Kategoria BISAC: History >> Oceania

The Ritidian Site is located in the United States island territory of Guam, the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific Ocean. The site holds a data-rich 3500-year record of natural and cultural history of the islands, now uniquely preserved and open for public access in the Ritidian Unit of Guam National Wildlife Refuge. The place means many things for people in different perspectives, together speaking volumes of Ritidan's powerful effects as a heritage landscape. Today, Ritidian is known as an archaeological site, as a place where important historical...

Across Melanesia, the ways in which people connect to land are being transformed by processes of modernization--globalization, the building of states and nations, practices and imaginaries of development, the legacies of colonialism, and the complexities of postcolonial encounters. Melanesian peoples are becoming landowners, Stead argues, both in the sense that these processes of change compel forms of property relations, and in the sense that "landowner" and "custom landowner" become identities to be wielded against the encroachment of both state and capital. In places where customary...

Painstakingly constructed by hand of plant fiber and precious feathers from endemic birds of Hawai'i, feather cloaks and capes provided spiritual protection to Hawaiian chiefs for centuries while proclaiming their royal status. Few of the artworks known as na hulu ali'i, or royal feathers, survive today except in museums and private collections. Through photographs and scholarly essays, Royal Hawaiian Featherwork highlights approximately seventy-five rare examples of the finest featherwork capes and cloaks ('ahu'ula) extant, as well as royal staffs of feathers (kahili), feather lei (lei...