ABSTRACT
I take this opportunity of re-publication of this account of the Tikopia Work of the Gods to expand some of the theoretical aspects referred to only briefly at the beginning and end of the original study. I wrote this monograph originally because, as I explained, so much had been reconstruction and hypothesis in the study of Polynesian religion that it seemed important to describe in a systematic way, from personal observation, just how some Polynesians did carry out their traditional religious rites. Moreover, so much discussion of religion in anthropology had relied on analysis of isolated items of belief or ritual that it seemed also important to give as detailed account as possible of a long-continued and complex sequence of rites, in their social setting. Now, while we need much more systematic theory in the anthropological study of religion it is still my conviction that such theory needs to go hand in hand with more meticulous and more refined empirical observation.
