8
Torres Strait Canoes as Social and Predatory Object-Beings

Ian J. McNiven

Torres Strait Islanders of northeast Australia (figure 8.1) are marine subsistence specialists whose identity and social world are intimately connected with the sea. Social actors in this maritime world extend well beyond people—they include the human dead, the sea and the land, live and dead animals, and a broad array of objects. These people, animals, and objects all interact socially, emotionally, and physically on a broad range of epistemological and ontological levels that confound Western dichotomies such as physical and spiritual, culture and nature, object and subject, and mind and body (cf. Latour 1993). In a previous study I explored the relational and recursive fields of engagement among Torres Strait Islander hunters, their marine mammal prey, the bones of those prey, and hunting charms (McNiven 2010). More recently, I have focused on what I termed the “dialogical matrix” between humans (alive and dead) and prey (alive and dead), again using anthropological and archaeological information (McNiven 2013). The present chapter extends these discussions of relationality and agency to the largest movable object used by Torres Strait Islanders—double-outrigger sailing canoes.

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Figure 8.1. Map of Torres Strait and adjacent region of south-central New Guinea

Anthropologist Alfred Haddon (1890:381) rightly observed that the “large canoes of the Torres Straits Islanders of former times must have been very imposing objects when painted with red, white, and black, and decorated with white shells, black feathers, and flying streamers.” Yet Torres Strait Islander canoes were far more complex and dimensional than inert and highly decorated marine transport vessels—they were object-beings from the beginning to the end of their lives. The biographical life cycle of Torres Strait canoe object-beings commenced with the felling of trees that bleed in the swamps of lowland New Guinea, from which huge canoe hulls were laboriously carved with stone adzes. Transferred into Torres Strait through exchange networks, in the hands of Islanders the object-being status of canoes was modified and elaborated materially and conceptually through a series of what I identify as four non–mutually exclusive and interdependent socialization processes of animic elaboration—anthropomorphism, zoomorphism, intentionalization, and predatorization. These processes of animation and transformation raise the question of the extent to which formation of Torres Strait canoe object-beings also involved recognition of sentience and the capacity for autonomous action. This chapter elaborates on these processes and issues of animancy and sentience within the broader contexts of theoretical conceptualizations of object agency and object-beings and anthropological understandings of Melanesian canoes as object-beings and other-than-human persons.

Object-Beings and Agency

The concept of agency has taken front stage in much archaeological theorizing over the past couple of decades (e.g., Dobres and Robb 2000; Robb 2010). A key development is the notion that “agency is not a characteristic of individuals but of relationships” (Robb 2010:494). The idea that agency is seen to operate as forms of social relationships has also been extended to objects and material agency. As Gell (1998:123) notes, “It does not matter, in ascribing ‘social agent’ status, what a thing (or a person) ‘is’ in itself; what matters is where it stands in a network of social relations.” In short, “Agency is the ability to act in particular ways, where more than one course of action is possible” (Layton 2003:451). In common with the material structuration of Giddens and Bourdieu, Gell (1998:36) proposed that objects mediate social relationships and operate as “secondary agents” with ascribed agency by people (“primary agents”). In this guise, objects are not agents but act as extensions/expressions (indices) of the social agency of, and imputed by, their maker or user (Layton 2003:451; see also Lindstrøm 2015). Furthermore, “Material objects do not have intentionality themselves, but they do have causal efficacy” (Droogan 2013:154).

The notion of ascribed agency or the projection, imbuement, or imputation of (secondary) agentive qualities onto an object does not necessarily create a social relationship but presupposes an existing relational ontology between the object and people. It is not so much a projection or an ascription as a pre-understanding of the co-determining qualities of and relationship between the object and people. In non-Western cultural settings, the phenomenal world is rarely engaged objectively, given that nonhuman objects are rarely positioned as ontologically external to culture within the separate domains of matter and nature and subject and object (Alberti and Marshall 2009:347–48; Barad 2007; Ingold 2007). People comprehend and understand the world through the cultural lens of their own ontological and epistemological internal subjectivities. Humans dwell in uniquely relational ecologies of entities (objects and beings), materialities (tangible and intangible), and temporalities (past, present, and future).

In contrast to the ontologically problematic notion of projected or ascribed (secondary) agency is the inherent agency of objects. Gell (1998:114) hints at the existence of inherent agency in objects of human manufacture using the example of religious structures. Such structures, Droogan (2013:160) notes, are “the material manifestations of a superhuman agency and potency, even though they are the remains of human labour.” Furthermore, “These buildings, ruined or still functioning, are ultimately examples of the agency of human beings. Yet, the narratives and actions of individuals and groups that are played out in their vicinity are in response to a perceived non-human agency, perhaps that of a deity, ancestor or other powerful non-human source” (Droogan 2013:160).

Perhaps the least understood area of agency theorization is the extent to which humanly made object-beings involved not only the materialization of inherent agency but also animacy and the autonomous capacity for intentional and purposeful action and perhaps even sentience (Brown and Walker 2008; Sillar 2009). In an important paper, Alberti and Marshall (2009:350–51) point out that the epistemological notion of inscription follows a “representationalist logic” whereby the form, meaning, and agency of objects is “read off” as the manifest “embodiment” of “beliefs” and “worldviews.” Alternatively, they advocate a “literalist (i.e., non-representationalist)” approach, informed by the “radically essentialist” ontology of Henare and colleagues (2007), whereby objects are beings in their own right. The extent to which animate object-beings possess intentionalized agency because of possession or the embodiment of an animating vital force or even soul, spirit, or spirit life force in a Tylorian sense is an issue for ongoing discussion (Gell 1998:96–154; Harvey 2005; Ingold 2007; Zedeño 2009). What does seem clear is that the expression of object-being agency and intentionality is invariably within an active and participatory social context with humans (Gell 1998; Zedeño 2009). As Jones and Boivin (2010:346) note, “Intentionality is a property of the relationship between people and things.” Object-beings, as other-than-human beings/persons, should not be seen as “accessories” but as social partners, actors, and participants in human action and broader social arenas.

