)UANTIFYING WOMEN'S OPPRESSION IN PREHISTORY: 'HE ANEITYUM (VANUATU) CASE Matthew Spriggs Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia san as the Jord of creation indulges himself inindotence; the drudgery and hard labour falls to the lot of the wife, (J. Geddie MR February 1852:20-1) Such descriptions of gender relations on Aneityum in the early missionary period of the 1840s and 1850s are common. They provide a picture of fairly unrelenting oppression of women. on that island. Although details of gender relations, the divi- sion of labour and the sex structure of the popu- lation at particular times have proved elusive so far in the archaeological record of Melanesia, they have obvious implications for an effective explanation of that archaeological record and must be taken into account. Just as it is import- ant to know who made the Lapita pots (Marshall 1985), it is important to consider who made the gardens when considering archaeological evi- dence for agricultural intensification such as is documented for Aneityum (Spriggs 1981, 1985, 1986). As well as considering the processes of agri- cultural intensification on Aneityum, the research. on which this chapter is based also attempted to evaluate the widely divergent estimations for the population of the island at European contact, using the geographer Bayliss-Smith's (1978, 1980) model for a ‘welfare’ approach to carrying capacity and related demographic questions. This seemed appropriate when taking note of the criticisms of various archaeological methods of population estimation (Spriggs 1981:77-9), as his approach works variable levels of output and ‘input into carrying capacity models making them more realistic in modelling likely population sizes. Bayliss-Smith points out that in addition to subsistence production there are important forms of social and trade production for which the motivation is not primarily subsistence. In addition there can be variable labour inputs in different societies depending on what is perceived as a tolerable level of agricultural work input. The model requires information on the age and sex structure of the population and the divi- sion of labour as well as the different means of subsistence and the area under cultivation at the time to be considered. While the last two sets of information could be established by archaco- logical survey, the rest are not directly repre- sented in the archaeological record as presently known for Aneityum, Historical information from written and oral sources relating to the early contact period has therefore been used to recon- struct these parameters for the eve of contact in 1830. ‘The consequences of particular pathways of agricultural intensification attested in the arc- hhaeological record as leading to this ‘ethno- historic baseline’ can also be considered using the historical information. THE SOURCES It might be argued that missionary letters written for an audience that was footing the bill for converting the heathen were likely to paint a particularly strong contrast between traditional native practice and ‘civilised’ norms of behaviour, even to the point of fantasy. The fact that a similar description of gender relations was pro- vided by an anti-mission sandalwood worker (Anon, nd.) gives some support, however. Information on other more neutral aspects of Aneityumese society from a variety of historical sources and from oral history collected by me in the late 1970s fits this picture too, and cautious use of analogy from the ethnography of other parts of Melanesia is also suggestive for con- struction of a partial model of gender relations in the early contact period. In the end though a personal judgement has to be made on the veracity of any source material. John and Char- lotte Geddie, the island's first permanent white missionaries who arrived in 1848 and stayed until 1872, were hardly disinterested observers of native mores, but I do believe them to be honest observers of events they witnessed (see also Jolly 1991 for a discussion of these sources). Although Ancityumese were present at Port Resolution on Tanna in 1809 when Golovnin's 43Sprisgs ship landed, the first contact with Europeans on Aneityumese soil occurred in 1830. In 1841 the London Missionary Society landed Samoan cate- cchists on the island but between 1830 and 1841 there were other contacts, presumably with san- dalwood traders or whalers. A sandalwood sta- tion was situated on the island between 1844 and 1853. While there are some records of these early contacts (see Spriggs 1981:20-1), most of our knowledge of this early historical period comes from the missionary sources, particularly records by John Geddie and by his colleague John Inglis, the