Anderson (2014) Seafaring in Remote Oceania, Traditionalism and Beyond in Maritime Technology and Migration

Seafaring in Remote Oceania: Traditionalism and Beyond in Maritime
Technology and Migration
Oxford Handbooks Online

Seafaring in Remote Oceania: Traditionalism and
Beyond in Maritime Technology and Migration
Atholl Anderson
The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania
Edited by Ethan E. Cochrane and Terry L. Hunt
Print Publication Date: May 2018 Subject: Archaeology, Archaeology of Oceania

Online Publication Date: Oct 2014 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199925070.013.003
Abstract and Keywords
Long-distance seafaring or voyaging is often understood in a traditionalist perspective

that assumes particular sail and watercraft technology for which there is no physical
evidence, a capability for search-and-return voyages of discovery, a degeneration of
voyaging technology over time, and an isomorphism between the ethnographic and pre-
European records. This chapter reviews the ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and linguistic
evidence pertaining to Oceanic boats and sailing rigs and concludes that prior to about
A.D. 1500 Oceanic sailing rigs were mastless without triangular sails and had no
weatherly capability. This conclusion has ramifications for the explanation of the episodic
nature of Oceanic colonization and post-colonization interaction.
Keywords: seafaring, voyaging, colonization, interaction, Oceanic boats
Introduction
LONG-DISTANCE seafaring, often characterized ambiguously as “voyaging,” was the core
activity of Pacific colonization, most emphatically in Remote Oceania where minimum
distances between islands were often over 500 km, and up to 4,000 km. Yet, no other
major topic in Oceanic prehistory has proven so intractable, for almost no remains of
offshore boats have been described and seafaring left neither a pre-European record of
the structure and rigging of boats, except enigmatically in rock art, nor more than a faint
ethnographic trace of the basic techniques of long-distance sailing, navigation, and
seakeeping. That Oceanic seafaring can be discussed at all depends largely, and
tenuously, upon its construction by proxy. Transcribed oral traditions of voyaging,
European historical observations, and historical linguistics have been combined to shape
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proxies for prehistoric seafaring technology and performance, while patterns of island
colonization and interaction, inferred from the distribution and dating of archaeological
remains, plus Oceanic geography and sailing simulation, have provided proxy narratives
of migration history. Explanation of these, turning with uncomfortable circularity back to
foundation issues of seafaring technology and performance, has ranged in recent
discussion from ebullient traditionalism (e.g., Howe 2006) to conservative historicism
(e.g., Anderson 2008).
That dichotomy of perspectives—here simplifying a broader range of approaches—

originated in acerbic criticism of the traditionalist model of voyaging by Andrew Sharp
(1957) and reactions to that in Golson (1963). Polynesian navigational ability formed a
(p. 474) lightning rod for much of that debate, as it had historically (Durrans 1979), but it
is not discussed here. In my experience, and by the assurance of more accomplished

navigators (e.g., Lewis 1994), a knowledge of rising and zenith stars, coupled with dead
reckoning, could provide a workable system of navigation on passages east‒west, while
the immense band of islands stretching across the central Pacific provided a safety net of
sorts for passages toward the equator (see map in the essay by Cochrane and Hunt). That
such methods could have been sufficiently effective in Oceanic prehistory is accepted
widely today.
An equally fundamental issue, and now the main topic of debate, is the nature of Oceanic
long-distance sailing in relation to maritime migration. Following a critique of
traditionalism, which is still the prevailing model, I discuss the changing character of
sailing technology and performance between the mid-Holocene and the era of European
exploration. Seafaring technology at the moving front of prehistoric migration across
Remote Oceania is most pertinent, but it is important to note that technology and
performance continued to change when initial migration phases were over and that they
did so by continuing introduction of technical novelty as well as by regional innovation. Of
comparable importance is variation in sailing conditions, a crucial and often missing
element in discussion of maritime migration.
I use “seafaring” as the general term for oceanic sailing and reserve “voyaging,” with its
implication of planned passages, to mean seafaring that has been asserted as purposeful
in traditional narratives or traditionalist perspectives, or for which some other
contention, such as evidence of two-way trade, supports an assumption that it was so.
Traditionalist Voyaging
The traditionalist approach to voyaging in Remote Oceania developed from a late
nineteenth-century conviction that Polynesian traditions were a reliable, primary source
for the history of Pacific colonization (Shortland 1854; Fornander 1878–1885). In some
respects this is demonstrably probable. For example, multiple and substantially
independent tribal genealogies and narratives amongst Maori agree that initial migration
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to New Zealand involved numerous canoes and occurred eighteen to twenty-two
generations before about 1840, a proposition entirely consistent with modern
archaeological, genetic, and paleoenvironmental evidence. However, none of the Remote
Oceanic traditions recorded in early historical sources referred in detail to the technology
and practice of seafaring. Such material came, dubiously, in more elaborate late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century versions of voyaging traditions (Smith 1904; Best
1923; Buck 1938) that underpin the continuing traditionalist model (Finney 1979; Irwin
1992; Lewis 1994; Howe 2006; Pearce and Pearce 2010).
European and indigenous scholars read Polynesian colonizing traditions to imply the
existence of large, fast, weatherly (windward-sailing) double canoes, precise astral
navigation, and frequent, intentional, return voyaging. As few of these features had been
(p. 475) observed historically, it was concluded that Polynesian seafaring had been more
sophisticated during the colonization era than at the time of early European observation.
That “principle of degeneration” (Dening 1963: 102) underwrote a confident belief in an
age of unrestrained voyaging, followed by degeneration in long-distance seafaring
capability. This traditionalist voyaging model encompassed various propositions, each
open to debate.
The first is that voyagers could sail where and when they pleased on fast return passages,
deciding later whether to establish colonies. Assertion that two-way voyages could make
average speeds (Velocity made good, Vmg) of 4‒6 knots (Smith 1904; Finney 2006a: 132)
is contradicted by historical evidence, including information from the Tahitian Tupaia to
Cook, in 1769, showing that the 2,600 nautical mile round trip, Tahiti‒Tonga, was sailed
at 2.6 knots Vmg (Anderson 2008: 269), in itself a comparatively strong performance
(Whiteright 2011). Evidence of frequent return voyaging is scarce. For example, the
Eastern Lapita (Fiji/West Polynesia) ceramic system was isolated and soon decayed,
presumably through lack of inter-archipelago interaction, while New Britain obsidian,
common in Santa Cruz, hardly reached New Caledonia, Fiji, or West Polynesia (Clark and
Anderson 2009). Post-Lapita movement is indicated by Polynesian influence in Vanuatu,
and by West Polynesian pottery and adzes in central East Polynesia (Weisler 1997), but
there is no impression of regular exchange. Similarly, some central East Polynesian
material reached Hawai‘i, Easter Island, or New Zealand but no convincing instances of
return have been documented (e.g., Anderson 2008 contra Collerson and Weisler 2007).
The delayed colonization argument (Graves and Addison 1995) assumes long retention of
precise sailing instructions, but these do not appear in early oral traditions, and,
archaeologically, the first reliable signs of human habitation on Remote Oceanic islands
are almost invariably followed by evidence of continuous settlement.
The hypothesis that Polynesians sailed to and from the Americas, founded in a
traditionalist perspective, needs mention here. In recent form, it envisages the
introduction of chickens to pre-Columbian Chile and the return from Ecuador of
Polynesian canoes bearing sweet potato (Jones et al. 2011). The chicken-bone DNA has no
specifically Polynesian signature, however, and the few radiocarbon dates suggest a mid-
fifteenth-century age, too close to Spanish chicken introduction around A.D. 1500 to be
Page 3 of 22