Melanesian Canoe Object-Beings

Melanesian canoes provide considerable scope to explore notions of object-beings, agency, animism, and personhood. Best known are kula canoes of the Trobriand Islanders of eastern Papua New Guinea, made famous by Malinowski (1922), with Gell (1998) showcasing ornately carved kula canoe prows as an example of agency and enchantment par excellence. Bell and Geismar (2009:12) posit that Malinowski saw kula canoes in a strict functionalist/instrumentalist sense, citing “the canoe is made for a certain use, and with a definitive purpose; it is a means to an end, and we, who study native life, must not reverse this relation, and make a fetish of the object itself” (Malinowski 1922:105). They argue that “Malinowski’s point was an important part of this nascent anthropological rationality: artifacts are fabricated by people to be used and, despite the claims of their makers, anthropologists should not impute agency to them. This approach helped to refocus anthropology away from the seductive charms of objects themselves onto issues of exchange, kinship, and theories of social function and structure” (Bell and Geismar 2009:12). Yet in ensuing sentences Malinowski (1922:105, emphasis added) immediately qualified his functionalist/instrumentalist statement:

In the study of the economic purposes for which a canoe is made, of the various uses to which it is submitted, we find the first approach to a deeper ethnographic treatment. Further sociological data, referring to its ownership, accounts of who sails in it, and how it is done; information regarding the ceremonies and customs of its construction, a sort of typical life history of a native craft—all that brings us nearer still to the understanding of what his canoe truly means to the native . . . Even this, however, does not touch the most vital reality of a native canoe. For a craft, whether of bark or wood, iron or steel, lives in the life of its sailors, and it is more to a sailor than a mere bit of shaped matter. To the native, not less than to the white seaman, a craft is surrounded by an atmosphere of romance, built up of tradition and of personal experience. It is an object of cult and admiration, a living thing, possessing its own individuality.

Based principally on fieldwork on Kiriwina Island, Malinowski (1922) elaborates on a wide range of rituals and magical “spells” associated with the construction and launch of large waga (seagoing canoes). Yet surprisingly, little more was said about canoes as a “living thing.” However, Malinowski (1922:421) notes that “the effects of magic are something superadded to all the other effects produced by human effort and by natural qualities.” Such magical spells are also considered to possess a degree of intentionality and even autonomy, such that “the beating of a canoe with two bunches of grass, one after the other, in order first to extract its heaviness and then impart to it lightness, has a meaning parallel to the spell but independent of it” (Malinowski 1922:407). Instructively, another “magical rite” is aimed at a “change of mind” such that “the canoe makes up its mind to run quickly” (Malinowski 1922:133). In this sense, through particular ritual performances, Trobriand Islanders strategically manipulated and animated the agency of canoes.

Munn (1977, 1986:138–40) provides more detailed and nuanced insights into the embodied dimensions of kula canoes in relation to Gawa Island society. Critical is the notion of “spatiotemporal transformations” whereby a canoe’s “life” or “fabrication cycle” entails development through a series of “conversion planes” from the intra-island (Gawa) world of canoe production and exchange to the inter-island (Massim) world of kula exchange (Munn 1977:39–40). The red wood of the hull is “metaphorically identified with internal bodily fluids” and blood (gendered female and from which a “fetus is formed”) (Munn 1986:138). White wood used to make outriggers is gendered male and smeared with “seminal fluid and female discharge . . . suggesting the male element mingling with the female in sexual intercourse” (Munn 1986:140; see also Tambiah 1983). The two types of gendered wood intimately link the fabric of canoes to the land, clan territories, and “corporeal property”—a link reinforced by the naming of some canoes after plots of clan land (Munn 1977:41–42). Ongoing production entails ritual transformation of a canoe’s symbolic “inanimate” properties of “heaviness” associated with land to the symbolic “animate” properties of “lightness,” “slipperiness,” and “speed” associated with the sea (Munn 1977:41). In addition, the heavily carved and decorated prowboard is “heavily anthropomorphized” such that the canoe “projects the image of the ceremonially decorated person, especially a youthful man” (Munn 1986:138). Such elaborate “beautification” adornments (e.g., carved prowboards, shells, and streamers) not only form part of the animic transformation of canoes but also help enchant kula exchange partners (Munn 1977:50). Anthropomorphism extended to intentionalizing the “canoe’s own desires,” such as “want to drink” (when caulking goes dry), “hungry” (when obtaining kula shell valuables), and “smell” (when near land) (Munn 1986:145). Thus, a kula canoe “encodes its producers in itself” such that “potency” is “embodied” as an extension of personhood (Munn 1986:147).

Drawing on her research on Vakuta Island in the Trobriand Islands, Campbell (2002) similarly records the spiritual and ritual dimensions of large ocean-going kula canoe (masawa) manufacture. Central is transformation of a tree (associated with land, anchoring, and heaviness) into a canoe hull (associated with the sea, mobility, and lightness). Important in this process is ritual removal of spirits and witches who inhabit the bottom and tops of trees, respectively. Campbell (2002:153) qualifies this act as “the first opportunity to secure the canoe as an artifact of men.” This process is associated with transformation of an “undomesticated” tree (associated with “anti-social and uncontrollable beings”) into a “controllable,” domesticated, and “social entity” (Campbell 2002:156). Newly constructed kula canoes are ritually bathed in shallow waters off the village beach, which is seen as analogous to similar ritual bathing of women pregnant with their first child (Campbell 2002:157).

