The document discusses various artistic traditions and materials used in Polynesian art and culture, including moai statues carved from volcanic rock on Easter Island, elaborate tattooing traditions, bark cloth textiles, slip-cast ceramics, and petroglyphs carved into rock surfaces. Art forms were closely tied to important aspects of social and religious life, including the veneration of ancestors and communication with spiritual beings. A wide variety of local natural materials like wood, stone, shells, and plant fibers were used in artistic and practical applications.

1. Materials and Techniques
1ind-2
Ana Alejandria
Rina Capati
Russel Dela Paz
Karoline Gabriel
Beatrice Macatanay
Sharmaine Urbano

2. The Polynesians are a finely
built brown people organized
socially into the family and
the clan with the chiefs, of an
attributed divine birth, as
rulers.
 Their religion consist of spirit
and ancestor worship, infused
through and through, as is
their social system, for the
social and religious are hardly
separable, with a highly
developed system of taboo
(tapu), which means
“prohibited” for sacred or
objectionable reasons.
 Polynesian art is characteristically ornate, and often meant to
contain supernatural power.
 Magic too plays a considerable part in the ceremonial, often highly
elaborate, which attends many of their everyday activities.
 The art forms of such people are dependent upon the materials at
hand and the tools they have evolved; and they are inextricably
knit into the whole pattern of everyday life.

3.  Moai are monolithic
human figures
carved from rock.
Though moai are
whole-body statues,
they are commonly
referred to as
"Easter Island
heads".
 The moai were either carved by a distinguished class of
professional carvers who were comparable in status to high-
ranking members of other Polynesian craft guilds, or,
alternatively, by members of each clan. The oral histories show
that the Rano Raraku quarry was subdivided into different
territories for each clan.

4.  The statues mediate
between chiefs and
gods, and between
the natural and
cosmic worlds.
 Portrays ancestral
chiefs. They stand on
platform markings
burials for religious
ceremonies.
 Completed statues were moved to ahu mostly on the
coast, then erected, sometimes with red stone cylinders
(pukao) on their heads. Moai must have been extremely
expensive to craft and transport; not only would the
actual carving of each statue require effort and
resources, but the finished product was then hauled to
its final location and erected.

5.  Known for their large, broad noses
and strong chins, along with
rectangle-shaped ears and deep eye
slits, and have designs carved on
their backs and posteriors.
 Deep elliptical eye sockets were
designed to hold coral eyes with
either black obsidian or red scoria
pupils.
 Some moai had pukao
topknots or headresses on
their heads; these were
carved out of red scoria.
 Some of the moai were
painted with maroon and
white paint
 These were carved from tuff
(a compressed volcanic ash).
At the end of carving, the
builders would rub the statue
with pumice.

6.  Polynesian tattooing was
the most intricate and
skillful tattooing in the
ancient world. This is the
only form of Polynesian
art that has been widely
adopted and imitated by
westerners.
 Characterized by
elaborate geometrical
designs which were often
renewed, and embellished
throughout the life of the
individual until they
covered the entire body.

7.  It was in Tonga and Samoa
that the Polynesian tattoo
developed into a highly
refined art. Priests who had
undergone a long period of
training and who followed
strictly prescribed rituals
and taboos during the
process executed the
tattooing. For the Tongon,
the tattoo carried profound
social and cultural
significance.
 In ancient Samoa, tattooing
played an important role in
both religious ritual and
warfare. The tattoo artist
held a hereditary and highly
privileged position.

8.  Traditional tattooing tools
consist of a comb with
needles carved from bone
or tortoise shell, fixed to a
wooden handle. The needles
are dipped into a pigment
made from the soot of
burnt candlenut mixed with
water or oil. The needles
are then placed on the skin
and the handle is tapped
with a second wooden stick,
causing the comb to pierce
the skin and insert the
pigment.
 The name tatau comes
from the sound of this
tapping.

9.  It was once a very
important textile
product in tropical areas
around the world.
 Has a spiritual dimension
in that it can confer
sanctity upon an object
wrapped in it.
 Traditionally used to
wrap the bodies of high-
ranking deceased chiefs.
 Also used for domestic
purposes such as
blankets, room
dividers,floor mats, and
decorations

10.  Made by stripping from
the bark from such
trees as the paper
mulberry that has been
softened through a
process of soaking and
beating.
 The inner bast is
separated from the
outer bark, soaked and
beaten with wooded
beaters on wooden anvils,
stretched, dried, and
combined into bigger
pieces.

11.  Ancestral Polynesian ceramics
represent a continuing pottery
tradition from the preceding
Eastern Lapita Phase. The
highly decorated ceramics of
the Early Eastern Lapita
cultural complex include a whole
range of shouldered jars and a
number of dish-like bowls not
found in the later plain wares
associated with Ancestral
Polynesian culture.
 Ceramic cooking vessels had rather great value for at least
three reasons:
 it was possible to cook larger quantities of food in a pottery vessel
than in a bamboo tube
 It was possible also to mash the food with a wooden paddle
 the flavor was judged to be superior to that of the same kind of
vegetable boiled in a metal container, an artifact then beginning to
replace pottery

12.  Clay was one of the earliest materials used to produce ceramics. Ceramic
materials are brittle, hard, strong in compression, weak in shearing and
tension
 Slip-casting methods provide superior surface quality, density and uniformity
in casting high-purity ceramic raw materials over other ceramic casting
techniques.
 A slip is a suspension of fine raw materials powder in a liquid such as water or
alcohol with small amounts of secondary materials such as dispersants,
surfactants and binders.
 Early slip casting techniques employed a plaster block or flask mould.
 The plaster mould draws water from the poured slip to compact and form the
casting at the mould surface. This forms a dense cast form removing
deleterious air gaps and minimizing shrinkage in the final sintering process.

13.  Are pictogram and logogram images
created by removing part of a rock
surface by: incising, picking, carving,
and abrading
 Easter Island has one of the richest
collections of petro glyphs in
Polynesia. About 1,000 sites with
more than 4,000 petroglyphs are
catalogued.
 It is the general category of rock
art and Petro forms like patterns,
andshapes
 Probably have deep cultural and
religious significance
 Significance remains for their
descendants.
 Represent some kind of not-yet-
fully understood symbolic or ritual
language
 Designs are mostly sea turtles,

14.  astronomical markers
 maps
 forms of symbolic
communication
 form of "pre-writing"
 show trails
 symbols communicating
time and distances
traveled
 local terrain in the form
of rivers, landforms and
other geographic
features
 to create totems
 to mark territory
 to memorialize a person