Kenneth Emory
Encyclopedia
Kenneth Pike Emory was an American anthropologist who played a key role in shaping modern anthropology in Oceania
. In the tradition of A. L. Kroeber and other pioneering anthropologists who trained him, Emory's works span all four major fields of anthropology: archaeology
, physical anthropology
, ethnography
, and linguistics
.
.
While a high-school student, several archaeological digs in the Honolulu area piqued Emory's interest in Polynesian artifacts
and culture
. Prosyletization in the first half of the nineteenth century by Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Mormon missionaries was so successful that by the 1920s Polynesians had abandoned their ancestral gods in all but a few isolated places. When Emory realized this he dedicated his life to finding and documenting as much pre-Christian Polynesian culture as he could. After attending Dartmouth College
, he became associated with the Bishop Museum
and spent the next 60 years roaming the Pacific, seeking out Polynesian settlement sites, excavating relics, and photographing petroglyph
s. He sought out Polynesians who remembered the pre-Christian chants and rituals, and recorded them on film. By the 1950s, he was the world's foremost expert on Polynesian culture.
Emory theorized that Polynesians were descended from the Māori of New Zealand, and that Polynesian culture originated on Tonga
and Samoa
and migrated eastward through the Pacific to Tahiti
, the Marquesas
, and Hawaii
. Emory believed, but did not attempt to prove, that Polynesians were capable of sailing great distances to all points of the compass. He argued that when the population of an island exceeded its capacity, a king or noble would outfit a large oceangoing vessel and set off to verify rumors of other habitable islands, sending back word of his discovery. Emory believed the Hawaiian Islands
had been colonized by Society Islanders
(Tahitians) in this way. With Kon-Tiki
, Thor Heyerdahl
proved that ancient mariners could have sailed westward across the Pacific; Emory replied that Peruvians might have gotten as far west as Easter Island, but its culture was overwhelmingly Polynesian. Others argued that even if Tahitians had found a new land mass such as Hawaii, they would have been unable to return to their point of origin. Emory disagreed, pointing out that contemporary copra
schooners relied on wave direction, ocean currents, and seabirds to guide them to land, and Polynesian legends made frequent reference to celestial navigation. Besides: "If they sailed south they were bound to hit islands whose inhabitants would know where the Society Islands lay."
Emory's parents were from Massachusetts. By the time of his birth, Honolulu offered every amenity that could be found in any American city, and regular steamship service connected the city with San Francisco and other Pacific ports. Hawaiians accepted the inevitable presence of haole
(Anglos) on their islands, partly because "It is now much easier for (Hawaiians) to live . . . than in the old strenuous days when famine and war were never far off." In Hawaii intermarriage was relatively rare, but in Taiti intermarriage between French and Tahitians was quite common. Emory married a woman whose mother's family was Tahitian and whose father's was French; she considered Paris her second home.
In 1947, Emory spent time on Kapingamarangi, a remote Micronesian atoll, which, from his description, approached Rousseau's ideal society: "This tradiational lifestyle supported five hundred people on land . . . that did not total more than six-tenths of a sqaure mile. There was no crime. . . . The people . . . were courteous, hospitable, hard-working, . . and superbly adjusted to their environment.
Emory died January 2, 1992 in Honolulu.
Oceania
Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...
. In the tradition of A. L. Kroeber and other pioneering anthropologists who trained him, Emory's works span all four major fields of anthropology: archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
, physical anthropology
Physical anthropology
Biological anthropology is that branch of anthropology that studies the physical development of the human species. It plays an important part in paleoanthropology and in forensic anthropology...
, ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
, and linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
.
Biography
Kenneth Pike Emory was born November 23, 1897 in Fitchburg, MassachusettsFitchburg, Massachusetts
Fitchburg is the third largest city in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 40,318 at the 2010 census. Fitchburg is home to Fitchburg State University as well as 17 public and private elementary and high schools.- History :...
.
While a high-school student, several archaeological digs in the Honolulu area piqued Emory's interest in Polynesian artifacts
Artifact (archaeology)
An artifact or artefact is "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest"...
and culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
. Prosyletization in the first half of the nineteenth century by Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Mormon missionaries was so successful that by the 1920s Polynesians had abandoned their ancestral gods in all but a few isolated places. When Emory realized this he dedicated his life to finding and documenting as much pre-Christian Polynesian culture as he could. After attending Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
, he became associated with the Bishop Museum
Bishop Museum
The Bishop Museum , is a museum of history and science in the historic Kalihi district of Honolulu on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu...
and spent the next 60 years roaming the Pacific, seeking out Polynesian settlement sites, excavating relics, and photographing petroglyph
Petroglyph
Petroglyphs are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images...
s. He sought out Polynesians who remembered the pre-Christian chants and rituals, and recorded them on film. By the 1950s, he was the world's foremost expert on Polynesian culture.
Emory theorized that Polynesians were descended from the Māori of New Zealand, and that Polynesian culture originated on Tonga
Tonga
Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga , is a state and an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, comprising 176 islands scattered over of ocean in the South Pacific...
and Samoa
Samoa
Samoa , officially the Independent State of Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa is a country encompassing the western part of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. It became independent from New Zealand in 1962. The two main islands of Samoa are Upolu and one of the biggest islands in...
and migrated eastward through the Pacific to Tahiti
Tahiti
Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...