confident about the source (Thomson et al. 2014). Conversely, Amerindian sailing to
Polynesia has long been suggested by multiple trait similarities in Easter Island
monumental architecture, “tupa” structures and a distinctive bird man motif, while large,
weatherly, sailing rafts seen by Spanish explorers in Ecuador could have reached
Polynesia, conveniently downwind, bringing also the sweet potato and gourd (Anderson,
Martinsson-Wallin, and Stothert 2007; Montenegro, Avis, and Weaver 2008). Both
hypotheses could be valid, and each requires more research. Similar claims that
Polynesian voyaging reached California from Hawai‘i (Jones et al. 2011) are constructed
around the existence of the Chumash Indian planked canoe, or tomol. The linguistic
argument that “tomol” has a Polynesian origin is thoroughly unconvincing. Furthermore,
as the tomol existed centuries before Hawai‘i was colonized, the hypothesis is feeble
(Arnold 2007).
(p. 476)A second traditionalist tenet, that Remote Oceanic exploration and colonization
involved systematic voyaging, had no basis for testing until Irwin (1992) proposed a long-
term voyaging strategy in which exploration was deliberately directional. It began toward
the prevailing wind direction, enabling a safe return, and later, as information
accumulated, set off across and then down the main wind directions. In seeking useful
cases, Irwin (2010: 138) took the absence of Lapita sites either side of Torres Strait as
supporting his strategic model, but there is now evidence of Lapita settlement in
southern Papua New Guinea (David et al. 2011). In East Polynesia the colonization
chronology (Wilmshurst et al. 2011) suggests that discovery of the marginal islands
occurred more or less simultaneously, yet Easter Island is upwind into the trades, Hawai‘i
is mainly downwind in the trades, and New Zealand lies in a very different and varied
temperate system. Furthermore, as soon as New Zealand was discovered, migrants set
off in all directions and found the outlying islands at 500‒800 km distant (see Anderson
essay on Southern Polynesia), again simultaneously within the limits of radiocarbon
dating. These data refute the proposition that there was a systematic strategy of
exploratory sailing with respect to prevailing winds. In addition, the general thrust of
Remote Oceanic colonization directly into the southeast trade winds, which gave rise to
that idea, is primarily a function of geography. The main bands of islands are aligned
northwest‒southeast, and migration originated in the northwest, so most new islands
were discovered progressively to the southeast, irrespective of seafaring strategies.
A third traditionalist proposition is that long-distance sailing throughout Polynesia came

to an end in the late fifteenth century by information passing among the islands to say
that no more were open to colonization, thus reducing the need for voyaging canoes. Yet
large double canoes under sail were common in Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Societies, Hawai‘i,
and New Zealand when Europeans arrived and some fragments of historical evidence
show that long-distance voyaging continued in tropical Polynesia, including voyages
between Tahiti and Tonga. Similarly, as knowledge of iron preceded the arrival of
Europeans in isolated islands such as Rapa, lengthy voyaging must have continued or
resumed. The issue, rather, may be the extent to which post-colonization seafaring can be
detected. Polynesian traditions of that period generally refer to the arrival of newcomers
within the context of hostilities, as in islands subjected to the late prehistoric Tongan
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hegemony (see Burley and Addison essay). The peaceful arrival of migrants might have
happened largely unnoticed in the traditions after A.D. 1500 because their impact would
have been lessened progressively by expanding resident populations and a consequent
weakening in the extent of intra-population communication. There has been little specific
analysis of this matter in Oceanic research of any kind, and the danger remains that
relative clarity in the signal of initial colonization is distorting our impression of migration
continuity.
Fourth, is the traditionalist assertion of technological degeneration. Some adaptation to

