10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol.79 



traying thereby a long period of independent growth in design from 

 each of the Polynesian siibareas of decorative design. The wooden 

 marionette figurine is a good example of such local variation, through 

 still conforming to the conventional Polynesian style of wood carv- 

 ing. Samoa and Tonga do not possess decorated wooden carvings 

 or decorative designs in the form of line plays. The Maori, like the 

 Marquesans, but unlike other Polynesians, persist in ornamenting the 

 carved surfaces of their wooden implements of diverse description 

 with curvilinear designs. This, as in European rococo art, consists in 

 the application of spirals and of counterspirals locked together. 

 This device resembles that of the Dyaks of Borneo, who thus con- 

 ventionally represent the interlocking tails of two dogs. Midway be- 

 tween New Zealand and Borneo in the so-called Massim area appear 

 similar hooked spirals. The design blossoms into the concentric 

 circle, so frequently applied as a frieze decoration when daubed over 

 with red paint in the gable end rafter projections appearing at the 

 front of Maori houses. The thick planks of the wooden ancestral 

 pillars supporting these houses have similar decorated surfaces filling 

 in the spaces between the grotesque faces of an ancestral deity. These 

 are deeply incised and inset with shell, the whole being painted over 

 with a red ocher. 



Meandered spirals appear incised on the surfaces of the musical 

 bull-roarer of the Australian-Papuan culture area, also on the painted 

 wood carvings of a semisacred nature. As mentioned previously, the 

 richly carved boxes and the ancestral deity figurines are never painted 

 by the Maori, who thus conform to Polynesian rather than to Mela- 

 nesian art impulses. The spiral design is used by the Maori princi- 

 pally in wood engraving. The spirals arc double and are placed in 

 interlocking patterns, or volutes. Boxes of wood cut out of the 

 solid, tattooing, house gable decorations, and house foundation 

 posts — these are some of the typical media on which are placed the 

 spiral patterns in connection with diverging lines, spurs, nucleated 

 cores representing eye forms, and other facial features, or any feature 

 breaking up the continuous spiral, but blending into it. The design 

 overlaps into Melanesia as shown in the cut devices on shields from 

 eastern New Guinea. 



Carving in the round is a characteristic of the Maori woodworker, 

 who resembles in this respect the artisans of many other areas, notably 

 Melanesians and Northwest Pacific coast Indians, each in a broad 

 way contiguous to the area of the Polynesians. The art of wood 

 carving in the South Pacific is imitative in that the designs are sim- 

 ilar to those used on more flexible materials such as the woven 

 fabrics in Tonga. 



In comparing Polynesian textiles, the contrast between the feath- 

 ered mantle of the Hawaiians just described and a Maori man's cloak 



