The ‘enata way of war: An ethnoarchaeological perspective on warfare dynamics in the Marquesas Islands

At the time of Western contact, warfare had become a critical feature of Polynesian chiefdoms, varying in both scale and intensity (Kirch 1984:197). East Polynesian societies have been described by early Western visitors as violent and often caught in a state of ‘endemic warfare’. This has been archaeologically recognised through the emergence of fortified sites, some of which have developed in a unique way similar to the fortified villages or pare in Rapa Iti (Anderson and Kennett 2012). The famous Maori pa in Aotearoa/New Zealand have also captured the attention of scholars for more than a century (see Best 1975;