(unmatching) volumes

Books

Encyclopaedia in three (unmatching) volumes

Man’s Conquest of the Pacific.

Hie Prehistory of Southeast \sia and Oceania. By Peter Sell wood. Published by William Collins. 5A39.95

Sbn 0 00 216911 8.

Hie Prehistory of Polynesia.

Edited by Jesse D. Jennings.

Published by Harvard Univer ity Press. 5U535.00. ISBN 0 *74 70060 0. exploring the Visual Art of )ceania. Australia, Melanesia, /ficronesia, and Polynesia.

Edited by Sidney M. Mead, ssisted by Isabelle Brymer nd Susan Martich. Published y the University Press of fawaii. SUS 25.00. ISBN 0 248 0598 4. here can be an economy about xpensive, big books and for bout $lOO the Pacific enthusi >t can purchase three volumes lat together constitute a refer ice encyclopaedia of things :eanic.

Man’s Conquest of the acific, Exploring the Visual rt of Oceania and The rehistory of Polynesia are imprehensive landmarks in holarly research, containing gether about 1300 pages, nu erous illustrations, and not a nail amount of scholarly wit.

To take the best first, Peter illwood’s Conquest must rely rank as one of the major >oks on the region to appear in cent times. The author irtrays Pacific archaeology

nd physical anthropology and

iguistics, and cultural history, d . .) as a lively progress over e millennia from South China igins* (for some) to far-flung stinations.

His arguments are fficiently detailed to please 5 specialist, and well-written ough to inform the interested lateur. Aside from his com ;hensive command of the mature, Bellwood himself has ne much original research, am the numerous photo tphs, most without attri tion, we can assume that he s travelled widely in search of graphic material.

In spite of the price, one must nember what one is getting:

the full story, so far as modern scientists know it, of the peopl ing of the Pacific, fully refer enced and illustrated. It is a summary statement drawn from the over 1500 books and articles cited in his bibli ography. His solid scholarship, however, does not interfere with readability.

The long and detailed index serves as a kind of dictionary and makes it easy to look up particular islands or peoples.

Yet for all the expertise of the particular coverage, it is the overall integrated picture that gives Bellwood’s work its useful ness.

In most cases, when someone uses “Pacific” in a title, it means some section of it, such as Polynesia, Melanesia or, even, a single island group. In Bellwood’s case, though. Pacific means the entire ocean, save the American continents and polar caps. Because the book is con cerned with origins and deri vations, the prehistory must stretch back to South-east Asia, as the subtitle of the book indicates.

Collins, as is well known, publishes the Bible; Bellwood’s book is the prehistorical equivalent for the Pacific fan.

A common way to achieve comprehensiveness in a volume is to invite a number of experts to contribute individual articles on their specialist areas and that is the course taken in Jennings’ Prehistory and Mead’s Visual Art.

The Jennings book derives from the editor’s abiding inter est in Polynesia and, to comp lement his own concerns, he has invited 16 colleagues to contrib ute original chapters to his survey. There is everything that anyone has ever wanted to know about Polynesia before Europeans, at least, everything in a descriptive sense, for these well-written essays (for the most part) critically analyse their material only insofar as they have given their data coher ence, but not explanation.

The authors have seen their task as a summary one. But this

caveat should not be taken as a cavil, for the material that the authors present in prose and photograph is satisfying, even pleasing, both for the specialist and the non-specialist.

In Jennings Patrick McCoy gives us a succinct view of Easter Island’s prehistoric de velopment, whilst from Ben Finney there is a colourful and evocative account of Polynesian navigation that made the settle ment of that remote island possible. Peter Bellwood (again) is there to provide an extract from his larger volume on the context of Polynesia in the human population of the Great Ocean, and offers also a general piece on settlement patterns.

The familiar William Howells condenses much of his longer book-length study into a chapter on physical character istics, just before Patrick Kirch looks at how those Polynesian people made their living on the islands they discovered.

In addition to the McCoy piece on Easter Island, there are individual sections on New Zea land, Samoa and Tonga (both by Janet Davidson), the Societies (Kenneth Emory), the Marquesas (Yosihiki Sinoto), and Fiji (Everett Frost). For balance, Sydney University’s Peter White makes some inter esting comparisons in a contri bution on Melanesia.

Althogether, Jennings’

Prehistory makes for a worthy compilation, one that the specialist and the generalist both will find rewardingly in formative. The conclusions, the speculations about unexplained mysteries, further thinking, are left to the reader to pursue.

Mead’s Visual Art looks at an area that is both ancient and contemporary, for the arts and crafts of Pacificans can be found both in archaeological trench and, with any luck, in modern markets or airport stalls.

As though to emphasise this contemporary quality, the vol ume begins with a very up-to date foreword by Michael Somare, in which the former

chief minister of Papua New Guinea serves up some very pungent comments.

Visual Art derives from a conference held in Canada in 1974, though there is little evidence that any cross fertilisation occurred amongst the 25 participants, now con tributors. To offset this, how ever, Mead’s introduction to the articles provides the reader with a summary and overview of the contributions and the confer ence from which they derive.

The book ends with what seems to be obligatory, pro forma, these days for meetings; a set of recommendations and resolutions, this time dealing with cultural integrity and pres ervation.

Visual Art is a much more ambitious effort than Jennings’

Prehistory, not only in its geo graphical coverage the whole of Oceania but also in its attempt to encompass a time scale from ancient rock art to the most contemporary debates on the restitution of artefacts to the museums now being estab lished throughout the Pacific area.

For too much of the history of the Pacific, indigenous master pieces have been up for export for a few beads or dollars, the unscrupulous being both local broker and foreign collector.

The Australian National Uni versity’s Anthony Forge de livers an excellent discussion of Sepik art, perhaps Melanesia’s most famous, while specialist articles consider such diverse topics as fly whisks, Aika aes thetics, masks, and ancestor figures.

Airport or tourist art, too, receives attention. In one sense, of course. Islanders have been making such tourist art for more than two centuries, trad ing, then selling it to the crewmen and collectors on pass ing ships. Many a priceless piece has adorned the mantel piece or glass cabinet in the

homes of European seafarers later to be donated or sold to public collections. It would be a rare colonial officer (or anthro pologist, for that matter) who would not have prominently displayed such souvenirs in the public rooms of his or her home.

Nelson Graburn, himself a specialist in Eskimo (Inuit) art, makes some excellent compara tive remarks about tourist art.

The excellence of the text in the Jennings and Mead books is not matched with similarly su perb illustrative material. The black and white plates in the two edited volumes are clear and pertinent to the material, but colour must be added by the imagination of the reader. Only Bellwood’s, significantly the most expensive of the three books, features colour plates.

With the current cost of books on almost any subject, buyers must be cautious before they invest their money.

Conquest. Prehistory, and Vis ual Art will not disappoint those

who buy them.

Grant

McCall.