Campbell (2002:91, 108, original emphasis) documents that zoomorphized kula canoe carvings and attachments add extra qualities to canoes that “encodes attributes . . . [and] certain features of animals . . . that convey qualities of motion, aesthetics and behaviours considered successful to kula” voyaging expeditions and the intentionalized “desire to secure” prized shell valuables. Examples include a prow attachment of a double row of shells (Ovula ovum), which forms the “mouth of the canoe” (Campbell 2002:159). The spot where the two rows of shell meet is painted red, which gives the appearance of teeth reddened from chewing betelnut. As betelnut chewing in “company” is often associated with “love and beauty magic,” the reddened shells (teeth) are associated with “attracting and seducing” kula exchange partners (Campbell 2002:159). Similarly, depiction of certain animal body parts is linked metaphorically to desired outcomes of kula exchanges: teeth, beak, and mouth (gripping prey = holding onto shell valuables), eye (a focus of sexual desire = attracting shell valuables), and throat (taste = desire for large and famous shell valuables) (Campbell 2002:93–94). Stylized depictions of butterflies on canoe splashboards reference how a “butterfly moves effortlessly upon the currents of the wind and it is this ability that they [Vakutans] hope will be emulated by the outrigger canoe” (Campbell 2002:95). The “principal ‘animal’ of the prowboard” is the osprey, which is central to procurement of large quantities of kula shell valuables because of the bird’s wisdom and highly successful predatory behavior (Campbell 2002:99, 129–35, 140). The fact that a treetop becomes the prow end of a canoe and is the place where ospreys sit to look out for fish is not unrelated (Campbell 2002:163–64, 177). In short, the “design units on the kula prow and splashboards are fundamentally about the representation of desired characteristics seen in the natural world to be ‘successful.’ The ‘animals’ used for representation on the boards are enlisted for the success of a kula expedition” (Campbell 2002:149). To what extent Vakutan seagoing canoes could be considered object-beings in their own right is not discussed explicitly by Campbell (2002).

Further anthropomorphic understanding of the ontological status of Melanesian canoes comes from the work of Lipset and Barlow with estuarine Murik fisherfolk near the mouth of the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea (Barlow and Lipset 1997; Lipset 2005, 2014). The Murik not only “vehicularize” their bodies as “canoe-bodies” but also travel in humanly constructed canoes that are “personified” as bodies. This dual notion of “bodies as canoes” and “canoes as bodies” is seen by Lipset (2014) to be part of a broader cultural tradition of canoe identity, personhood, and habitus in the Austronesian world (see also Ballard et al. 2004). Embodiment of canoes began with the felling of a tree and a log that was a “being” whose gender required ritual transformation from female to male (Barlow and Lipset 1997:10–11). From a gendered perspective, canoe launching rites were analogous to initiation of boys into warriors (male) and birth (female). Central was anointing the canoe with powerful substances such as red ochre, penile blood, and blood from a sacrificed dog and possibly a captured woman (Barlow and Lipset 1997:15). Launching rites saw transformation of the canoe from “an inert, man-made object into a cosmic agent of productivity on behalf of the descent group and, ultimately, of the community” (Barlow and Lipset 1997:14). The result was a new (nonhuman) “person” and “citizen” in the community (Barlow and Lipset 1997:28, 30).

A Murik seagoing trade canoe featured various carved “images” that “animated the vessel and imbued it with the fortifying presence of its ally, the male cult” (Barlow and Lipset 1997:23). The images included carved birds (e.g., sea eagles) and bird motifs to “impart both lightness and speed to the canoe” and to express “the desire that the canoe would ‘fly’ directly to its destination” (Barlow and Lipset 1997:22). As personified beings, Murik canoes also possessed stomachs, hands, and prow heads (Lipset 2014:32–33). Prows in particular reveal that “canoes are not inert, value-neutral objects but they possess embodiments and capabilities that make them no less moral than sentient human spirits. No less than human beings, they are canoe-bodies” (Lipset 2014:33). Complex anthropomorphic and zoomorphic spirit prow carvings all look forward with “a multiplicity of eyes deciphering the moral character of space, reckoning whether it harbors, or will harbor, friend or foe” (Lipset 2014:34). This intentionalized and subjective “task of surveillance” also “evokes a human subject, sentient, generative, moving through space, transgressing its boundaries,” and expressing a “desire for mastery” of social domains (Lipset 2014:34–35). Thus, while Murik seagoing canoes are independent object-beings, the expression of agency and animacy is within the context of human social endeavors such as raiding and exchange expeditions.

Tilley (1999) documents the “heavily anthropomorphized form” of Wala Island outrigger canoes, northwest Malekula, Vanuatu. The canoes embody a “big man,” complete with individual names and metaphorical mouth and eyes (prow bird figurehead), ears (prow tassels), penis sheath (stern tassels), arms and legs (outrigger booms), fingers and toes (outrigger float attachment sticks), palm of hand and sole of foot (outrigger float), and belt (attachment to rim of canoe) (Layard 1942:462; Tilley 1999:115). In addition to being overtly masculine, Wala canoes also possess female dimensions, such as use of female-gendered woods for (“vulva-shaped”) hulls and outriggers (Tilley 1999:117–18). The elaborate and highly ritualized processes of making and consecrating large seagoing canoes in northwest Malekula converted “inanimate materials into an embodied subject” (Tilley 1999:124; see also Layard 1942). Through construction and consecration rituals involving pig sacrifices, a Wala canoe “acquired a high rank, like a big man and a ‘soul,’ and was gendered as male” (Tilley 1999:124). Following Layard (1942:470–72), Tilley (1999:124, original emphasis) notes that “these vessels were considered not only to live like human beings of high rank (in a large house), but also to die, and mortuary rites appropriate to the status of a high-ranking big man were performed for wrecked vessels. Those which were not wrecked during their lifetime were allowed to die a ‘natural’ death, i.e., to slowly rot away in their tabooed boat house. Timber was never taken away for firewood or any other use.”