unusual local conditions had certainly occurred by the eighteenth century. Yet, even the
raft-canoe of Chatham Islands Moriori was hardly degenerate. It was an ingenious
reduction of the double canoe to a framework that, with built-in buoyancy, produced
(p. 477) an unsinkable pontoon boat suited to the sea conditions. Other maritime
technologies in East Polynesia have been held to represent retention of technology

transferred during the colonization era. Haddon and Hornell (1975: 1:208) argued that
the Maori sailing rig “either preserved an extremely archaic and primitive design,
improved elsewhere into the Oceanic lateen, or else it was a degenerate form of the
lateen. The probability is altogether in favour of its archaic character.” Most importantly,
after about A.D. 1500, Remote Oceanic maritime technology generally was on a trajectory
of innovative development, not degeneration (discussed later).
A fifth proposition of traditionalist thinking was that most of the sailing technology that
existed in early historical Remote Oceania had always been there. This undiscriminating,
ethnographic perspective encourages construction of experimental Polynesian canoes
that combine favorable elements of technology from across the region and beyond,
irrespective of when or where they originated; for example, the combination of Hawaiian
spritsails, Tongan lateen halyards and masts, and European deadeyes and headsails
creates powerful sailing rigs that never existed historically. Traditionalism, with its
ahistorical bent, failed to comprehend the technical transformation that occurred in the
mid-second millennium A.D. That failure also confounds simple evolutionary approaches
to seafaring technology. Rogers and Ehrlich (2008; Rogers, Feldman, and Ehrlich 2009)
modeled a cultural lineage of Polynesian canoe traits as a case of evolutionary change.
Using data from Haddon and Hornell (1975), they argued that as functional traits
changed more slowly than symbolic traits, the former were under negative or
conservative selective pressure. While hypothetically plausible, the validity of
demonstration depends upon the traits having evolved, or not, within the same selective
environment, and in Remote Oceania that is simply not the case. Many Polynesian canoe
traits are clearly external introductions from late prehistoric lateen rigs, or from
European technology. In other words, the pattern of variation in the ethnographic record
was formed significantly by late technological invasion rather than by selective pressure
in situ.
Criticism of traditionalism (notably by Sharp 1957) gave rise to new ways of testing
alternative hypotheses, by computer simulation and experimental voyaging. Initial
research in simulated voyaging showed that the probability of finding the marginal
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Polynesian islands by drifting under sail was extremely low, and therefore that those
passages, at least, were sailed intentionally (Levison, Ward, and Webb 1973). Later
simulation (Irwin 1992, 2010), tested discovery probabilities across a range of voyaging
scenarios and showed, logically, that these increased with hypothetical increases in
sailing capability. Simulation, however, cannot determine which scenario is most realistic;
whether discovery occurred by more passages with lower technology or fewer passages
with higher technology. That still comes back to evaluation of indirect evidence about how
long-distance seafaring was actually accomplished. Experimental sailing has often been
used in the latter role, but it is severely limited by compromises in construction,
navigation, and performance that stem from an inherent contradiction between scientific
seafaring experiments and a concomitant cultural requirement of manifest success in
voyaging (Anderson 2000, 2008; Finney 2006b).
Prevailing views about ancient Polynesian seafaring remain as strongly

(p. 478)
traditionalist as ever (notably in Howe 2006) and, in the latest manifestation, hyper-literal
interpretation of traditions creates a bizarrely improbable Pacific prehistory that Pearce
and Pearce (2010) attempt to validate mathematically. Alternative perspectives have been
resisted, not least by indigenous determination to hold on to the popular estimation in
which traditionalism is held. Rethinking Remote Oceanic seafaring is thus more than the
task of occasional or specific criticism, and its achievement is not a realistic objective
here. Nevertheless, it is worth starting along that path by going back to the basics of
Pacific boats and sailing rigs.
Maritime Technology
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Oceanic Boats
Propositions about hypothetical sequences of canoe development have varied

