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Octopus Lure Sinkers In as much as these artifacts are now being found in Tubuai in significant numbers the diagnostic importance of these objects should be detailed. In the Green and Davidson Report on the Samoan excavation. SU-Va-1, page 134, one finds the following analysis The recovery from layer of two stone sinkers for the octopus lure, one in the clean up of cutting II and the other in square A-2, places them as part of the early assemblage in Samoa. No octopus lure sinkers have yet been found in archaeological contexts in Tonga, however see (Poulsen 1968: 87) The conical octopus lure sinker, shaped much like a spinning top is only known ethnographically for Tonga. The same applies in Samoa, where none of these sinkers have turned up in archaeological excavations, although they have again been recorded ethnographically by Buck (1930: 434-36). The early sinkers from Samoa are of a type which I propose to call cowrie-shaped sinkers, because their form approximates that of the complete cowrie shell that is usually employed in whole or in part in making the lure portion of these objects. Stone sinkers of this type have a flattened base with the body at one end being broader and rising more steeply than at the other end (fig. 58c, d). In addition the more steeply rising end is often partially flattened. Some may even have traces of a groove along the center line of the sinker. Octopus lure sinkers of this type are known from the early Samoan examples and from those of the early Settlement and Developmental periods in the Marquesas (Sinoto 1966: 299). They appear to be the ancestral form from which the coffee-bean and bread-loaf shaped sinkers, best known from Hawaii (Emory, Bonk, and Sinoto 1959: 28-29), are to be derived. Given the marked contrast between the later forms of octopus lure sinkers of East and West Polynesia, the identity of the early forms from the Marquesas and Samoa is of some importance. Of the two specimens from Samoa, one is flattened only on the base and lacks any sign of a groove (fig. 58c), while the other is flattened both on the base and at one end, the upper surface of which bears the faint trace of a groove (fig. 58d). Turning then to Sinoto (1966: 299) "Those of the coffee-bean type were found throughout the Nukahiva sequence, but none in the excavations in Hane. Instead, Hane sinkers appear to be of a type ancestral to present day West Polynesian octopus sinkers of the conical or top shape, and also to the later East Polynesian coffee-bean sinkers. Thus Hane sinkers are conical in shape with one side and end flattened and with or without a longitudinally encircling groove... (cont. page 119) |
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