Torres Strait Canoes as Object-Beings

Do ocean-going canoes of Torres Strait Islanders, a Melanesian people of northeast Australia, fit within the broader context of socialized and intentionalized Melanesian canoe object-beings? Torres Strait Islander double-outrigger sailing canoes measured up to 21 m in length and were the largest marine vessels used by any group of Indigenous Australians (figure 8.2) (for detailed overviews of Torres Strait canoes, see Haddon 1937; Lawrence 1994; McNiven 2015a). They were capable of holding twenty–thirty people and tons of produce and objects, including hunted dugongs (marine mammals) weighing over 300 kg. Their life at sea ranged from hunting trips for turtles and dugongs (an exclusively male activity) to fishing, seasonal settlement relocation, and trading trips between islands and between the adjacent mainlands of New Guinea to the north and Australia to the south (by men, women, and children) across 700 km of sea space (McNiven 2015b). Although use of canoes across Torres Strait largely ceased at the end of the nineteenth century, detailed ethnohistorical and anthropological recordings from that century provide tantalizing glimpses of the complex lives and biographical life histories of these vessels (see Kopytoff 1986; Van de Noort 2011). While the behavioral life of Torres Strait canoes involved manufacture, use, maintenance, and discard (see Skibo and Schiffer 2008), below I focus on the ontological dimensions of canoe lives. Ironically, this complex and multidimensional maritime life began not in Torres Strait but in the adjacent swampy coastal lowlands of southern New Guinea.

Transformation

All large Torres Strait outrigger canoes started their lives as tree object-beings in the lowland forests of the Fly River delta of the adjacent coast of Papua New Guinea (see figure 8.1). During fieldwork in 1888, Haddon (1890:341) recorded:

The large canoes in the Straits all come from Daudai [New Guinea coast opposite Torres Strait], about the neighbourhood of the Fly River. I was told the logs were cut and hollowed at Wabad (Wabuda?) [Island] and fitted with a single small outrigger. Thence they passed through the hands of the Kiwai and Mowat [Mowatta] people on the mainland of New Guinea, and across to the island of Saibai. Here they are re-rigged with two outriggers, and a gunwale is fitted and the canoe decorated with a figure-head, bow ornament, and otherwise ornamented with feathers and shells. From Saibai the canoes found their way to the other islands of the western division of the Straits.

After follow-up fieldwork in 1898, Haddon (1904:296) added: “The large canoes all come from the delta of the Fly River. I was told in 1888 that the logs were cut and hollowed out at Wabad and fitted with a single outrigger. In 1898 we were informed they came from Wabad and Dibi, the former is evidently Wabuda [Island] and the latter Dibiri [Island]. The late Rev. James Chalmers (Journ. Anth. Inst. XXXIII. 1903[a, b], pp. 111, 117) refers to canoes being made at and exported from Dibiri and other villages near the mouth of the Fly River, on its left bank.”

Chalmers (1903b:123) also commented on the scale of canoe output: “The large and best canoes are dug out at the villages near the mouth of the [Fly] river on the left [east] bank. Once I called there, and all along the bank, in front of the village, were quite a hundred large canoes, covered with coconut leaves. My boat’s crew were natives of Ipisia and Saguane [villages on Kiwai Island], and, as soon as those ashore saw them, the coconut leaves were thrown aside and the canoes exposed for sale.”

Early twentieth-century records provide glimpses of the elaborate secular and ritual processes associated with transformation of tree object-beings into canoe object-beings with production of canoe hulls at the mouth of the Fly River (Landtman 1927; Lawrence 1994, 2010; Riley 1925). Riley (1925:110) observed that before the carefully selected tree was chopped down, these words were spoken: “You now stand up a tree; we are going to cut you down; you will presently walk about on the top of the water; by and by we shall decorate you.” The root end of the tree was always the bow end of the canoe, and it would take forty–sixty men to drag a canoe to the riverbank (Riley 1925:113). Riley (1925:109) noted that construction was staggered because of other commitments; thus “to complete one may take from six to twelve months, after which finishing touches are given to it.” Landtman (1927:209) made these observations: “While the work [hollowing out the tree trunk] was in progress the workers were not allowed to swim in the sea, for this would not only harm the canoe, but themselves as well. There existed an association between the tree and the canoe-builder: the sap flowing from the cuts in the tree was its blood, and by way of a sympathetic connection between the two, the builder’s skin was thought to have been pierced in a magical sense, so that if he got into the sea, the water would penetrate his body and drag him down.”

After decoration, the final act of transformation was as follows: “The old couple also ‘wake up’ the canoe by swinging a bullroarer close to the bow of it, first in reference to the harpooning of a dugong or turtle, and then a second time for the capturing of the animal, these two actions being looked upon as distinct” (Landtman 1927:211).

Anthropomorphism and Zoomorphism

Torres Strait canoes were anthropomorphized and zoomorphized by the addition and attribution of a range of anatomical features. The bow of the canoe served as a head, the stern of the canoe was a tail, and the main body of the canoe hull seems to have functioned as a torso. The overall anthropomorphic/zoomorphic form of Torres Strait canoes is revealed in a series of three sketches of canoes from Mabuyag in western Torres Strait by local senior cultural expert Gizu (figure 8.3:top).

Bow (Head)

In 1844–45 Sweatman noted that “the bow is highly ornamented with carving, paint, shells and emu [cassowary] feathers, being often fashioned into a rude resemblance of a human head” (cited in Allen and Corris 1977:35). These features included separate eye, mouth, and beard elements across the bow plus the attachment of prow figureheads.

