ART FIDJTIIEKNI 107 displayed for certain statues versus the fear those same objects inspired among the common people. Around 1818, Camille de Roquefeuil, commander of an early French expedition in Polynesia, mentions that “fetishes that one could at fi rst take for idols are carelessly thrown about the houses, and no kind of veneration is shown for them” (1823: 324). This said, some tiki were greatly feared. These were kept in ceremonial sites known as me’ae, located at the bottoms of valleys and still considered vahi tapu, or sacred and forbidden. Ordinary people took every precaution to stay away from these places to avoid being slain by occult powers and deities. What was the difference? Knowledge of the tiki was the exclusive province of priests and chiefs and was not to be communicated. German ethnologist Karl von den Steinen, the author of an important three-volume work on Marquesas Islands culture, suggests that tiki did not represent any particular individual when they were produced by the sculptor, or tuhuka ha’atiki. Highly stylized in appearance, the only elements that distinguished one tiki from another were details such as the tattoo designs on the bodies and the cheeks, which were eminently tapu and thus associated with the realm of the sacred and forbidden. Before these were added, tiki fi gures were empty shells and became the abode of a spirit only after they were given a name by the tau’a in the course of a genealogical recitation that was performed in secret. This recitation resulted in a magical transfer of mana. Whether made of stone or one of several kinds of wood, the activated sculptures were generally kept in the heart of the me’ae on the paepae, a low quadrangular platform paved with stone slabs. A structure was generally erected on this platform as were altars for offerings and funerary houses. Offerings of pigs’ heads, turtles, or human victims were placed on these altars or at the feet of the tiki. Only the priests and their assistants who performed religious ceremonies lived in these sacred places. Tiki Monoliths Large-scale monolithic tiki were generally made of a reddish-colored volcanic tufa called ke’etu (fi g. 1), but examples are known made of harder grayish stone (fi g. 2). The largest concentration of these monumental statues occurs on the island of
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