There is, perhaps, more uniformity throughout the area in the realm of magic (q.v.) than in that of religion, in so far as it is possible to separate the two, for there is a transparent sympathetic basis of almost all the magical practices. In addition to direct sympathetic magic without the aid of ghosts or spirits, we also find, particularly in Melanesia, the coercion of both ghosts and spirits for the attainment of what are usually anti-social ends. Divination of sorcerers is also common, which, together with fan tastic beliefs concerning the powers of sorcery, accounts for a good deal of the strain to which social relations between individuals, and between groups is subjected in this part of the world. One of the commonest causes of murder is revenge for supposed sorcery.
From permanent contact with European settlers in the latter part of the s8th century the transition from the Stone to the steel age was rapid. Previously writing was unknown in the area, if we except the pictographic "script," as yet imperfectly explained, of Easter island (q.v.).
Although it is improbable that any of the more important monuments have entirely escaped observation and record, the greater part of the area has never been properly surveyed in an archaeological sense, and the published records available for many islands are meagre and of unequal value. The only islands of which anything like detailed surveys have been published are Easter, the Australs, the Marquesas, Hawaii (some islands), the Carolines (Ponape, and Kusaie) and, in part, New Zealand and the Chathams (see Bibliography). Surveys of Tonga, Tahiti, Necker I., Rapa-iti, and some smaller islands (Fanning, Malden, Christmas, etc.) are now in preparation by the Bishop Museum, Honolulu.
In the moist climate, perishable objects were quickly destroyed, and pottery being absent in Polynesia (except Fijian vases introduced into Tonga), the materials for archaeological study are practically limited to stone tools and monuments. No evidence of a Palaeolithic cul ture has been found in any part of Oceania. The prevailing tools are everywhere axes or adzes of stone (occasionally also of shell), polished wholly or in part, although flaked obsidian was also used in certain islands where it occurred (e.g. Easter, New Zealand, New Britain), and roughly flaked quarrying tools bearing a super ficial resemblance to palaeolithic hand-axes are found in Easter island. Judged by its tools, the prehistoric culture of the area belongs entirely to the neolithic phase.
ethnographical division into Melanesia and Polynesia holds good, in the main, for archaeology. In the former region adzes are of the "celt" type and rounded or sublenticular in sec tion ; in the latter they are predominantly straight-edged and angu lar in section, and further subdivided into a tanged and tangless type, characteristic of east and west Polynesia respectively. The distribution of monuments is in substantial agreement with that of the tools, and the elaborate structures of masonry characteristic of Polynesia scarcely occur west of Fiji, where the few stone monuments found are crude and megalithic in character. Excep tions in the Solomon and Banks islands may be regarded as relics of Polynesian migrations eastwards, or as due to later reflex movements.
No stratified sites showing cul ture sequence, except in a minor degree in New Zealand, have been found. The habit of making funerary offerings seems to have been little developed, and grave-goods, where discovered, do not differ markedly from artifacts of recent date. Only in parts of Mela nesia has the occurrence of deposits distinct in character from the products of the historic inhabitants been observed.
In Polynesia there is at present little archaeological evidence of a succession of cultures; monuments and implements represent at most an earlier and, in some cases, a higher phase of the culture that continued into historic times. Exceptions do occur, however; adzes of distinctively Melanesian type, found in Tahiti, and the carvings of bird-headed men in Easter island suggest the possibil ity of a pre-Polynesian occupation of parts of eastern Oceania by the negroid race. The evidence is too scanty to be entirely con vincing, and the presence of a strong negroid strain in the inhab itants of eastern Polynesia is more probably due to racial inter mixture during the Polynesian migrations through Melanesia than to a fusion in the islands in which it is found.
In all the island groups east of Tonga and Samoa, without a single important exception, occur the remains, now more or less ruined, of megalithic structures, the sacred places or marae of the Polynesians. These consist typically of paved rectangular enclosures, surrounded by stone walls, and con taining one or more rectangular stone platforms, sometimes, as in Tahiti, of stepped pyramidal form. The elements were variously combined, and differ in details of construction, contour and size. Thus in the Marquesas the walls are low or absent, in the Australs the platforms are generally lacking, while in Tahiti and Hawaii all features are generally present. The platforms were faced with large boulders or hewn blocks of stone or coral, sometimes weigh ing many tons, and often neatly fitted in regular courses, although mortar was never employed. The core consisted of earth or rubble, and sometimes contained burial pits or vaults. Platforms served also as substructures for sacred houses built of perishable material, for the exposure of the dead, as sacrificial altars, etc. ; and the question whether they were intended primarily as tombs has yet to be settled by excavation. Many of them were originally sur mounted by large figures of wood or stone in conventionalized human form. Such stone figures, some still in situ, are found in Hawaii (Necker), Easter island, Pitcairn, Tahiti, and the Australs (Raivavai), and in the Marquesas, where they exactly resemble those carved in wood. In the Marquesas, platforms, which always had vertical sides, were also much used for secular purposes, both in public assembly places (tohua) as seats for the spectators of dances, and as foundations for the ordinary dwelling-houses. The extreme development of terraces and platforms in the latter islands is due to the scarcity of level ground in the steep and nar row valleys, and to the abundance of suitably shaped boulders and easily worked volcanic stone. The largest recorded platform, that of Oborea, in Tahiti, now almost destroyed, measured 90 by 29yd. at the base, and rose in so or s r steps to a height of about soft.; but in general these structures did not exceed i2ft. in height. The antiquity of particular structures cannot be determined from internal evidence, but they were presumably built by ancestors of the historical Polynesians, who on traditional evidence did not reach the area enlier than the 7th century A.D. The fact that they occur in similar form in all groups, including Tahiti and Hawaii, which remained without intercommunication after the great voy ages of the 13th and 14th centuries, as well as on intermediate islands, afterwards uninhabited, like Malden and Fanning, shows that the type must have been fully developed by the time of these voyages. Many were still in use when discovered, and some were even constructed in the historic period.