An “eye” element is located on the triangular-shaped weatherboard behind the prow washboard at the front of the canoe (e.g., figures 8.2, 8.3:top, 8.4:top). Raven (1990:140) reports that on Boigu in the northern strait an eye “was painted on canoes to assist them in locating prey.” Similarly, on Kiwai Island at the mouth of the Fly River immediately northeast of Torres Strait, Landtman (1927:211) recorded that “the man provides the bow of the canoe with painted eyes, also gluing on real eyes of a rúburúbu or warío (two large hawks).” As a result, the canoe was seen to have the same capacity as men to see dugongs and turtles while out on hunting trips (Landtman 1927:211).

A “mouth” element is located on the canoe prow and often took the form of a woven framework that extended beyond the tip of the canoe hull (figures 8.2–8.4). The framework essentially represented an open mouth with upper and lower jaws, usually lined with shell attachments that possibly represented teeth. Haddon (1912:215) stated explicitly that this attachment was referred to as gud (mouth) in Kala Lagaw Ya (western Torres Strait language).

A “beard” element is usually located directly below the mouth element and consists of tassels of plant fibers hanging down such that they usually drag through the water during voyaging (figures 8.2–8.4). In 1840 d’Urville observed that prows of canoes at Tudu in the central strait have an attachment that “represented an old man with a long beard of seaweed” (1846, cited in Rosenman 1987 2:550). Haddon (1912:215) recorded that Torres Strait canoe prows feature “a fringe of shredded young coco-nut leaves” that “represents a beard, imus,” according to the Meriam of the eastern strait. Furthermore, “Tufts of cassowary feathers may also be inserted along the sides of the end-board [washboard], along part of the junction of the weather-board and gunwale, and at the end of the former; these feathers are called ‘whiskers’ by the Miriam [sic]” (Haddon 1912:215).

Some canoe prows featured figureheads in the form of either a single anthropomorphic head or twin zoomorphic bird heads. In terms of anthropomorphic figureheads, King (1837:754) observed that some Torres Strait canoes “have the head carved with the figure of a man, ornamented with strings of cowries.” Haddon (1904:353) recorded that anthropomorphic figureheads represented dogai, who in western Torres Strait were a “class of powerful beings, or bogeys . . . who generally were on the look out to do mischief . . . some however were good . . . [and] they could assume a seductive appearance” (figure 8.5). As all dogai were female (Haddon 1904:353), the addition of dogai figureheads suggests attribution of female gender for at least part of the canoe. In addition, dogai figureheads likely imbued canoes with some form of spiritual protection or spiritual agency in terms of voyaging success (McNiven 2015a:177). In terms of zoomorphic bird figureheads, Haddon (1912:215) documented two such examples on Mabuyag—one where “the heads, ngagalau kwik, represent the sea-eagle, ngagalaig,” the other carving “kisu kwik . . . portraying a hawk-like bird, kisulaig” (figure 8.5).

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Figure 8.5. Western Torres Strait canoe figureheads. Top: Figurehead with a female (anthropomorphic) dogai head with characteristic large ears, Saibai. Collected by Alfred Haddon 1898. Courtesy, Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Z.9697. Length: 43 cm (Moore 1984:59). Bottom: Figurehead with two heads representing the sea-eagle (ngagalaig), Mabuyag. Collected by Alfred Haddon 1898. Courtesy, Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Z.9698. Length: 48 cm (Moore 1984:50).

Stern (Tail)

Haddon (1904:338) observed that on top of a canoe stern post “a wooden fish’s tail was sometimes present which, from its shape, was almost certainly intended to represent the tail of a king-fish or one of the allied predaceous gigantic mackerel. All these creatures are voracious fishers” (see also Haddon 1912:216).

Hull (Torso)

Few details are available on the major central section of the canoe hull between the “head” and the “tail” and whether it was modified to visually enhance association with a body or torso. Haddon (1912:209) remarked that in western Torres Strait language the phrase for removing bilge water from a canoe was usi depaupli, where usi is “urine or bilge water.” Ray (1907:163) added that usi also meant “bladder.” This association among urine, bladder, and bilge water is remarkable as it suggests strongly that the accumulation of bilge water is linked to the process of urination, implying that a canoe is considered an animate being with bodily functions.

Intentionalization and Predatorization

Torres Strait canoes were intentionalized and predatorized to seek out the two key hunted food items: turtle and dugongs. Both dugongs and especially turtles were hunted by men with harpoons and canoes. Success in hunting turtles and dugongs was assisted by hunters undertaking a range of tangible and intangible activities to help ensure that canoes expressed an intentionalized desire to seek out these key prey animals. These activities included inscribing representations of predatory fish onto canoes, attaching carved representations of the tails of predatory fish to canoe sterns, attaching hunting magic charms to the bows and sterns of canoes, and giving specific names to canoes (discussed below).

Fish Images

In 1840 d’Urville recorded a large representation of a fish (which he identified as a “porpoise”) on the bow weatherboard of a canoe on the beach at Tudu (figure 8.4). Brierly’s 1850 illustration of the canoe Bruwan features a zoomorphic creature on the starboard side of the bow, while Haddon’s 1888 watercolor painting of a canoe bow from Mabuyag reveals what he describes as a stylized representation of a fish, possibly a remora (gapu) (Haddon 1912:214) (figure 8.4). In the 1840s Brierly (cited in Moore 1979:104) also observed representations of remora on the gunwale at the stern of Kaurareg canoes in southwest Torres Strait (figure 8.6): “I observed a bit of carving near the stern, on one side, and from the strong resemblance it bore to the sucker fish’s head, looking down upon it from above, the outline of the sucker on the head, the projecting lower jaw which would be seen beyond the upper one, and the position of the eyes, placed near the mouth at the side, had all been observed and were characteristics of the fish which could not be mistaken. Upon my pointing to it and asking what it was, Cheakow immediately answered gapoo queekoo—‘gapu’s head.’ ”

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Figure 8.6. Detail of the stern of Bruwan, a Kaurareg canoe from Muralag, southwest Torres Strait. Note engraved representation of a remora’s head at the stern end of the gunwale (enlarged view shown in top left). Pencil sketch and watercolor by Oswald Brierly, November 6, 1849. Courtesy, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, PXA 510.