latter being on Aneityum from 1852 to 1876. ‘There were some important changes to ‘Aneityumese society attendant upon contact prior to the settlement of the European missionaries. ‘The introduction of European diseases appears to have led to population decrease and some aban- donment of garden areas. Some new crops such as sweet potato were introduced but appear not to have become important elements in the diet at that period. Some men were engaged as labour- ers in collecting and (after 1844) processing san- dalwood, although mainly around the sandalwood station at Anclcauhat. Women were being of- fered by chiefs and/or their husbands for sexual services to sailors in retum for European goods, again presumably only in the immediate environs of the sandalwood establishment. It also appears that metal tools had already generally replaced stone by 1848. While these changes may have affected the division of labour on occasion, the number of people engaged in servicing the sandalwood station was never large. Missionary comments on all these changes would suggest that they would have been aware of any which would have greatly altered the island's social structure. As sailors much preferred the easily storable yams to taro, the island was not an important centre for provisioning ships and so no important contact-induced intensification of pro- duction for trade purposes is likely in the pre- 1848 period. WOMEN'S PLACE The traditional sexual division of labour in agricultural tasks has now broken down under church and other extemal influences, but at con- tact it seems clear that much of the agricultural ‘work was done by women. In one account it is stated that women were, the servants of men and do much of the manual labour. They fish, dig, gather Fuel, collect food, 44 cook and nurse their children (Copeland, RPM, October 1866376). ‘At least one source claims that taro gardening was exclusively the work of women, with yam gardening as solely the task of men: ‘They do not plant and grow many yams not sufficient for there own fashons the yams is held as a luxury. If this was the work of the females, there would be more grown, whercas, the Tarrh, they have a sufficiency, because this is the entre work of the women (Anon. nd: 14-15, punctuation and spelling as in the original}. This is similar to the traditional division of labour recorded for New Caledonia (Barrau 1965:337-9) and in other southem Melanesian societies such as on Tanna (Spriggs 1986:17). ‘Women were also heavily involved in tend- ing pigs, a cause of inconvenience to Charlotte eddie whose school for women was temporarily closed because the women were kept busy fat- ‘ening pigs for an upcoming feast. Tam afraid it will be a long time, ere the ‘women of this dark island will learn to read. At this place they are now all busy feeding pigs for ‘a grea feast that isto take place some three or four months hence ... the poor women have a hard time of it, collecting food forthe pigs, and they are as particular in baking it for them, as if it Were for themselves (C. Geddie, eter April 1850, MR. December 1852:186; letter nd May 1850, MR March 18: Even today weeding and harvesting are usu- ally female tasks, as are shellfish gathering and cooking activities. Oral history suggests that garden preparation was traditionally a task per- formed by men when only clearing was involved, and by both sexes when tillage was necessary, bbut that planting, weeding and harvesting were female tasks. Thus a disproportionate amount of garden work was done by women. ‘When missionaries Geddie and Inglis took the first census in 1854 they noted a marked imbal- ance in numbers between the sexes, due to greater infanticide of female children and the strangling of women upon the death of their husband or sometimes other close relatives — there is in fact no word for widow in the Aneityumese language G.Geddie, MR August 1855:125 cf. McArthur 1974:65-7, 123-4)(2). Chiefs had a role in arrang- ing marriages, the women apparently having little or no say at all (J.Geddie, MR February [1] This account was written in the 1860s (McArthur 1974:34, 45) by sailor who pethape worked for the sandalwood station on Ancityum in the 1840s and early 1850s. His last visit vo Ancityum was in 1860, [2] Widow strangulation appears to have been willingly centered into by women. Possible motives for this are ‘examined by Jolly (1991).1852:20; Inglis, RPM July 1867:253). Sister- ‘exchange was the preferred form and no bride- price was involved according to Aneityumese informants. Sexual antagonism and violence against women leading to their death or subsequent suicide were frequently recorded by the mission- aries. In 1851 John Geddie wrote (MR December 