Expeditions in 1920. Handy’s theoretical perspective was closely allied to that of the European Kulturkreise (culture-circle) school (see, e.g., fritz graebner 1905), in which the origins of a particular people or culture were sought through a comparison of trait lists with neighboring or even far-flung cultures. Thus Handy developed an elaborate theory of Polynesian origins and migrations in which Polynesian cultural traits were correlated with “Brahmanical” and “Buddhistic” cultures ranging from India to china (Handy 1930). Rather than seeing variations among the Polynesian cultures as deriving from a lengthy process of cultural change in situ, he interpreted all variation as the outcome of successive “waves” of migration.

A more influential theory of Polynesian origins was promulgated by the Maori scholar Te Rangi Hiroa (also known as Sir Peter Buck), who had succeeded Gregory as director of the Bishop Museum in 1936. Hiroa was a seasoned ethnographer, with experience throughout much of Polynesia. He had, however, little use for archaeology, finding it a “dry subject.” Hiroa relied more upon the salvage ethnographic work of Bishop Museum scientists to develop a migration theory that traced the route of Polynesian voyages into the Pacific not via the large archipelagoes of Melanesia but through the small coral atolls of Micronesia. In his widely read book, Vikings of the Sunrise, Hiroa argued that “the master mariners of the Pacific [the Polynesians] must be Europoid for they are not characterized by the woolly hair, black skins, and thin lower legs of the Negroids nor by the flat face, short stature, and drooping inner eyefold of the Mongoloids” (1938, 16). Hiroa’s racially charged theory can be understood in retrospect in light of the severe racial prejudice he himself suffered at the hands of the dominant white academic society and in terms of the racial pigeonholing that characterized much of anthropology in the early twentieth century (Kirch 2000, 24–27). His theory was, however, a highly forced contrivance, and archaeology later in the twentieth century lent no support whatsoever to the concept of a Micronesian migration into Polynesia.

Within the genre of migrationist theories of Polynesian culture-history, mention must also be made of the highly influential writings of Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian zoologist and adventurer who captured the world’s attention in 1947 with his daring Kon Tiki raft voyage from South America to the Tuamotu Islands. World War II had already focused much attention on the Pacific islands, and Heyerdahl now claimed to have a theory that explained the Polynesians as deriving from successive migrations not from Asia but from the Americas. The full theory was published in a massive volume a few years after the Kon Tiki voyage (Heyerdahl 1952), and Heyerdahl funded his own archaeological expedition to Easter Island and other Eastern Polynesian islands in 1955 and 1956 in an effort to prove his origins theory. His hypothesis has not survived the test of modern archaeological research, but Heyerdahl must be credited with helping to spur a reinvigoration of Polynesian archaeology in the period immediately following World War II.

Stratigraphic Archaeology and Culture-History

After several decades of being relegated to a minor supporting role in Polynesian studies, archaeology suddenly emerged in the aftermath of World War II as the primary source of data on Polynesian culture-history. This intellectual transformation can be traced to several developments. One was the heightened scientific interest in the Pacific islands generated in the wake of the war itself (a number of influential U.S. anthropologists and scientists had worked closely with military intelligence in the Pacific theater). Thus, in the later 1940s, renewed archaeological studies in the Pacific were initiated by such scholars as Edward W. Gifford of Berkeley in the Fiji archipelago and Alexander Spoehr of the Field Museum in the Marianas Islands (Gifford 1951; Spoehr 1957). Rather than continuing with surface surveys of monumental architecture, which had dominated prewar field research, these new efforts emphasized a return to stratigraphic excavations. Significantly, both Gifford and Spoehr, working outside of Polynesia proper in island groups where pottery had been manufactured and used by the indigenous