Hunting Magic Charms

A broad range of portable hunting magic charms was either carried onboard canoes or attached to canoe hulls. These charms were intended to help hunters obtain turtles and dugongs by attracting prey to hunters, and vice versa. Small wooden carvings of turtles and dugongs were placed in the bow of canoes as hunting charms (Haddon 1904:333–38, 1912:390, 1935:86). In addition, parts of special plants and “the head, oesophagus and probably trachea of a turtle stuffed” with special plants were “fastened” to the bow, the stern, or both of canoes to magically aid the capture of turtles (Haddon 1904:330). Small carvings of fish were taken onboard canoes, and resin chewed with plant “medicine” and “spat on the bow of a canoe” would magically assist with success in obtaining fish and large cone shells used as valuables (Haddon 1908:218).

In 1849 Brierly recorded that the stern staves were similar to staves forming part of a turtle-hunting magic shrine on Turtle Island and suggested that the canoe staves were associated with attracting turtles for hunting (cited in Moore 1979:105, 122, 198, 210). Haddon (1904:338; see also Ray 1907:129) adds that on Mabuyag he recorded stern staves with serrated edges and terminations carved to “represent” the head of either a “frigate-bird” (womer/waumer) or, more occasionally, a “sea-eagle” (ngagalaig), which he thought indicated “a magical significance” and use as turtle/dugong “charms” (figure 8.7). Both the frigate-bird and sea-eagle staves, along with the frigate-bird and sea-eagle figureheads and kingfish tail carvings (described above), are animals that according to Haddon (1912:216) “are voracious catchers of fish, and the representation of them would therefore be obvious to the native mind. Their use would therefore be analogous to that of the canoe [hunting] charms.” This view is consistent with a pair of White-breasted Sea Eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster) claws with palm-leaf ties collected from Mabuyag in 1933 that were “used in canoes on fishing and fighting expeditions” and “held in the middle of the canoe in both hands in order to draw near, by magic, the enemy’s canoe” (Florek 2005:77).

figure-c008.f007

Figure 8.7. Canoe stern staves (gozed), Mabuyag. Collected by Alfred Haddon, 1898. Courtesy, Cambridge University Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, Z.9693a and Z.9693b.

Names

It is possible that the names given to canoes (often painted on the gunwale after European contact) in some cases contributed to the expression of intentionalized and predatory agency. For example, in 1849 Brierly (cited in Moore 1979:150–51) recorded the names and meanings of a number of Kaurareg canoes from the southwest strait, including “Uzanna, which means a large net,” “Bidthem—a poisonous snake” (both possible references to the hunting of turtles), and “Maleel, meaning iron bar” (a possible reference to the desire for much-coveted iron). As Brierly (1849, cited in Moore 1979:150) notes, the Kaurareg “are great wreckers and pull the ships [European wrecks] to pieces as much as they can to get the iron bars which they call maleel.” On the island of Mabuyag in west-central Torres Strait, Haddon (1904:308) recorded a large canoe named Waumeran that most likely is a reference to waumer, the predatory frigate-bird (Rod Mitchell, personal communication, 2014).

Waking Up

An important insight into the possibility of the intentionality of canoes extending into sentience is provided by rituals of “waking up” canoes prior to voyaging. Landtman (1927:211) observed at Mawatta village on the New Guinea coast opposite Torres Strait that people “wake up” a canoe by swinging a bullroarer close to the bow, not only during the construction of canoes (discussed above) but also prior to hunting expeditions. In what may be a related reference to Torres Strait Islanders, Haddon (1904:331) recorded that on Mabuyag, “preparatory to starting out to catch the floating turtles the men took a bull-roarer from the agu [turtle shrine] and swung it over the canoe” (figure 8.3:bottom).

Dismemberment and Dispersal

While Torres Strait canoes were “owned” by men of high status, in reality, payments to canoe hull makers in New Guinea using shell valuables were made in installments that extended for the life of the canoe. Full payment and final ownership, ironically, was complete once a canoe’s voyaging life was over. Following the situation with Gawa kula canoes described by Munn (1977:45), it is possible that Torres Strait canoes were inalienably linked to their New Guinea producers. Landtman (1927:214) reported that “when at last the canoe broke up, the owner sent the seller an armshell or string of dogs’ teeth (which highly valued ornaments seem to have been conventionally regarded as the last installment in paying for a canoe), and, to emphasize the significance of this gift, he attached a small piece of the broken craft to it.” Furthermore, “If a canoe got wrecked or was destroyed in some other way shortly after its purchase, the owner sent in the ordinary final payment, together with a piece of the ruined vessel, as mentioned above, but no further installment after that” (Landtman 1927:215).

