Rituals of sacrifice in early post-European contact Tonga and Tahiti.

Abstract This paper is a comparative study of the ritual of sacrifice in the highly stratified societies of Tonga and Tahiti in the period immediately following the commencement of European contact. It looks at the form of the ritual, the occasions on which the ritual was performed, and argues that although sacrifice was usually performed in order for the chiefly elite to gain some benefit, both chiefs and commoners made use of the ritual for political ends. The paper then looks briefly at human sacrifice in Hawai'i, in order to demonstrate the validity of the conclusions drawn in the paper within the wider context of Polynesia.