1852:188): ‘When we landed on the island, females were regarded as brutes, and weaied as such, If a woman dazed to disobey the word of her hus- ‘and, o rather, maser, a good clubbing was the consequence. I kow of two instances in which women have been murdered inthis way, and the natives say ithas been a common occurence on this island. On one occasion, I picked up a woman on the shore, who had been eaten by her husband so severely with a club, that he lft her for dead. With the assistance. of some natives I brought her home, and attended her for several weeks. Her skull was awfully fractured, portions of her brain came away, and her body ‘was otherwise dreadful mangled. She recov- cred, but will carry the marks of her wounds to the grave. Similar accounts abound in the literature G. Geddie, Journal:80, 84, 113, 217; J. Geddie, MR February 1852:12-21; J. Geddie, MR Sep- tember 1852:134)(3]. While it is recorded that a boy's birth was greeted with celebration, the birth of females was not rejoiced over (J. Geddie, MR February 1852:19; Inglis 1887:274). ‘Agricultural production limits were effectively set by the amount of work women could be pressured into doing, but their numbers were limited by infanticide and strangulation of wid- ‘ows, monopolised by the polygamy of chiefs and elders, and rationed by these same men who allocated them as wives. At one level such limiting practices can be seen as operating as a social control over the behaviour of younger men, with obedience being demanded in retum for a wife (Cf. Terray 1972). As John Geddie noticed, the imbalance of the sexes meant that ‘no less than 600 men are doomed to a life of hopeless celibacy’ (MR August 1855:125). Women were thus (to men) a scarce and extremely valuable exchange object controlled by chiefs and family heads. ‘Women were of course the producers of the producers and selective infanticide, although [3] As Margaret Jolly (pers. comm.) has pointed out, at Teast some of these incidents involved conflicts created by the mission presence — women wanted to attend religious services and their non-Christian husbands tried to prevent them. This perticular aspect of women's oppression may therefore have been exacerbated by the religious conflict on the island. Quantifying Women's Oppression in Prehistory probably not strangling of widows, may have served as a population limiting or stabilising ‘mechanism (McArthur 1974:65-8, Chapter 5). There is no evidence, however, that the island was populated at anything like ‘carrying capacity’ and so a population control function seems unlikely. Socially sanctioned violence against ‘women elsewhere in Melanesia has been inter- preted as coercion to extract obedience and in particular increased labour inputs into agricultural tasks under conditions of agricultural intensifica- tion (cf. Modjeska 1977:252-8). A general argu- ment, however, linking the degree of inten- sification in Melanesia with acts of violence against women cannot be sustained (Margaret Jolly, pers. comm.). For instance, low intensity systems in the Eastem Highlands of New Guinea show high levels of such violence. Jolly further notes that women's oppression is not immediately reducible to levels of agricultural input and physical abuse. Lack of reproductive control and exclusion from realms of knowledge and power are also important, and can certainly be evidenced from mid-nineteenth century Aneityum as well. Whatever the causes of women’s oppression on Aneityum, it is perhaps not surprising that the missionaries’ best ‘customers’ in the beginning were women and younger men, the two sets of people with least t0 lose in the destruction of the traditional social and religious system (J. Geddie, Joumnal:75). MODELLING THE DIVISION OF LABOUR AND AGE AND SEX STRUCTURE During my 1978-80 fieldwork on Aneityum I carried out ethnographic observation of gardening tasks with a view to assessing pre-contact labour inputs for particular garden types (Spriggs 1981:Chapter 3). An adjustment was needed to account for the present use of metal tools in some gardening tasks, and this was calculated to be a pre-stee! increase in gardening labour of 1.1 to 1.5 times in Aneityum garden types (Spriggs 1981:Appendix 4). It should be noted that the availability of metal tools has brought tangible benefits in reducing labour in traditional male ‘garden tasks, but has affected labour in traditional women's tasks to a much smaller degree. Table 1 represents the calculations of labour input and productivity in gardening on Aneityum in 1830. As can be seen, the percentage of female labour in different types of gardens varied between 60% and 87%. As no modem fertilisers are used on Aneityumese gardens, contemporary 14s