TOMAHAWKS, TURTLES AND TRADERS: A Reconstructioninthe Circular Causationof Warfareinthe New Georgia Group

Four hundred years of niche construction in the western Solomon Islands

“…This mapped well onto the headhunting economy and combined head/turtle expeditions provided heads/captives and evidence of chiefly mana as well as the returns from the shell, including shell rings purchased from traders. These resources were then used to finance ever greater expeditions, which with the new iron axes and rifles had an increasing impact on the populations of the western Solomons (McKinnon 1975).…”

Axes of entanglement in the New Georgia group, Solomon Islands

“…Prior to 400 BP, dispersed monumental shrines and settlements occurred on isolated ridgelines in the interior of islands, but these were subsequently abandoned in favour of sprawling composite villages on the coast, featuring numerous shrines of diverse function in close association with house platforms, wharves and fortified areas (Sheppard et al 2000;Walter and Sheppard 2000). By the mid-1800s these communities had come into sustained contact with European whalers, traders and naval ships, and lasting historical records and early ethnographies attest to expansive regional relationships spanning most of the western Solomons (Bennett 1987;Hocart 1922;McKinnon 1975).…”

Languages in Contact: An Exploration of Stability and Change in the Solomon Islands

“…The frequent raids in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, accelerated by the supply of European steel axes and firearms (McKinnon 1975), were part of complex regional systems of warfare, trade, and politics that involved the people of the New Georgia Group in networks ranging far beyond the archipelago to other parts of the Solomon Islands and entailing extensive, continuous spatial mobility. The people of the Roviana and Marovo Lagoons and of Simbo, Vella Lavella, Rendova, and other islands of the group went raiding and trading within the group, and also farther afield, across the ocean to Isabel, Choiseul, the Russell Islands, Savo, Guadalcanal, and more remote destinations (Findlay 1877:773).…”