on to the second half of unit 5 the art of the pacific this podcast will be less long-winded partly because many of the themes are the same and partly because i want you to have time to work on your presentations i'm not repeating these presentation instructions you know the drill i'll open with the same comment that i made about africa we are talking about a huge area and a great disparity in cultures in the case of oceania however there is certainly at least one uniting theme these are people whose lives were dominated by the ocean anthropologists usually divide the region into four groupings which you can see here australia micronesia melanesia and polynesia note that new zealand really belongs in polynesia its native maori people emigrated to the island from polynesia rapa nui or easter island and hawaii are also considered part of polynesia easter island is just too far east to appear on the map you should recognize the two these two works from our prehistoric art unit both are from melanesia the emblem stone from papua new guinea and the geometrically carved labid a terracotta fragment from the solomon islands do you remember who the lapida people were and why they are important oceanic history they're believed to have migrated from southeast asia bringing some of their neolithic technology plants and animals with them and are the ancestors of modern day micronesians polynesians and some of the people of the melanesian coastal areas as the map made pretty clear this is a geographic area dominated by the ocean the skill to navigate oceans to use ocean resources and to understand ocean weather is central to surviving and thriving in this region indeed many of the voyages of polynesian sailors are as technologically impressive and personally courageous as any of the voyages of european explorers the pacific after all is really bigger and scarier than the atlantic i suspect that the centrality of the ocean to pacific art and in fact it's often called oceanic art is a reason why the college board included this navigation art in its list of required works you'll learn what the sticks and shells stand for and this chart wasn't actually taken to sea where presumably it was too fragile to survive instead it was memorized on land yes i am recycling one of my africa slides here and i'll do it again but the point carries through to pacific art here we see a female deity from micronesia and an example of a temple or cult house where offerings would be brought to the image during the harvest for the period of these rituals the sculptures were considered the resting place of a god or a deified ancestor's spirit this is a modern day cold house by the way and i confess i couldn't find an image of one from this particular culture similarly the ahula or feather cape was far more than a decoration these were symbols of the highest rank and could be worn only by members of the chiefly class chiefs wore them during ceremonies but they also wore them into battle as this 19th century illustration shows no two capes have the same design since they tell a very specific story about each chief's lineage and accomplishments the colors are symbolic red in particular is the color of kings much as purple became associated with kingship in europe yellow was valuable because yellow feathers were especially scarce so why were such a precious and presumably somewhat delicate and vulnerable work of art into battle well these capes were thought to provide the chief with divine protection against an enemy's weapons and given the extraordinary dense and intricate weaving it's possible that they did think of chainmail they were also intended to scare off enemies polynesian society in particular was hierarchical and socially stratified with a powerful ruling aristocratic class it's sometimes described using the term feudal polynesian rulers sought to protect and enhance their mana it's a complicated concept and i doubt that i understand it completely but essentially mana is a kind of spiritual force emanating from the gods associated with the possession of power effectiveness and high standing in the community the term in other words captures a combination of efficacy ability to get things done and prestige social status keeping gaining or losing mana was very important to the leaders in these communities the european portrait of a maori leader and the tattoos on his face capture this individual's abundant mana the word may originally have derived from words for thunder and reflects the strength strong relationship between oceanic deities and the forces of nature that ruled the lives of people i've mentioned that feathers had spiritual power in hawaiian culture on the left you see a book mask from the torres strait for this culture animals had tatemic powers that is they stood for certain spiritual forces the image on the right which is not a required work shows a mask shaped like a crocodile surmounted by a human face we've seen these human animal combinations before think of the lama sue what message are they usually sending these masks were used in rituals where masked dancers would reenact episodes from the lives of ancestral heroes legendary beings whose actions helped establish these societies the dancers evoked the powers of the animals portrayed the flight of the birds the fierce bite of the crocodile i couldn't find any photos of bookmask performance and i believe that most of what we know about this comes from early european visitors to the island who may have not been an entirely reliable source of information the art of new ireland traditionally centered on mortuary ceremonies and feasts to honor the dead in northern new ireland the name given to these elaborate ceremonies is mologon which is also the term used for the carved and painted sculptures associated with funerary and coming of age rituals the purpose of a mologun funeral ceremony is to send the souls of the deceased to the realm of the dead we've seen that in art before at the climax of the ceremony the commissioned mulligan sculptures are exhibited in temporary display houses each sculpture honors a specific individual and illustrates his or her relationship with ancestors clan totems and or living family members it's intended to be a representation of an individual's soul or life force not again a direct portrait during the course of the ceremony the mologun are treated with the utmost care since it's believed that the souls of the deceased actually enter the sculptures once the souls leave the molecule and the world of the living the sculptures are no longer needed and are usually either burned or allowed to rot only the masks and musical instruments used during mulligan ceremonies are preserved for future use can you think of other works we've studied that temporarily or permanently house a god or the spirit of the deceased think of statues portraying egyptian pharaohs or the hindu statue of shiva lord of the dance these may be the most