ATEA
bears. Prestige items such as feather cloaks and
headdresses reinforced the status and reputation
of chiefs but also asserted their direct genealogical
connections with divine ancestors—the
men and gods who had first peopled the islands.
Far from being an abstract notion, Polynesians
understood their relationship with divinity to
be dynamic and very much materialized in nature—
in the plants, feathers, and fibers of the
ocean and island environments from which they
themselves had sprung.
The presentation is divided into three main
sections. Section 1, “Ancestral Homelands,”
introduces artworks from islands to the west
of the region: Fiji, Tonga, and Niue. Section 2,
“Propping Up the Sky,” explores the dynamism
of ritual artworks from Mangareva, Tahiti, and
85
FIG. 6 (above): Feather
gorget, taumi.
Tahiti. 18th century.
Feathers, fiber (various), shark teeth,
dog hair. H: 66 cm.
Gordon Sze Collection.
FIG. 7 (below):
Feather cape of Kamehameha I.
Hawai’i. Before 1819.
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnology, Harvard University, museum
purchase, Huntington Frothingham
Wolcott Fund, 1911, inv. 11-65-
70/84100.