CULTURE
The Cook Island people are
culturally part of eastern Polynesia although the island of Pukapuka
stands out as different in this regard. The people of Pukapuka
have a close ancestral tie to the Samoan area and while most communities
in the Cooks speak a dialect of the East Polynesian, Cook Island
Maori language, Pukapukans speak their own language which is part
of the Samoaic sub-branch of the Polynesian language family.
From an archaeological perspective
the Cook Islands lie in a pivotal position for addressing some
of the key issues in Polynesian cultural history. Following the
expansion into West Polynesia there appears to have been a hiatus
in the voyaging process and direct archaeological evidence of
Polynesian presence in East Polynesia does not appear until at
least 1500 years after the colonisation of Samoa. To add to the
confusion, the earliest cultural horizons across East Polynesia,
from Easter Island and the Marquesas in the east, to New Zealand
in the southwest, show remarkable levels of similarity. In fact,
the artefacts from these early sites are so similar, and contrast
so markedly with those of West Polynesia, that archaeologists
have referred to them as being part of a single ‘archaic
East Polynesian’ cultural tradition. These features of East
Polynesian archaeology have given rise to two of the major mysteries
of Polynesian prehistory.
First, there is the question
of why there appears to be a pause of up to 1500 years between
the colonisation of West and East Polynesia. Archaeologists fall
into two divergent camps over this issue. There are those who
accept the pause in Pacific voyaging and seek to explain it in
various ways. Others find it inconsistent with other aspects of
Pacific cultural history and consider it, perhaps, to be an artefact
of archaeological sampling. Either way, the Cook Islands lie in
the border region between the core archipelagos of Fiji/West Polynesia
to the west and Tahiti/Society Islands to the east. Whatever happened
during the initial expansion out of the Polynesian homelands,
part of the story is likely to be found in the archaeological
record of the Cook group.
Second, there is the question
of why the early cultures of East Polynesia, spread as they are
over a vast and relentless ocean, show such high levels of similarity.
Did these artefacts develop and disperse from some unknown innovation
center located, perhaps, in what is now French Polynesia? Or can
the appearance of this distinctive cultural tradition be attributed
to the remarkable sea faring abilities of the Polynesian ancestors.
Perhaps a voyaging network linked these diverse and scattered
islands and served as a medium for the dissemination of innovations
as they arose, and resulted in the development of a true, maritime
community of cultures.