considerably. Haddon and Hornell (1975: 3:76) settled upon a sequence of double
outriggers in the Indo-Pacific, then single outriggers in Oceania and, lastly, double
canoes. Doran (1981), arguing from a premise of increasing seaworthiness, reversed that
order, and Horridge (2008) proposed double outriggers, then double canoes and single
outriggers, suggesting that the latter two were used in Austronesian migration.
Contemporary evidence that might assist evaluation of these schemes is scarce.
Island Southeast Asian rock art includes pictures of boats which, in the main, probably
belong to an “Austronesian painting tradition” (Ballard et al. 2003; Bulbeck 2008).
Against the expectation that these would depict outrigger canoes none do so, although
that might have been difficult in the side-on perspective adopted (Lape, O’Connor, and
Burningham 2007). None of the rock-art boats has been radiocarbon dated directly and
some are probably very recent. Others, though, are stylistically similar to boats shown on
Dong Son drums, dating about 3,000‒2,000 B.P. and they confirm, at least, the existence
of quite large canoes in the Austronesian source area at about the time of early
migrations into Remote Oceania. Of hulls, little remains. Logboats, dating from modern
back to the early Mesolithic are common throughout Southeast Asia, but their shallow
hulls are not of a seagoing form, except in inshore waters. Nor were dugouts, unless
fitted with stabilizers or an outrigger. Suggested evidence of early Holocene outriggers in
China is unconvincing, as Lape, O’Connor, and Burningham (2007) explain. The earliest,
indirect, archaeological evidence of outriggers, is from Sri Lanka and dates about 300
B.C. (McGrail 2001: 266), while the earliest depiction of outriggers in Southeast Asia is in
A.D. eighth- to ninth-century engravings at Borobudur, Java (McGrail 2001: 307).
From historical linguistics (see essay by Pawley), Pawley and Pawley (1998; Pawley 2002)
doubt Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) *katiR = “outrigger canoe” (accepted later by
Pawley 2007 on some WMP reflexes), but accept PMP *(c,s)a(R) (p. 479) man = “outrigger
float” on meanings that, at best, refer to the float indirectly. The terms *waga = canoe,
and *patoto = outrigger connecting sticks, have been moved down from Malayo-
Polynesian (MP) by Pawley (2007) to join other terms associated with outrigger
technology; *katae = canoe side without outrigger, *patar = canoe platform, and *kiajo =
outrigger boom, which have Proto-Oceanic (POc) origins (Pawley and Pawley 1998),
equated with Lapita from the Bismarcks to eastern Melanesia. Perhaps the spread of
terms suggests lengthy development more than sudden innovation, with meanings in the
MP stage referring not to outriggers in the modern sense, but to their precursors such as
bamboo floats attached directly to hulls. If the Donohue and Denham (2012) argument
that POc may have origins that stretch as far eastward as Fiji is valid, then the true
outrigger could postdate the beginning of Lapita expansion into Remote Oceania.
Page 7 of 22

The double canoe is more clearly an eastern Oceanic innovation. Pawley and Pawley
(1998) suggest Proto-Eastern-Oceanic (PEOc) *paqurua, for double canoe and cognates
are most common across Polynesia; those found further west are likely indications of the
extent of downwind sailing back into the west Pacific, notably to the “Polynesian outliers”
after the main Polynesian colonizations. As “rua” (two) was applied to canoes exclusively
in Eastern Oceanic, the double canoe probably arose in Fiji/West Polynesia, perhaps long
after Lapita colonization. Several planks, possibly from a double canoe platform, a
steering oar, and other canoe pieces were found in a wet site on Huahine Island, Society
group, and recovered partly by dredge (Sinoto and McCoy 1975). Whether they date to
the lowest level, about 1,000‒900 B.P., or were sunk in the pond sometime later is
uncertain.
Canoes may not have been the only vehicles of Remote Oceanic colonization, or the first.
A PMP term *dakit has been reconstructed for “raft” (Pawley and Pawley 1998), and
bamboo rafts were used historically for offshore sailing in Indo-China and Taiwan and
probably much earlier. The large sailing ship depicted at Borobudur appears to have a
raft hull (McGrail 2001: 310). The advantages of a raft for colonization are its inherent
seaworthiness and load-carrying capacity. An 8m long bamboo raft loaded to 50% of
displacement could carry 3,150 kg (Anderson 2010), the weight of seventeen adults and
sufficient stores for thirty days, affording a reasonable chance of colonizing success. By
comparison an 11.5 m long double canoe could carry less than half that weight and it
would need to be 18 m long to match the raft. Outrigger canoes of comparable lengths
had lower carrying capacities again. Perhaps large double canoes were conceived as
surrogates for colonizing rafts in the eastern Pacific, where large bamboo was scarce.
Computer simulation of a drifting vessel under sail (Avis, Montenegro, and Weaver 2008),
the situation of a raft, showed a mean crossing time of thirty-one days from Santa Cruz to
Vanuatu in summer months when monsoon or El Niño westerlies were available. The
general results of that study suggested that drifting under sail was capable of colonizing
Santa Cruz, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia (POc *raki(t) = “raft” would take in those
archipelagos but it did not extend into Proto Central Pacific (PCP) of Fiji/West Polynesia
or later), but that active sailing of canoes was probably needed to reach Fiji/West
Polynesia. In regard to Western Micronesia, Hung et al. (2011) argue for a long passage
by weatherly sailing canoes from the northern Philippines, but Winter et al. (2011)
(p. 480) show that this is very improbable and note that computer simulation (Callaghan
and Fitzpatrick 2008) of drifting under sail suggests the most likely origin of colonization
in Palau would have been from the area between the southern Philippines and
Halmahera.
There are few secure conclusions to be derived about the boats in the early Austronesian
migrations to Remote Oceania. The earliest movements may have been on sailing rafts,
perhaps as far east as Vanuatu/New Caledonia. Migrations further east were more
certainly in sailing canoes. How early there were outriggers in the historical sense is
uncertain. The modern consensus is that Lapita canoes were single outriggers (Irwin
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2010), which is plausible even if hardly demonstrable. Double canoes developed later,
probably in West Polynesia.
Oceanic Sailing Rigs
Successful colonization of Remote Oceania relied upon the advent of sail, as indicated by
a sixfold increase, beginning about 3,500 years ago, in the range of Indo-Pacific seaborne
activity (Anderson 2004). The same trend suggests that sailing had not existed in the
region any earlier. Had there been sailing in Near Oceania during the Pleistocene, or
indeed any effective form of sail up to the mid-Holocene, then crossing some 300 km to
Remote Oceania should have occurred much earlier than it did. As ideographic,
iconographic, and documentary evidence dates earliest sailing in India and China to the
early and late second millennium B.C., respectively (Anderson 2010; McGrail 2010: 103),
it probably began then in island Southeast Asia, reaching Remote Oceania soon
afterward.
The earliest type of sailing rig is often assumed to have involved a V-shaped sail attached
to converging spars that were joined together, at or near the base, to form a semi-rigid
triangular foil. Horridge (1986: 92) proposed that this two-boomed rig, formed “an
archetype of the whole eastward expansion into the Pacific.” It is very difficult to
document that contention for there are no archaeological remains of sailing rigs and
historical evidence of sails from island Southeast Asia begins late, in the early first
millennium A.D. It portrays narrow squaresails set horizontally or aslant on a fixed mast
(McGrail 2001: 308). Squaresails were the early form in the Indian Ocean and China up
until the second millennium A.D. (McGrail 2001: 278, 357) and, in Near Oceania, square
or quadrilateral sails were dominant historically in the islands north of New Guinea
(Ambrose 1997). Enigmatic structures on canoes in East Indonesian rock art probably
represent sails (O’Connor 2003; Lape, O’Connor, and Burningham 2007), but masts are
seldom shown and the sails are mainly quadrilateral. There is, then, little to support the
view that Oceanic sailing began with a triangular sail, and strut or mast.
In historical linguistics, PMP *layaR = sail, is generic and no PMP terms refer to spars or
rigging, except for *tuku = “prop, post, mast,” an ambiguous term. They begin much
later; e.g., POc *jila = “boom or yard of (triangular) sail,” PEOc *kaiu-tuqu(r) = “vertical
supporting timber, prop supporting rig,” and PEOc *pana = “mast, boom stepped in foot
of mast” (Pawley and Pawley 1998: 195‒196). The glosses are likely to be misleading,
however, because they read the maritime technology of the distant past in modern
(p. 481) terminology. As proposed later, masts and booms may not have been in existence
in Oceania before the arrival of lateen technology, in which case the POc terms probably
referred to spars used in other configurations. No Oceanic terms for standing rigging are
constructed and running stays are not attested linguistically before PCP, *tuku = “running
stay supporting mast [or spar]” (Pawley and Pawley 1998: 197), having changed its
earlier specific meaning (Pawley 2007: 27‒28) while retaining a general sense of
Page 9 of 22

