Ancient Tahitian Society,

Author

Oliver; Douglas L.

Year

1974

Publisher

University of Hawai'i Press

Language

English

Pages

ISBN

978-0-82480-267-7

Link

Last Update

17-Nov-2025

Keywords

History ; Asian Studies ; Anthropology

Description

‘Tahiti is far famed yet too little known.” Thus wrote J.M. Orsmond in 1848 (Henry 1928:I), and the same assertion can be made in 1972. Thousands of pages had been published about Tahiti and its neighboring islands when Orsmond uttered his judgment, and tens of thousands have been published since that time, but a unified, comprehensive, and detailed description of the pre-European ways of life of the inhabitants of those Islands is yet to appear in print. The present work, lengthy as it is, makes no such claim to comprehensiveness; rather, it is concerned mainly with the social relations of...