Study reveals Tonga once vast trading empire

Transcript

New research shows Tonga was once the centre of a vast trading empire with economic and political power stretching across the Pacific.

The study was authored by Australian National University academics, Geoffrey Clark and Christian Reepmeyer.

It found Tonga was the only maritime polity in Oceania to encompass an entire archipelago, and through long-distance voyaging, extend its influence to other island groups.

Dr Clark told Mary Baines their conclusions were drawn from the analysis of hundreds of stone tools and artifacts dating back to 1200 AD.

GEOFFREY CLARK: It's one of the few places, and perhaps the only place in the Pacific that seemed to have a political system that managed to encompass an entire archipelago in pre-history. Most chiefdoms and other societies in the Pacific were quite island specific and didn't really manage to have the political clout or power that Tonga seemed to develop. So, what we knew about Tonga and its complex society in the past has really come from traditional history. And these are very wonderful records and very detailed, but we wanted to develop through a stone-sourcing project using the geochemistry of stones to find out how far Tongan influence extended and with whom. So our study showed that Tonga had very strong links with a number of archipelagos, particularly Samoa and Fiji, but also very far flung links including the society islands which are around 2,500 kilometres from Tonga, and as far as we know there is no other society in the Pacific that had this kind of maritime reach in the past.

MARY BAINES: So it was an economic and a political connection it had to these other islands?

GC: Yes, our feeling is that it is both political and economic. In other words, that you can't really take out the economy from the political system because it is the influence and power of these paramount chiefs of Tonga, known as the Tu'i Tonga or lords of Tonga, that were really driving the system. So although there were economic exchanges there were also very important social links such as marriage between chiefly families with Tonga and Fiji and Samoa. And this really allowed, I think, Tongans to develop a geographic spread of power or influence that reigned so far and was so different from any other places.

MB: And to find out this information you looked at stone tools?

GC: Yes, what we did, is we found a variety of stone tools that were associated with the tombs of the paramount lords of Tonga. So they have these very impressive stone tombs. Now we didn't dig in the tombs, but we dug on the outside of tombs where people had been working the stone with stone tools. And as they worked the stone for the tombs, pieces of their stone tools broke off. So by analysing these we were able to build up an identity for the stones by looking at the geology of other areas, and we also looked at stone tools from chiefdoms and societies in Samoa as well as other places to see really how different Tongans were using the stone tools.

MB: How were they using them in a different way?

GC: Well it's really about the extent of movement which is shown by their stone tool sources. In most Pacific Islands, there are a number of good stone sources for people to make good stone tools out of. And what we found is that more than two thirds of all stone tools were being imported into Tonga and then was probably being redistributed by the chiefs, as well as used by the chiefs, in a way to keep political power or influence, to doll out if you like and influence the political system.