“support.” If the scarcity of terms for stays is significant, a predominance of mastless rigs
is implied.
By the time of European

arrival, masted rigs with
triangular sails were
common in Remote
Oceania and included
various forms of the
Oceanic spritsail. That has
a largely East Polynesian
distribution (Haddon and
Hornell 1975: 3:83;
McGrail 2001: 334), which,
Click to view larger in part, may be related to
Figure 21.1 The early or “tongiaki” form of Oceanic the influence of the
lateen sailing rig in Tonga, A.D. 1616. Oceanic lateen (reversing
Source: Published originally in Spieghel der the relationship suggested
AustralischeNavigatie, 1622. Image courtesy of the by Campbell 1995). In its
Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New
Zealand. developed form, the
Oceanic lateen existed by
the early sixteenth century in western Micronesia so if it came from the Mediterranean
lateen, taken into the Indian Ocean by the Portuguese, then it did so extremely rapidly.
More likely, it had origins in lateen sail types used by Arabian seafarers from at least the
fourteenth century (McGrail 2001: 75). In any event, double canoes under the Oceanic
lateen were reported as far east as Tonga by the early seventeenth century, but under the
relatively primitive tongiaki rig with its fixed-stays mast they lay closer to the wind on one
tack than the other and went about through the wind (Figure 21.1). By the late eighteenth
century, the more efficient kalia rig with canting mast and the shunting method of going
about had come into vogue. Kalia-rigged double canoes typically had a smaller windward
hull and in this respect, as in the rig, they were effectively scaled-up versions (p. 482) of
the Micronesian proa. Their singular merit was a weatherliness that probably had not
existed until that time in Remote Oceania.
The second millennium A.D. transformation in Remote Oceanic sailing rigs had a wide-
ranging impact. Within the area where lateen technology was concentrated, Micronesia
and Fiji/West Polynesia, seafaring involving exchange and, to some degree, tribute and
political suzerainty, developed into extensive maritime chiefdoms (e.g., in Yap with
respect to central Micronesia). Yapese traditions about Palauan stone money suggest that
this system began, or was intensified, in the fifteenth century, and Tongan expansionism,
although beginning several centuries earlier, also seems to have gathered pace from the
fifteenth century (Clark, Burley, and Murray 2008; Clark 2010). I have argued that the
new technology was adapted piecemeal on the margins of its range (Anderson 2000). The
idea of a fixed mast which facilitated some windward capacity, and a balance board that
enabled higher tension in the shrouds and thus larger sails and greater speed, spread to
Page 10 of 22