iconic ancestor statues in all of our history although as i hope our presenters will explain there's still a lot of debate about what they really mean power and authority were very important in pacific culture as they are really in almost all cultures especially in the more hierarchical and aristocratic cultures of polynesia the wearers of the feather capes actually recited the wearer's genealogy to increase the power or mana of a cape again these capes were worn during ceremonies but they were also worn into battle the rather poignant portrait on the right by the way was a hawaiian princess dressed in a feather cape for the funeral of her parents who had died on a trip to london only hawaiian chiefs could wear the sacred feather cape the patterns on the cape were created to reflect the intended wearer's lineage and included symbols relating to his clan they're a little bit like heraldic sheets in europe shields in europe traditionally feather cape creators recited the geology the wearer during construction the cape sorry i think i already mentioned that weaving the story of the family and the individual into the patterns of the garment there's still a lot of mystery and uncertainty surrounding the ancient site of nanmedol and ponpe micronesia but it seems to have been an elite center where the nobility resided and mortuary activities were presided over by the priests it's thought that namidol served in part as a way for the ruling sandalore chiefs to organize and control potential rivals by requiring them to live in the city rather than our their home districts where their activities were difficult to monitor stay tuned for the palace of versailles a comparison that the college board might well draw already showed you the maori chief with his very impressive tattoos marks that would have sent clear readily interpreted signals about his status and his mana to the people of the maori culture by the way by the time this was painted he was a leader in new zealand's methodist church body art actually plays a central role in both african and pacific culture in the middle you see a samoan hand tattoo the woman on the right was from the kuba tribe of the congo basin the tribe that produced the dope portrait in africa body art more commonly took the form of scarification which is also true of maori tattoos which are gouged into the skin so why would body art be so important in these two regions one answer is pretty simple these are warm climates so people do not wear a lot of clothes body arts serve the same function as beautiful textiles in northern climates though these cultures produce beautiful textiles as well i'm actually little peeves that no african textiles were included on the list of required works since i found much of this cloth usually produced by women exquisite i've stuck an example of ghanaian kenty cloth on the bottom of the slide just to wet your appetite to learn more we'll see more of this in our global contemporary unit unit 13. again this art is produced almost entirely by women in these cultures like african cultures men generally carved and women wove but we get to see the weaving this time around what's especially fascinating about the staff god is how it combines male and female elements you'll notice there are a lot of college board questions about that the wooden core made by male carvers has a large head at one end and originally ended in a large penis representing male virility and fertility think of the fang reliquary figure the missionaries made the islanders cut the penises off these gods ouch but some scholars believe that other figures facing outwards could depict women in childbirth the bark cloth made by women not only protects the ancestral power or mana of the deity but it contains within the contains it within its different layers so it has spiritual significance this photographic image of a 1953 ceremony honoring queen elizabeth ii captures the role of women both as creators and as performers of pacific art i've already talked about mulligan funeral rituals but in fact this mulligan display also relates to the culture's coming of age rituals after several months of training and seclusion remember the sunday societies of the mende peoples young men and women are presented in public and given these carved and painted figures the invitation ceremonies that follow include the creation of these special houses to hold the images i noticed the disport disproportionate number of the college board sample questions on pacific art seem to involve materials probably because islanders were so dependent on native materials to create art the stone logs of the nanme dog complex are actually naturally produced columnar basalt not workstone these columns form when flowing lava spreads several feet over a large area the lava cools from top down as it loses heat to the atmosphere and from the bottom up as it loses heat to the ground below the result is a pattern of fractures or cracks that form natural log-like shapes the people of nam-madol use these columns in the same way that many mainland cultures have used logs for building the basalt columns were much heavier that's the downside but also survived centuries later as an indicator of the industry and sophistication of the people who built these islands islands cultures archaeologists are still debating how the people of this artificial island manage to move these huge stones over water these works however are really mostly exceptions stone is not as uncommon in pacific art as it is in african art but we still see more art constructed of wood feather sea materials and fiber readily available local material bark cloth weaving too is a female art i'm going to leave it up to the presenters to describe the complex way in which these works were created note the procession of women bringing in cloth a gift of cloth to the queen does this remind you of any other procession depicted in this course another procession involving a gift of cloth think the panthenai procession on the parthenon freeze feather cloaks and capes were symbols of power and social standing in hawaiian culture i've talked about that quite a bit only high-ranking chiefs or warriors of great ability were entitled to wear these exceptional garments both the feathers and the color red again were associated with gods the cape symbolized the king's religious responsibilities and conveyed his divinity note all the natural elements make up the book mask including feathers and turtle shell stay tuned for paul gauguin another painter who lived in the south pacific in his later years he took great inspiration from pacific culture and in exchange he infected a large number of local girls with the syphilis that eventually killed him cultural exchange was not necessarily any kinder to the people of the pacific than it was to the people of africa remember our canned corn beef bowl and that finishes up my introduction once again good luck with your presentation