ABSTRACT
I provide a spatiotemporal analysis of Māohi communal and specialized houses to access transformations in social relationships at the supra-household level in the late pre-contact Society Island chiefdoms. In analyzing Late Expansion/Development Phase (AD 1450–1650) and Classic Phase (AD 1650–1774) Māohi society, I argue that communal- and specialized-house sites, including those for ritualized craft activities and those for housing ritual practitioners, differ from everyday residences in their large size, elaboration, and spatial proximity to ritual sites. Communal and specialized houses also differ in the suites of daily activities and daily social interactions carried out among their users. As I argue, such structures functioned as contexts of supra-household social relations exclusive to highly ranked socio-ritual elites. Tacking back and forth from the micro-scale to the community highlights how assemblages of specialized houses were embedded in larger social landscapes and intermeshed within webs of social interactions that changed through time. Specialized houses likely underpinned the expansion of ritual power and alliance building, activities intimately tied to economic and political power. In this way, specialized houses effectively created landscapes of power that legitimated hierarchical roles and served as expressions of social difference within neighborhoods and communities, ultimately effecting social transformations at both the micro- and macro-scales.
