128
7 The Horticultural Context
need for a significant founder population and sought to include colonists who possessed and could teach and hand on all the traditional skills on which their culture
depended.
The critical size and composition of a founder population for a successful colony
undoubtedly depended on its having a representative cross-section of the homeland society – a tenet Edward Gibbon Wakefield put into practice in the 19th
century when founding the colony of South Australia and colonies in Wellington
and Christchurch in New Zealand. A representative cross-section of society is a
vital part of the colonists’ ark of resources – partly to represent, in microcosm, the
socio-political structure of the homeland society, evolved by the migrating peoples
over time and basic both psychologically and practically to physical and cultural
survival.
In a Lapita and Polynesian context, the microcosm needed to include teachers
and practitioners for all the society’s technologies from fishing to weaving, from
boat-building to navigation, from medicine and shamanism to the teaching of cultural history and traditions which embody survival strategies, cultural prerogatives
and spiritual knowledge and practices. Castaways can adapt and survive in a new
land and perhaps slowly create a new society. But cultural translocation, and the
significantly sized founder populations this implies, not only ensures long-term survival but also gives an onward impetus for further expansion and a surer base for the
cultural and material innovation and adaptation that underpin such expansion. It is,
then, not surprising that the earliest traditional accounts of migrations, such as the
whare wananga accounts S. Percy Smith published, speak of migration fleets of six
or seven canoes [10]. Indeed, their ensuring significant founder populations might
be seen as implicit evidence that the Lapita peoples were skilled migrants. And it
is not surprising to find that in Polynesian societies, involved throughout their histories with migration, fleets of migrating canoes occur not just down to the time of
Kahukura in about AD 1230, as we describe in Chapter 18, but down to the time of
the Heke, the last migration fleet, which reached New Zealand about 600 years ago.
The speed and success with which the Lapita colonies were established in
the Bismarcks, Madagascar, New Zealand, Hawaii, Island Melanesia and Western
Polynesia imply significant founding populations in each. Possibly all these founding populations were drawn directly from the Spice Islands, possibly later they
also included experienced colonists from established colonies in the Bismarcks
and Solomons. Whatever their immediate origin, there seems little doubt that large
numbers of colonists were involved and that a remarkable degree of co-ordinated
organization underlay the fast expansion in first and second waves of Spice Island
migrations. It is a matter of conjecture whether the setting up of inter-island trading
regions as a means of ensuring self-sufficiency and independence for the colonies
was a matter of deliberate organization or a serendipitous development due to a
degree of isolation enforced on the new colonists by the advent of a cold climatic
period in c. 1000 BC. Certainly there is evidence of trading links and technological
interchange between the Spice Island homeland region and Eastern Polynesia up to
the time of Tangiia (about AD 1294 by the chronology we construct in Chapter 19).
There is evidence too of trading links and technological exchange between the
7 The Horticultural Context
need for a significant founder population and sought to include colonists who possessed and could teach and hand on all the traditional skills on which their culture
depended.
The critical size and composition of a founder population for a successful colony
undoubtedly depended on its having a representative cross-section of the homeland society – a tenet Edward Gibbon Wakefield put into practice in the 19th
century when founding the colony of South Australia and colonies in Wellington
and Christchurch in New Zealand. A representative cross-section of society is a
vital part of the colonists’ ark of resources – partly to represent, in microcosm, the
socio-political structure of the homeland society, evolved by the migrating peoples
over time and basic both psychologically and practically to physical and cultural
survival.
In a Lapita and Polynesian context, the microcosm needed to include teachers
and practitioners for all the society’s technologies from fishing to weaving, from
boat-building to navigation, from medicine and shamanism to the teaching of cultural history and traditions which embody survival strategies, cultural prerogatives
and spiritual knowledge and practices. Castaways can adapt and survive in a new
land and perhaps slowly create a new society. But cultural translocation, and the
significantly sized founder populations this implies, not only ensures long-term survival but also gives an onward impetus for further expansion and a surer base for the
cultural and material innovation and adaptation that underpin such expansion. It is,
then, not surprising that the earliest traditional accounts of migrations, such as the
whare wananga accounts S. Percy Smith published, speak of migration fleets of six
or seven canoes [10]. Indeed, their ensuring significant founder populations might
be seen as implicit evidence that the Lapita peoples were skilled migrants. And it
is not surprising to find that in Polynesian societies, involved throughout their histories with migration, fleets of migrating canoes occur not just down to the time of
Kahukura in about AD 1230, as we describe in Chapter 18, but down to the time of
the Heke, the last migration fleet, which reached New Zealand about 600 years ago.
The speed and success with which the Lapita colonies were established in
the Bismarcks, Madagascar, New Zealand, Hawaii, Island Melanesia and Western
Polynesia imply significant founding populations in each. Possibly all these founding populations were drawn directly from the Spice Islands, possibly later they
also included experienced colonists from established colonies in the Bismarcks
and Solomons. Whatever their immediate origin, there seems little doubt that large
numbers of colonists were involved and that a remarkable degree of co-ordinated
organization underlay the fast expansion in first and second waves of Spice Island
migrations. It is a matter of conjecture whether the setting up of inter-island trading
regions as a means of ensuring self-sufficiency and independence for the colonies
was a matter of deliberate organization or a serendipitous development due to a
degree of isolation enforced on the new colonists by the advent of a cold climatic
period in c. 1000 BC. Certainly there is evidence of trading links and technological
interchange between the Spice Island homeland region and Eastern Polynesia up to
the time of Tangiia (about AD 1294 by the chronology we construct in Chapter 19).
There is evidence too of trading links and technological exchange between the