A number of small canoes in Torres Strait were observed to have been manufactured from sections of large canoes (Barham and Harris 1987:94; Haddon 1904:75, 104, 1908:25, 1912:158, 207; MacGillivray 1852 2:40). In addition to the recycling of large canoes into smaller canoes and the use of hull fragments in the final canoe payment, fragments of old canoe hulls were known to have been re-carved into canoe washboards on Dauan (Moresby 1875:4), house doors on Mer (Haddon 1912:105, 1935:300), and receptacles for carrying freshly caught fish on Dauar (Haddon 1908:16), while the centerboard was used as a standing platform on dugong-hunting platforms (Haddon 1912:167; Riley 1925:133). However, fragments of old canoes were also transformed into new objects used in a range of spiritually charged and ritual contexts. Examples include hull fragments used as house taboo markers on Mabuyag (Haddon 1904:270), corpse stretchers on Mer (Haddon 1935:323), and grave goods on Mabuyag (Haddon 1904:286). Similarly, sections of gunwale were carved and used in turtle-hunting ceremonies on Pulu by the people of Mabuyag (Haddon 1935:353; Moore 1984:148), central canoe platform and crates were used as a support for the Waiat spirit-being figure on Dauar (Haddon 1908:277, 1935:fig. 47), and a stern post was carved into a tobacco charm on Dauan (Haddon 1904:346, 1908:207).

Fragmentation and ritualization may help contextualize a curious 33-cm-long fragment of a canoe stern post with evidence of a carved human face collected by Haddon from Tudu in 1888 (Moore 1984). The highly weathered condition of the carving indicates curation for some time and strongly suggests that the object held special significance that extended beyond its time as part of a canoe.

In a related sense, the complex mortuary practices of Torres Strait Islanders involved body fragmentation such that skulls were kept by families for divination, while skulls, jaws, and limb bones could be incorporated into various ritual objects and selected bones were often interred in rock niches or buried (e.g., Haddon 1904:248–61, 362, 364, 1908:266–69, 1935:321). Similarly, bodies taken in raids were usually decapitated, with skulls and jaws used in a range of ritual and spiritually charged contexts, while eyes and cheek flesh could be eaten to gain strength (e.g., Haddon 1904:369, 1908:275, 1935:387). As with dead people, the inalienable bodies and personhood of dead canoes were similarly fragmented, distributed, and used in a wide range of new social and ritual contexts that acknowledged a dead canoe’s ongoing sociality, agency, enchainment, and entanglement (see Chapman 2000; Hodder 2012).

Discussion

Torres Strait canoes were complex object-beings whose inherent capacities for animacy and intentionalized agency were given expression by people through a wide range of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic processes. These processes were central to how canoe object-beings were socialized to become active and useful members of Torres Strait Islander communities. Culturally relevant animacy and agency were achieved through a range of strategies of predatorization such that canoes desired and helped facilitate access to both food items (e.g., turtles and dugongs) and objects (e.g., iron from shipwrecks). The expression of intentionalized desire by Torres Strait canoe object-beings has direct parallels with other parts of Melanesia where canoes were similarly described as expressing “desires” during voyages for fast speed and prized shell exchange valuables (e.g., Barlow and Lipset 1997; Campbell 2002; Munn 1977, 1986).

Critically, the animacy and agency of Torres Strait canoe object-beings were not the result of projection, imbuement, or ascription by people. Animacy and agency were inherent vital qualities traceable back to the trees on the New Guinea mainland from which canoe hulls were shaped. As Ingold (2006:10) reminds us: “Animacy, then, is not a property of persons imaginatively projected onto the things with which they perceive themselves to be surrounded. Rather—and this is my second point—it is the dynamic, transformative potential of the entire field of relations within which beings of all kinds, more or less person-like or thing-like, continually and reciprocally bring one another into existence. The animacy of the lifeworld, in short, is not the result of an infusion of spirit into substance, or of agency into materiality, but is rather ontologically prior to their differentiation.” Thus, the addition of painted eyes to prows helped express the inherent capacity of canoes to see prey, the attachment of wooden carvings of carnivorous fish tails to sterns helped express the inherent capacity of canoes for predatory desires, and so on.

The degree to which Torres Strait canoe object-beings were considered sentient and autonomous object-beings is more difficult to determine using existing anthropological and historical sources. No explicit records were found to match notions of Torres Strait canoe object-beings generally possessing a life force and sentience, as documented in other parts of Melanesia by Lipset (2014) and Tilley (1999). However, Haddon’s anthropological writings and Lawrie’s (1970) detailed compendium of legendary stories provide a number of examples to support the view that Torres Strait canoes operated as autonomous, sentient object-beings in certain ontological contexts. First, the “waking up” of canoes prior to hunting trips implies some notion of an object-being with a life force and perhaps with sentience. Second, the castaway concept of sarup (see below) reveals that the sea and canoe could conspire against and reject mariners, which was tantamount to a death sentence. Third, Sigai, an important anthropomorphic culture hero and ceremonial cult founder of the Kulkalgal people of central Torres Strait, “took on the form of a canoe” and “moved of its own volition” (Lawrie 1970:253–54), which suggests that canoes could be sentient and autonomous object-beings in specific spiritual contexts. This inference is corroborated by Bomai, an anthropomorphic culture hero and ceremonial cult founder of the Meriam of eastern Torres Strait, who similarly had the capacity to change into a canoe and various marine animals (Haddon 1908:33–36, 1935:71).

A little understood dimension of the sociality of canoes is their relationship with the sea. Previously, I have discussed seascapes as anthropomorphized spiritscapes that can be engaged socially by people (McNiven 2004, 2008). The concept of Torres Strait canoes as object-beings raises the question of to what extent canoes engaged with the sentient qualities of the sea, and vice versa, independent of human agency. Apart from hunting magic (described above), it is known that Torres Strait Islanders could alter the nature of engagements between canoes and marine elements through ritual practices. Examples include special magic to ensure that whales either avoid “destroying” canoes or destroy the canoes of enemies (Hunt 1899:8; see also Haddon 1935:106, 169), to bring up winds for favorable and unfavorable sailing conditions (Haddon 1890:402, 1904:351), and to ensure a favorable voyaging pathway through rough seas (Haddon 1904:352).

