The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (52 page)

Archaeology and History at Lapaha

Lapaha, the civic and religious center founded by the 12th Tui Tonga, stretched 1,600 yards along the Tongatapu lagoon. In the beginning it had consisted only of an oval enclosure 600 yards long, flanked on one side by the shore and protected elsewhere by a defensive ditch 10 feet deep and 20 feet wide. The earth from the ditch was used to create a high embankment with a palisade of wooden posts, increasing the height of the barrier. This enclosure, known as “Old Lapaha,” belonged to the Tui Tonga lineage.

Three changes led to an enlargement of Lapaha. One change, presumably natural, was the migration of the shoreline to the west, making new land available for the Tui Haa Takalaua lineage. The second change was the work of human agents: following the creation of the chiefly Tui Kanokupolu lineage, additional land to the south was turned into New Lapaha. A third change involved the creation of more langis, or elite burial mounds.

Figure 48
is a modified version of W. C. McKern’s 1929 map of Lapaha. Note that from the air the site would have appeared as a linear arrangement of plazas, temples, pyramidal mounds, stone monuments, and elite residences. What makes Lapaha special is the fact that we have eyewitness accounts of its buildings and occupants, beginning with the visits of Captain James Cook in 1773 and 1777.

Let us look first at Old Lapaha. Its centerpiece was a large, grassy plaza 100 yards long. To the south of this plaza were two important residences. One was the house of the Tui Tonga, which was 50 feet long and flanked by the smaller houses of his servants. This chiefly residence sat within a private enclosure, shielded from public view by a reed fence taller than a man’s head. The gateway to this enclosure was accompanied by a stone monument: a stela of volcanic rock three feet tall and a foot thick, a gift from the chief of Houma on the island of ‘Eua.

Two other landmarks in the vicinity of the plaza are worth mentioning. Some 35 yards west of the Tui Tonga’s private enclosure lay the house of the priest assigned to Taufaitahi, the patron deity of the sacred chief’s family. A short distance north of the chiefly enclosure was the earthen mound where the Tui Tonga’s hair clippings, blood, and bodily wastes were ritually buried.

To the north of the grassy plaza were several additional constructions. Four of them, called Langis J1-J4 on McKern’s map, were the rectangular burial mounds of past Tui Tongas. Immediately to the west of the mounds lay the Tui Tonga’s kava circle, a plaza where he could have a drink with his advisers and subordinate chiefs.

FIGURE 48.
   The civic-ceremonial center of Lapaha, Tonga, stretched for 1,600 yards along a lagoon.

Oral histories give the occupants of several of Old Lapaha’s burial mounds. Langi J4 is said to hold the remains of Tui Pulotu I, the 33rd Tui Tonga. He was reportedly buried facedown, with his brother Tokemoana at his back. Tui Pulotu I’s sister (who outranked him) was given her own langi. Tui Pulotu II, the 35th Tui Tonga, was reportedly buried in Langi J1.

One last landmark of Old Lapaha is a walled enclosure called Loamanu, near the former shoreline of the lagoon. This was the burial place of past Tui Haa Takalauas, whose langis were smaller than those of the Tui Tongas. Evidently, although the Tui Haa Takalaua chiefs lived to the west of the former shoreline, they wanted to be buried in Old Lapaha.

Let us look next at Moalunga, the area created for the Tui Haa Takalaua lineage. It appears on McKern’s map as a cluster of houses and mounds just west of Old Lapaha, built on land exposed by the migration of the shoreline. One of its major features was an artificial pier called Mounu, which extended 500 to 600 feet into the lagoon. This pier is said to have been created from stone slabs native to the island of ‘Uvea, boatloads of which had been brought 500 miles to Lapaha for langi construction.

The Tui Haa Takalaua’s house lay 50 yards inland; one of his matapules, or titled attendants, lived nearby. At the approach to the pier was a large house occupied by the secular chief’s numerous concubines. Immediately to the south was a kind of beach house, to which the chief could take any of his concubines for a tryst. This “cohabitation house” was flanked by a stone monument ten feet in diameter, the gift of a neighboring chief. Farther south lay a burial mound for the Tui Haa Takalaua’s legitimate noble wives. The southernmost landmark of Moalunga was the house of a second matapule.