the Society Islands, and to some extent beyond, creating an advanced sailing ability
which further extended the range of contact. It is reflected in the relatively extensive
geographical knowledge of the eighteenth-century Tahitians, as opposed to much more
limited horizons elsewhere. In Hawai‘i, one spar was stayed as a mast, possibly as a
result of contact with Tahiti, but in a way that made windward sailing impractical, even if
technically possible, and Marquesan sails were similar. In the Gambiers, a spritsail with
strut was used on rafts.
In contrast, islands that were largely or entirely beyond the influence of lateen
technology had mastless rigs of various forms. Some of these used two-boomed triangular
sails as in Vanuatu (Haddon and Hornell 1975: 2:25‒31). Rectangular sails were possibly
used in the southern Cook Islands (Buck 1927), and sails of unspecified form, but no fixed
masts, were noted in the Australs and Rapa. The fullest evidence is from New Zealand,
where a tall, quadrilateral sail was observed on the first double canoe seen in 1769. An
ambiguous description of it has been taken to imply a fixed mast and trailing spar (Irwin
2006), but a contemporary sketch showed that the rig consisted of two movable spars
with running forestays and sheets attached. This was a downwind rig and when the canoe
eventually broke off contact with the Endeavour and stood back to its base, upwind, the
sail was doused and the vessel was paddled. Joseph Banks (Morrell 1958: 139) got the
description right once he became familiar with the rig, writing that “we very seldom saw
them make use of sails and indeed never unless when they were to go right before the
Wind. They were made of Mat and instead of a mast were hoisted upon two sticks which
were fastned one to each side” (Figure 21.2).
It can be proposed that the New Zealand rig exemplifies a class of mastless sails used
across Remote Oceania before the arrival of the Oceanic lateen. Some may have been
triangular, but large sails of this kind are more easily rigged if they are rectangular or
quadrilateral and that, in turn, provided a facility to shape the sail to take the wind on
angles that approached a beam reach. There has been only one experiment in using such
a sailing rig on a small double canoe and it showed that while sailing angles up to a beam
reach (i.e., sailing across the direction of the wind) were possible in a light breeze, boat
speed fell off quickly and windward sailing was impractical (Anderson and Boon 2011).
(p. 483) It can be surmised that when the fixed-stay mast arrived with the lateen rig, the
older triangular and quadrilateral sails were adapted to it by closing their spars at the
base. Stepping one spar as a mast at the transverse midpoint of the hulls compelled the
other to be attached to it, and doing so produced the Oceanic spritsail and a small
weatherly capacity.
Page 11 of 22

On the inadequate
evidence that exists
presently, then, early
Austronesian sailing rigs
may have had neither mast
nor triangular sail. They
might have consisted
mainly of quadrilateral
sails, held up by lateral
Click to view larger spars, which were each
Figure 21.2 Sketch by Herman Spöring of double fixed loosely at the base, to
canoe with quadrilateral sail on movable spars, New
allow independent fore-
Zealand, A.D. 1769.
and-aft movement using
Source: Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull
Library, Wellington, New Zealand. sheets and running stays.
If so, then seafaring in
Remote Oceania before about A.D. 1500 had little or no weatherly capacity and long
passages to windward were largely precluded. From the sixteenth century, sailing on the
margins of lateen dispersal had acquired some windward ability and that spread north to
Hawai‘i and west to Melanesia.
Seafaring Performance and Migration
Pause and Pulse
The traditionalist model entailed a logical imperative requiring seafarers in possession of

a sophisticated technology to make colonization of Remote Oceania a more or less
(p. 484) continuous process, which meant early migration to East Polynesia. Kirch (1986)
proposed settlement of central East Polynesia 3,000‒2,200 B.P. and Irwin (1992: 216) a
colonization chronology that began in the Cook Islands and Societies at 2,700‒2,600 B.P.,
reached Hawai‘i and Easter Island 1,700 B.P., and New Zealand 1,200 B.P. This
continuity proposition attracted support from early paleoenvironmental research arguing
human intervention as early as 2,500 B.P. in the Cook Islands and 2,000 B.P. in New
Zealand but methodological problems (Anderson 1995) brought renewed analyses putting
initial anthropogenic change in East Polynesia within the last 1,000 years (e.g.,
Wilmshurst et al. 2008). Re-dating of East Polynesian archaeological sites (see Rieth’s
essay) with existing radiocarbon ages of up to 2,200 B.P. showed similarly that human
colonization of East Polynesia did not begin until around 1,000 B.P. and that marginal
islands were not colonized until about 700 B.P. (Dye 1992; Rolett and Conte 1995;
Anderson and Sinoto 2002; Wilmshurst et al. 2011). There can be little doubt, then, that
advancing colonization in Remote Oceania was a discontinuous process.
Page 12 of 22