, the Marquesas
Marquesas Islands
The Marquesas Islands enana and Te Fenua `Enata , both meaning "The Land of Men") are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southern Pacific Ocean. The Marquesas are located at 9° 00S, 139° 30W...
, and Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
. Emory believed, but did not attempt to prove, that Polynesians were capable of sailing great distances to all points of the compass. He argued that when the population of an island exceeded its capacity, a king or noble would outfit a large oceangoing vessel and set off to verify rumors of other habitable islands, sending back word of his discovery. Emory believed the Hawaiian Islands
Hawaiian Islands
The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll...
had been colonized by Society Islanders
Society Islands
The Society Islands are a group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean. They are politically part of French Polynesia. The archipelago is generally believed to have been named by Captain James Cook in honor of the Royal Society, the sponsor of the first British scientific survey of the islands;...
(Tahitians) in this way. With Kon-Tiki
Kon-Tiki
Kon-Tiki was the raft used by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl in his 1947 expedition across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands. It was named after the Inca sun god, Viracocha, for whom "Kon-Tiki" was said to be an old name...
, Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer with a background in zoology and geography. He became notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition, in which he sailed by raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands...
proved that ancient mariners could have sailed westward across the Pacific; Emory replied that Peruvians might have gotten as far west as Easter Island, but its culture was overwhelmingly Polynesian. Others argued that even if Tahitians had found a new land mass such as Hawaii, they would have been unable to return to their point of origin. Emory disagreed, pointing out that contemporary copra
Copra
Copra is the dried meat, or kernel, of the coconut. Coconut oil extracted from it has made copra an important agricultural commodity for many coconut-producing countries. It also yields coconut cake which is mainly used as feed for livestock.-Production:...
schooners relied on wave direction, ocean currents, and seabirds to guide them to land, and Polynesian legends made frequent reference to celestial navigation. Besides: "If they sailed south they were bound to hit islands whose inhabitants would know where the Society Islands lay."
Emory's parents were from Massachusetts. By the time of his birth, Honolulu offered every amenity that could be found in any American city, and regular steamship service connected the city with San Francisco and other Pacific ports. Hawaiians accepted the inevitable presence of haole
Haole
Haole , in the Hawaiian language, is generally used to refer to an individual that fits one of the following: "White person, American, Englishman, Caucasian; American, English; formerly, any foreigner; foreign, introduced, of foreign origin, as plants, pigs, chickens"...
(Anglos) on their islands, partly because "It is now much easier for (Hawaiians) to live . . . than in the old strenuous days when famine and war were never far off." In Hawaii intermarriage was relatively rare, but in Taiti intermarriage between French and Tahitians was quite common. Emory married a woman whose mother's family was Tahitian and whose father's was French; she considered Paris her second home.
In 1947, Emory spent time on Kapingamarangi, a remote Micronesian atoll, which, from his description, approached Rousseau's ideal society: "This tradiational lifestyle supported five hundred people on land . . . that did not total more than six-tenths of a sqaure mile. There was no crime. . . . The people . . . were courteous, hospitable, hard-working, . . and superbly adjusted to their environment.
Emory died January 2, 1992 in Honolulu.
Selected bibliography
- Emory, Kenneth P. 1933. Stone remains in the Society Islands. Bulletin 116. Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum.
- Emory, Kenneth P. 1934. "Archaeology of the Pacific Equatorial Islands." In Bishop Museum Bulletin 123. Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum.
- Emory, Kenneth P. 1943. "Polynesian stone remains." In Studies in the Anthropology of Oceania and Asia, presented in memory of Roland Burrage Dixon, edited by James M. Andrews. Cambridge, Mass., The Museum.
- Emory, Kenneth Pike, and Yosihiko H. SinotoYosihiko H. SinotoYosihiko H. Sinoto is a Japanese-born American anthropologist at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii...
. 1961. Oahu excavations. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press. - Emory, Kenneth Pike. 1965. Kapingamarangi, social and religious life of a Polynesian atoll. Honolulu, The Museum.
- Emory, Kenneth Pike. 1969. The island of Lanai: A survey of native culture. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press Reprints.
- Emory, Kenneth Pike. 1971. Archaeology of Mangareva and neighbouring atolls. New York: Kraus Reprint. ISBN 0527022713
- Emory, Kenneth Pike and Maude, HonorHonor MaudeHonor Maude of Canberra, Australia was the world authority on Oceanic string figures, having published Maude & Maude 1958, Maude & Wedgewood 1967, Firth & Maude 1970, Maude 1971, Maude 1978, Emory & Maude 1979, Maude 1984, and Beaglehole & Maude 1989...
. 1979. String figures of the Tuamotus. Canberra: Homa Press. ISBN 0959611118 - Emory, Kenneth Pike. 2002. Archaeology of Nihoa and Necker Islands. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, Mutual Publishing. ISBN 1566475651
External links
- Dening, Greg. "Beautiful Day. Got Married. Learned Canoe Lashings." New York Times, 5 March 1989.