The area called New Lapaha also had its landmarks, though they were not as densely clustered as those in Old Lapaha. New Lapaha contained the residence of the Tui Kanokupolu and, perhaps 35 yards to the south, the house of the priest assigned to his family’s patron deity. There were also houses for the Tui Kanokupolu’s firstborn son and daughter. The largest structure in New Lapaha, however, was a guest house.

Finally, there were at least 18 langis to the north of Old Lapaha. Fifteen of these burial mounds, including a group of 13 arranged in parallel rows, were built east of the lagoon’s old shoreline.

Langi J9, one of the four largest of these northern burial mounds, is believed to have been the first one created at Lapaha. It is said to have been built by Talatama, the 12th Tui Tonga, who became the first sacred chief to establish his paramount village at Lapaha. This suggests that the first langis at Lapaha were built outside the defensive ditch.

The Sacred Landscape of the Tui Tonga

Throughout this book we have argued that archaeology and social anthropology contribute more when they work together. We have also seen that principles of behavior stand out more clearly when we can show them operating (1) in different parts of the world and (2) in the past as well as in the present. To illustrate this we will look first at what Gifford’s social anthropology and McKern’s archaeology combine to tell us about Lapaha. Next we will look at an analogous chiefly center from another part of the ancient world.

To begin with, Lapaha was huge; from north to south, it measured almost a mile. At the same time, it was in no sense a “city.” There is no evidence that it included large concentrations of commoners or urban wards of craftsmen. Lapaha seems to have been what archaeologists call a “civic-ceremonial center.”

Like many civic-ceremonial centers, Lapaha grew by accretion. Old Lapaha was dedicated to the Tui Tonga lineage. Hundreds of yards of burial mounds were gradually added to the north. The westward migration of the shoreline added land for the newly created Tui Haa Takalau lineage. The area later assigned to the Tui Kanokupolu lineage required a 600-yard extension to the south. This growth tells us that each of the three major chiefly lineages insisted on its own space.

Tonga fits Goldman’s most powerful category of Polynesian society, the one whose chiefs combined militarism and expertise with mana. McKern’s plan of Lapaha, however, gives the impression of a sacred landscape. We do not see military barracks or concentrations of artisans, as we will see later when we discuss kingdoms. We see long alignments of ritual plazas and burial mounds, the largest of which were for sacred, not secular, chiefs. Only the Tui Tonga had a private enclosure surrounding his residence. The use of open space to create a tranquil, parklike atmosphere is unmistakable.

Among the people and objects the Tongan chiefs wanted close at hand were their wives; their concubines; their servants; their matapules, or titled attendants; the stone monuments they had received as gifts; and the priests in charge of their patron deities. Not shown on McKern’s map, but described by Gifford, were the houses of the Tui Tonga’s falefa advisers and the temples to the chiefs’ patron deities. Apparently not included in Lapaha were the residences and fa’itokas (communal burial mounds) of lower-ranking lineages.

Anthropological and historical accounts stress the secular and military power of Tongan chiefs. What the archaeology of Lapaha shows us, on the other hand, is a “built environment” dedicated to the privacy and self-indulgence of a privileged few; places for ritual processions and kava drinking; and memorials to semidivine rulers in the form of elegant pyramidal mounds.

LAPAHA AND LA VENTA: COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS

Some 3,000 to 2,400 years ago the tropical coast of the Gulf of Mexico was home to several spectacular rank societies. Some of the most flamboyant occupied the drainages of the Papaloapan, Coatzacoalcos, and Tonalá Rivers in the Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco.

The coast of western Tabasco is prograding, or expanding, toward the Gulf, even as it subsides under the alluvium of the Tonalá. A dozen miles inland, the archaeological site of La Venta occupies a residual hill almost buried by the recent alluvium of the coastal plain. La Venta was once surrounded by swamps and sloughs draining into the Tonalá, leaving it naturally defended. Inland from La Venta lay a tropical forest receiving more than 100 inches of rain each year.