At a theoretical level, that is an expected pattern because migration begins/ends
universally in an episodic fashion through lowered/raised perception of opportunity at
source, dissatisfaction/satisfaction of experience at destination, and decreasing/
increasing climatic, demographic, socioeconomic, or technological resistance.
Nevertheless, the punctuated pattern of Remote Oceanic migration invites conjecture at a
regional level. It is an artificial construction to the extent that it emphasizes migration
into hitherto uncolonized islands at the probable expense of migration continuing after
colonization, but the sequence of expansion into new territory is interesting for the way in
which it exemplifies a serial and binary model of migration mobility involving stable,
largely time-transgressive phases and unstable, largely space-transgressive pulses
(Anderson 2001). West Micronesian and Lapita pulses occurred more or less together at
approximately 3,300‒2,900 B.P. and were followed by a stable phase that ended 2,200‒
2,000 B.P. in a colonization pulse to central Micronesia and other islands marginal to
Lapita migration, such as the northern Cooks, Niue, and Rotuma. Following a stable
phase, the sequence was repeated with a colonization pulse to central East Polynesia,
around 1,100‒900 B.P., a brief stable phase, and then another pulse to marginal East
Polynesia. As East Polynesian colonization probably came directly from West Polynesia, a
“long pause” of around 2,000 years (Wilmshurst et al. 2011) is implied, and this is
supported by historical linguistics (Pawley 1999).
Whether the semi-regular occurrence of migration pulses implies the operation of some
inherent dynamic of island colonization is worth consideration. It has been argued that
migration ought to occur at two points in a logistic curve of population growth, first at the
point of rapid early growth where consumer impact upon resources is initially apparent
and then later as population density approaches some objective measure of carrying
capacity (Keegan’s 1995 A-type and K-type migrations, respectively). Perhaps the main
pulses were A-type dispersals seeking to maintain nutritional levels and rapid population
growth as soon as some decline became apparent in the high-quality resources of
formerly pristine island ecosystems, with the secondary pulses being K-type migrations
reflecting significant population pressure. It might be noted that Lapita (p. 485) migration
seems to have been running out of migrants at the eastern end of its range, whereas
migration from the Societies to New Zealand was described in oral traditions as exile
arising from disputes about land, food, and status (Anderson 2006).
The longest pause was on the edge of the West‒East Polynesian gap where the band of
large, numerous, and ecologically varied islands stretching back into Near Oceania comes
to an end. West of it, Lapita migration had more than twenty times the land-capture rate
of East Polynesian dispersal, measured by the proportion of land area to dispersal area
(cf. Irwin 2010), until late and fortuitous discovery of the huge New Zealand landmass
(Clark and Anderson 2009). If the long pause represents colonization success of one kind
in the Lapita region, that is, finding enough land for a millennium of settlement before
substantial migration pressures set in again, then migration to and within East Polynesian
may represent it in another way. The predominance of small islands east of the gap
encouraged more frequent migration seafaring at low population densities, as is
suggested by an accelerating rate of dispersal (Irwin 1992; Anderson 2001). Within
Page 13 of 22

colonizing pulses of several hundred years in each case, Lapita migration extended 4,680
km across 21° of latitude, and East Polynesian migration 8,700 km across 70° of latitude
(Clark and Anderson 2009).
It is also hardly coincidence that the Lapita boundary and the subsequent long pause
were at the proximal edge of a largely barren seaway nearly twice as wide as the
broadest in the Lapita region. The long passages across it were hardly changed by the
late first-millennium A.D. retreat of the hydro-isostatic highstand in sea level (Dickinson
2003). That brought numerous atolls either side of the seaway but virtually none within it.
Thus, the effect of the double canoe, when it became available in West Polynesia, was to
lower part of the technological resistance to new migration by creating a carrying
capacity sufficient to maintain a viable colonizing group plus its essential gear and
supplies for a month or more at sea. There is, though, no reason to think that it had any
better sailing performance than existed earlier, and eastward migrations continued to
face strong climatic resistance, especially in wind directions.
Sailing Conditions
Wind conditions have long been recognized as a critical factor in eastward migration, as
implied in the truism that sailing capability is inversely related to favorability of sailing
conditions. If migrations occurred before following winds, then no advanced sailing
capability was required; but if migrations reached destinations that lay upwind, then a
weatherly capability existed. Given that sailing conditions over the long term were much
as they are today, the standard assumption in Polynesian voyaging research, then
colonization of tropical Remote Oceania had generally to push upwind against the trades
going east (and upwind against mid-latitude westerlies going southwest to New Zealand),
hence the emphasis upon weatherly technology in traditionalist perspectives. Nobody was
going anywhere much without it. What is more, the resistance increased eastward as the
trades became stronger and steadier. This has been illustrated in simulated voyaging
(p. 486) by Di Piazza, Di Piazza, and Pearthree (2007) who found that whereas passages
from Vanuatu to Fiji could be made within wide arcs of success for most of the year, those
east of Samoa were much more difficult. From Samoa to the northern Cooks the target
angles were small and passages feasible for only seven weeks a year. Courses from
Samoa produced a small percentage of successful landfalls in the Marquesas and
Societies (cf. Levison, Ward, and Webb 1973: 60, using a 90° sailing angle). From Samoa
to the southern Cooks, feasibility was reduced to one week per year. These simulations
used modern canoe performance, where progress is possible to within 75° of the wind
direction, but a more conservative assumption, that sailing could not extend windward of
90°, especially in open sea conditions (Whiteright 2011), would probably make at least
the last of those routes impossible.
But what if sailing conditions were different during the colonization period, and routes
that are now upwind were then downwind? Explanations of altered voyaging frequency or
success have emphasized the significance of El Niño to eastward voyaging; El Niño
Page 14 of 22