Perhaps the clearest indication that canoes and the sea could interact socially independent of humans is revealed by the concept of sarup (castaways). Those unfortunate mariners who became shipwrecked through a canoe mishap at sea but managed to make it ashore alive as castaways were known as sarup and were invariably killed (irrespective of whether they came ashore on their home island or the island of another community) (Haddon 1935:196, 349–50). Indeed, “If a canoe overturned more than about thirty yards from the shore, all who had been onboard it became sarup” (Lawrie 1970:74). Thus, a “sarup was a man without hope from the moment that his canoe sank” (Lawrie 1970:74). In a sense, people became sarup because they had been rejected by both the sea and its agent, the canoe. Sarup executions were considered necessary, as castaways were deemed physically and mentally unstable and hence metaphysically dangerous to communities. Scott’s (2004:263) ethnographic work on Erub in the eastern strait describes this human-sea relationship and the fate of sarup: “The proper relationship of mind to physical reality is mastery through conformity to powers that transcend human agency. Navigation at sea, an omnipresent reminder of such power, has long symbolised this relationship. According to tradition, to lose harmony with the sea was tantamount to a loss of mind and human status. Individuals were frequently rendered insane by such an ordeal and survivors might be considered as good as dead. Shipwrecked individuals, sarup, were regarded with fear, as no longer fit for society.”

Westerdahl (2005:3) refers to a boat as a potent “liminal agent,” and Torres Strait canoes expressed such liminality in a broad range of contexts. Apart from association with the concept of sarup, canoe liminality was realized through the mix of male and female gender attributes mirrored behaviorally in the almost daily alternations between fishing trips on reefs where both men and women were involved and turtle- and dugong-hunting trips, which were undertaken only by men. Furthermore, all trips involved transitioning between the ontological domains of the beach/village (inactive/resting) and the sea (active/hunting/voyaging) (see Munn 1977). For Torres Strait Islanders, the sea itself was a liminal domain, as mariners shared the waters with the voyaging dead. That is, ghosts of the dead (known as markai in the western strait and lamar in the eastern strait), traveling in their spirit canoes, could also be seen by mariners (e.g., Lawrie 1970:29–30, 40, 276–77). Among the Kaurareg of the southwest strait in the 1840s, Brierly recorded that “when the wind blows and the clouds break open, they will point to them and say, Markieli warroo-ya ypoo—‘The markai (spirits) are looking at the turtle in the water,’ and say that the spirits come down and take the turtle up into the clouds and eat them” (cited in Moore 1979:151). Haddon (1904:358) similarly recorded that “on ordinary occasions the markai paddle the canoe in the open sea on calm nights to catch turtle, dugong or fish.”

The liminality of spiritual canoes of the dead illustrates the multidimensional ontological status of Torres Strait canoe object-beings (see also Brady 2010). A further dimension to canoe liminality is revealed by their transformational ontological status whereby canoes changed into other entities. In addition to culture heroes such as Bomai, who had the capacity to transform into a canoe, turtle, dugong, porpoise, crayfish, and whale (see above), legendary stories mention the magical transformation of feathers and coconut shells into canoes and the transformation of canoes into star constellations and stones that can still be seen today (Haddon 1904:51, 1908:3–4, 315, 1935:132; Lawrie 1970:19, 97, 132, 153). Examples of the latter include the canoes of Tagai, Abob, and Malo on the reef edge on Mer, Kuyam’s canoe on Gebar, and the Seven Blind Brothers’ canoe on Mua (Haddon 1904:75, 1908:26; Lawrie 1970:3–4, 33, 97, 305, 332).

Conclusion

Torres Strait canoes and many Melanesian canoes more generally were object-beings that were intentionalized and predatorized through a range of ritualized strategies to facilitate socially and culturally desirable engagements with the marine realm (prey and elements). This animate ontological status alerts archaeologists to the potential agentive dimensions of marine vessels as socialized actors in maritime contexts. While the extent to which Torres Strait canoes possessed sentience and autonomy outside of very specific spiritual and ontologically fluid transformational contexts remains uncertain, they clearly were anthropomorphized and zoomorphized as specific forms of animate object-beings. In this sense, Torres Strait canoes fit within a broader Melanesian cultural context in which canoes were similarly materialized and socialized as object-beings through human formulation and intervention. Bell and Geismar (2009:4, 6, original emphasis) encapsulate these views well with their notion of “materialization,” seen as “an ongoing lived process whereby concepts, beliefs and desires are given form that are [sic] then transformed and transforming in their social deployment.” Informed by Appadurai (1986), they add that “by taking a processual view of objects, their concreteness emerges as a momentary point in a spectrum of making, use and dissembling that constitutes their biographies, their social lives” (Bell and Geismar 2009:5). In this sense, the agentive lives of Torres Strait canoes materialized and unfolded while participating within complex and dynamic relational matrices and co-constitutive social arenas involving people (alive and dead), animals (alive and dead), spirit-beings (tangible and intangible), other object-beings (animate and inanimate), and the sentient realm of the sea.

Acknowledgments

The core of this chapter was presented as a paper in the Towards Social Maritime Archaeologies session at the 2006 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference in Exeter. I thank session organizer Robert van de Noort, as well as John Chapman, for helpful feedback. Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology kindly provided access to the Haddon photographic and material culture collection. Thanks also to volume editors Eleanor Harrison-Buck and Julia Hendon for the kind invitation to contribute to this volume and for helpful comments on earlier drafts. This paper was written during a visiting fellowship at Oxford University. Special thanks to St. Cross and All Souls Colleges for logistical support. Helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter were kindly made by Lynette Russell.

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