Archaeologist Robert Heizer once calculated that 18,000 people lived close enough to La Venta to consider it their region’s main civic-ceremonial center. Those people likely grew two crops of corn each year, a main crop sown just before the rains began in May and a minor crop planted just before the February dry season. Small farming villages would have moved periodically as the tropical forest was cleared, burned, planted, and left fallow for years. In this landscape of shifting settlements, La Venta would have been the one fixed point.

Like Lapaha, La Venta took the form of a long, linear complex of pyramidal mounds, flat-topped platforms, stone monuments, and chiefly burials. Also like Lapaha, La Venta grew by increments. Complex A (the counterpart to Old Lapaha) was only about 300 yards long and oriented eight degrees west of true north. This complex, which covered about five acres, was built in stages between 3,000 and 2,600 years ago. Immediately to the south is a large earthen pyramid called Complex C. From this point southward the mounds and plazas of La Venta have been less fully investigated, and some date to periods too recent to be discussed here. Suffice it to say that La Venta’s linear sequence of public constructions eventually reached 1,600 yards in length, similar to Lapaha at its peak.

At least four generations of archaeologists have worked at La Venta. Included were Frans Blom and Oliver LaFarge in the 1920s; Matthew Stirling in the 1940s; Philip Drucker, Robert Heizer, and Robert Squier in the 1950s; and Rebecca González Lauck in the twenty-first century.

Figure 49
shows the layout of Complex A. Let us begin in the south, where we find an elongated plaza between two long, low earthen mounds called A4 and A5. The northern half of this plaza was occupied by Mound A3. Immediately to the south of A3, the people of La Venta buried a large mosaic pavement formed with blocks of imported serpentine, a hard metamorphic rock.

To the north lay a second plaza, this one outlined by a stone fence. The posts of the fence were of columnar basalt, a volcanic rock that occurs naturally as a series of multifaceted columns. Within this second plaza stood five earthen platforms, numbered A1-c through A1-g.

Buried below Platforms A1-d and A1-e, on the south edge of the plaza, archaeologists found two nearly identical mosaics composed of serpentine blocks. Each resembled a giant, anthropomorphized mask of Earth, with additional elements representing the four great World Directions. Buried near the north edge of the same plaza was another massive offering of serpentine blocks.

Buried below Platform A1-f, Drucker, Heizer, and Squier found a group of 16 stone figurines (15 of them jadeite) and six tongue depressor-like jadeite celts, all arranged in a ritual scene. All of the figurines appear to represent males with deliberate cranial deformation, perhaps a sign of rank. The lone sandstone figurine stood with his back against one of the jadeite celts, which may represent the basalt fence posts of the very plaza in which they were found. The scene seems to show four jadeite men filing past the sandstone figure, while the remaining 11 jadeite men watch. This scene may commemorate an actual event, but opinions differ on its meaning. Were the four men, walking single file, lucky initiates or captives destined for sacrifice?

Immediately to the north of the plaza just described rose Mound A2, an earthen pyramid resembling some of the langis at Lapaha. This mound did, in fact, contain a chiefly burial. Tomb A had walls and a roof of basalt columns, looking for all the world like a box made from giant Lincoln Logs. The occupant of the tomb had evidently been laid to rest in a carved sandstone sarcophagus. To the disappointment of the archaeologists, at some point Tomb A had been reopened and the occupant’s remains taken elsewhere. Still lying on the floor were the remains of two young people; they had been buried previously, later exhumed and bundled up, and then added to the tomb. Found with these bundled remains were four jadeite figurines, one sitting cross-legged and wearing an iron-ore mirror; a jadeite bloodletting tool, carved to represent a stingray spine; several genuine stingray spines; a jadeite pendant in the form of a clam shell; an iron-ore mirror; and countless smaller baubles of jadeite. Left behind in the sarcophagus were additional sumptuary goods, including two jadeite ear ornaments, two jadeite pendants in the form of jaguar teeth, a jadeite awl or bloodletter, and a jadeite figurine. Whoever the original occupant of the tomb was, he must have been as full of sacred life force as a Tui Tonga.