conditions weaken the dominant trade wind flow and induce a higher frequency of
westerly winds. However, while El Niño events occur frequently they are seldom
sufficiently persistent to push a sailing vessel eastward across the larger sea gaps in
Oceania. When that does happen, the greatest impact is in latitudes 0‒14° South. This
range includes sailing from Samoa to the northern Societies and Marquesas but not to
the southern Cooks. El Niño conditions also increase humidity in the east Pacific while
causing drought to the west. Successively poor growing seasons in western islands may
have favored migration as a solution, while unusually lush conditions on newly discovered
eastern islands might have reinforced attraction in that direction. Analysis of proxy
records of climate for the last 4,500 years shows that periods of migration coincided
approximately with major frequency peaks in El Niño conditions when there was an
enhanced probability of long-lasting episodes of westerly winds in the tropics. El Niño
frequency was relatively high at various points 3,400‒2,400 B.P., which might have
assisted Lapita and subsequent migration. Another set of high frequency peaks occurred
1,500‒1,200 B.P., the period in which movement may have begun into East Polynesia, and
a third very high peak at 800‒700 B.P. when the main expansion of colonization occurred
in East Polynesia (Anderson et al. 2006).
The South Polynesian region (New Zealand and its outlying islands, see Anderson’s essay
on South Polynesia) was also colonized about 700 B.P., but on courses opposite to those
of eastward migration in tropical Polynesia. The key variable was probably the latitudinal
span and persistence of subtropical easterly winds. In this regard, new research on the
predominant prehistoric locations of the main pressure systems, relevant to sailing from
the Cooks and Australs toward New Zealand, shows that about 1,250‒850 B.P. there were
persistent blocking highs in the Tasman Sea, which sent westerlies across New Zealand
and directed easterly winds well to the north, making it difficult to sail south beyond the
subtropics. From 850 to 650 B.P., the high pressure systems were generally to the east of
New Zealand and they, together with low pressure cells in the Tasman Sea, turned the
southeasterly trades progressively into northeasterly and then northerly winds
approaching New Zealand, conditions unusually conducive to sailing from East (p. 487) to
South Polynesia. By 600 B.P., the high pressure systems were weaker and low pressure
predominated over New Zealand, the combination restoring a westerly flow that
effectively closed the route to downwind sailing for the remainder of the prehistoric era
(Goodwin, Browning, and Anderson, 2014). Colonization seafaring when winds along the
route from central East Polynesia to South Polynesia were generally abaft the beam
would have been relatively easy and quite fast. That does not mean that canoes could not
sail to windward, but it gets around the traditionalist assumption that such technology
was necessary. It is a solution to the East Polynesian voyaging problem that requires no
need to postulate any additional technology, or conjunction of dispersed technical
elements, than that which was recorded historically.
Page 15 of 22

Conclusions
In considering the study of ancient seafaring globally, the archaeological recovery of
boats and related maritime technology provides the vital evidence for basic concepts of
maritime technology and performance, as in northern Europe and the Mediterranean.
The virtual absence of such direct evidence concerning long-distance sailing in Remote
Oceania is a severe obstacle to any coherent understanding of the topic and it is in that
deficiency of deep historical record that traditionalism continues to flourish (e.g., Howe
2006). Traditionalism reduces temporality to a generalized ethnographic present that is
blind to historiographical differences in traditional narratives, it obscures temporal
differences in maritime technology and practice within the early European period and it
fails to comprehend those inferred within the pre-European era. Further, traditionalism
takes no more than a passing interest in the broader maritime history of the Indo-Pacific,
or the implications for sailing conditions in Remote Oceania of the varied climatic history
of the ocean. Although popular with scholars and public alike, traditionalism has long
outlived its usefulness to the study of Remote Oceanic seafaring.
The way forward requires a much stricter and scientifically focused historical approach to
documentary and other records, the use of historically documented and case-appropriate
parameters in simulation and experimental sailing, and contextualization of Remote
Oceanic seafaring research within global oceanic history, prehistory, and associated
environmental histories. In the final analysis, though, our being compelled to analysis by
proxy should spur explicit programs of research aimed at finding technological remains,
especially of migration canoes, upon which any robust comprehension of Remote Oceanic
seafaring really depends.
For the present, some general points about Remote Oceanic seafaring can be made. First
and foremost, it depended upon the mid-late Holocene advent of sail. Second, which sails
and with what performance characteristics remains quite uncertain. Traditionalist
confidence in the early existence of triangular sails with stayed masts and weatherly
ability is poorly founded. A conjectural case for mastless rigs with no windward ability
and possibly using quadrilateral sails suits the sparse evidence better. Third, (p. 488) sail
technology changed substantially in Remote Oceanic prehistory. If, as suggested here, the
Oceanic spritsail arose by adapting some technical features of the Oceanic lateen, which
arrived in the mid-second millennium A.D., then the colonization of Remote Oceania was
accomplished without a windward sailing ability and it may have depended substantially
upon periodic changes in sailing conditions.
The strongest feature of Remote Oceanic migration is that it was strongly episodic rather
than continuous, at least as measured by punctuated progress in the advancing front of
initial human colonization. Discontinuity can be inferred hypothetically as arising from
demographic responses in variable conditions of relative resource scarcity. Long-term
migration pulsing was modulated by west‒east variation in island geography, and
changes in sailing conditions, boats, and sails. Those created a seafaring pattern that
Page 16 of 22

varied eastward, and toward higher latitudes, from one in which some degree of agency
and interaction can be inferred, especially late in prehistory, to another in which they
cannot and where isolation was prevalent.
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Technology and Migration

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Print Publication Date: May 2018 Subject: Archaeology, Archaeology of Oceania

Abstract and Keywords

Long-distance seafaring or voyaging is often understood in a traditionalist perspective

Keywords: seafaring, voyaging, colonization, interaction, Oceanic boats

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

That dichotomy of perspectives—here simplifying a broader range of approaches—

is not discussed here. In my experience, and by the assurance of more accomplished

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

A third traditionalist proposition is that long-distance sailing throughout Polynesia came

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

Fourth, is the traditionalist assertion of technological degeneration. Some adaptation to

technologies in East Polynesia have been held to represent retention of technology

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

Prevailing views about ancient Polynesian seafaring remain as strongly

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

Propositions about hypothetical sequences of canoe development have varied

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

Oceanic Sailing Rigs

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

By the time of European

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

Seafaring Performance and Migration

Pause and Pulse

The traditionalist model entailed a logical imperative requiring seafarers in possession of

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

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Subscriber: Universidad de Chile; date: 21 September 2018

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