Tikopia Brought Up To Date

pROBABLY no anthropologist in the world is more closely identified A with a single place than is New Zealand-born anthropologist Dr Raymond Firth with the isolated Polynesian island of Tikopia (popula tion: 1,200-odd) in the Santa Cruz group of the Solomons.

After he first visited that island in 1928-29, Dr. Firth wrote his well-known study of kinship, We, the Tikopia; his account of Tikopian economics, Primitive Polynesian Economy; and his study of Tikopia’s pagan religious cycle, The Work of the Gods in Tikopia.

Since that first visit. Dr. Firth has been back to Tikopia on two occasions—in 1952 and 1966—and has found much more to write about, for the Tikopian way of life, like that of many another South Sea Island, has changed greatly in the past 30 years.

In 1956, for example, the last remaining pagans on Tikopia adopted Christianity following a disastrous epidemic, and Dr. Firth’s The Work of the Gods was thereby converted into an historical document.

The Work of the Gods in its original form has long been out of print. But Dr. Firth has now brought out a new edition, adding post scripts to most of the original chapters to compare the religious ceremonies he saw in 1952 with those of 1928-29, as well as an epilogue on the final eclipse of the traditional ritual, based on his visit of 1966.

The new edition of The Work of the Gods (Melbourne University Press, $8.75) is the first of three volumes on Tikopia religion which Dr. Firth is bringing out. The second volume, Tikopia Ritual and Belief (Allen and Unwin, $9.80), is a collection of papers published between 1930 and 1966. The third volume, yet to be published, will

be entitled Rank and Religion in Tikopia.

RL.