with anachronical privileges, which stiffles those enterprises. Public transfers from the Métropole gradually became the true motor of development, even more than nickel. This will certainly raise problems when the territory becomes more autonomous. Every year, thousands of young people come to the employment market with education but without job prospects. Because of this it may be feared that social problems will grow worse in the future.

The Russian hydrographic record in Central Polynesia in the post-Napoleonic era (1816-1826) is a proud one. Exploration and surveying in the scattered coral islands that comprise the Tuamotu Archipelago east of Tahiti represent the brightest page of all. Kruzenshtern's two protégés, Otto von Kotzebue and Faddei F. Bellingshausen, brought three dozen coral islands into focus for the first time, for the benefit of international science and cartography; accurately placed them in relation to each other and to Venus Point, Tahiti, in the west; collected careful ethnographical, botanical, and zoological materials relating to specific islands; and discovered ten islands or clusters that had been unknown to Europeans. These were Tikahau, Angatau, Nihiru, the Raevskii cluster, Katiu, Fakarava, Niau, Matahiva, Fangahina, and Aratika. The Russian Central State and Naval Archives in St Petersburg contain a wealth of documents, bearing directly on hydrography, cartography, and other sciences in Central Polynesia, that have yet to be exploited in the West.

This article attempts to show how technological studies in Oceania make it possible to propose a distribution of technical features and to formulate hypotheses about their diffusion. General syntheses have already been proposed especially for adzes, pestles and fishing- hooks. Here we are aiming to study the diffusion of bows and arrows in Oceania on the basis of typologies built from concepts of technical tendency and degrees of the technical facts. This study also makes use of linguistic evidence and ethno-historical texts in order to determine functional differences in archery depending on geographical areas.

Today in New Guinea and the Moluccas, the large diversity of pottery techniques, often used for the production of a single shape of pot, is a phenomenon rarely observed elsewhere; variations in pottery manufacture are almost innumerable, to the image of the cultural diversity in these areas. The authors tackle the question of technical complexity, looking at things from the potter' s point of view, in terms of know-how, technical skill and difficulty for apprenticeship. In other words, this study is founded on discrete features of pottery manufacture, rather than on a stylistic approach of shapes and decorations. It appears that pots in New Guinea can be classified in different groups, in relation with the degree of technical relationships; the spatial distribution of these technical groups suggest different evolutions: modification of Lapita pottery after its disappearing as identity sign, intense maritime contacts with eastern Indonesian islands and, finally, transmission of pottery techniques by the means of imitation and simplification, in the inland direction.

This article attempts to put into a local and regional historical context, the conditions under which, in the 15th-16th centuries, a Tongan colony was established on the island of Uvea (Wallis Island). In the middle of the second millenium AD the expansionism of the Tui Tonga dynasty from the island of Tongatapu led to the progressive occupation of the majority of the islands of Western Polynesia, with the installation of Tongan « Governors » and of new chiefs. The outstanding figure of this period on Uvea was Ga'asialili, who is presented in oral traditions as the person mainly responsable for setting up a Tongan political system on the island. The chronological position of this « Governor » has been localy doubtful up to now and the present article tries, by putting events into their regional context — in particular by using Tongan traditional data — , to place Ga'asialili in a satisfactory historical frame.

Can Métoro' s Readings be Relied Upon for the Decipherment of the Rongorongo? Mgr Jaussen had four of the five tablets in his possession read by his informant, Metoro (tablets Aruku-Kurenga, Tahua, Mamari, and Keiti). Those readings are reproduced in Barthel 1958 : 173-199 as they must have appeared in Jaussen' s unpublished manuscript, and faithful tracings of the hieroglyphic texts are given in appendix. The direction of the reading is one of the very few things known beyond the shadow of a doubt. Comparing Metoro' s readings against the hieroglyphic texts shows that he read the obverse of the last two tablets in an order incompatible with any understanding of their contents. Metoro read the lunar calendar of tablet Mamari last line first, and failed to recognize the very obvious pictographic sign for the full moon. Not only did he read every single line of the obverse of tablet Keiti backwards, from end to beginning, but he skipped the first six signs, and reinserted them after finishing reading the second line. Barthel was aware of those facts, but he clung to the belief that Metoro mastered the writing perfectly. This led him to ignore internal contrary evidence in his attempts at decipherment, thus when he proposed the reading ure ( penis ) for glyph 76 of his nomenclature, an interpretation unsupported by Metoro' s other readings of that sign. Metoro knew nothing. Or, if he knew anything, he was careful not to reveal it. His chants, far from providing a key to the decipherment, are fantastic, misguiding interpretations which can only hinder attempts at analyzing and understanding the rongorongo.

Kanak women artists seeking to create a strong identity in the contemporary world must position themselves in relation to the prominent touristic presence as well as in relation to neo-traditional tribalism. The bodily aesthetics of the female tourist and the Kanak woman operates as a ground of cultural differentiation. Previous social science on the importance of clothing or nudity, including Maurice Leenhardt, Norbert Elias and Jean- Claude Kaufmann is challenged in this analysis of Kanak art in relation to contemporary body politics.