The Mangarevan Akamaroi and Ancestral Images

Record summary

Mangarevan religious traditions included temple precincts, hereditary specialists, sacred chiefs, and images or representations connected with gods and ancestors. The Gambier Islands entered European awareness late in the eighteenth century, while fuller descriptions came later through missionaries and ethnographers. This makes the lead useful for studying how oral transmission and post-contact recording reshape knowledge of an earlier ritual system. Archaeological remains and later Mangarevan accounts can help distinguish pre-contact institutions from changes introduced by Christianity and colonial administration.