To‘i ma‘a (stone adze)

Before the arrival of metal tools in Samoa in the early 1800s, the most important tool for woodworking was the to‘i ma‘a (hafted stone adze). This was made from a piece of worked stone with a sharpened edge that was lashed with coconut fibre cord to a handle made from timber. For Samoans, to‘i ma‘a were everyday tools used for the cutting of curved rafters of fale (houses), shaping and fitting the planks of va‘a (canoes) and manufacturing bowls and containers, and other tools, clubs and edged weapons.

Stone sources

The preferred stone used for making the adze head was a finely grained basalt sourced from stone quarries on the island of Tutuila. Archaeological investigations indicate that Tutuila was the centre of an adze making industry in Samoa and part of a network of inter-island exchange and communication. Archaeologists have used techniques of geochemical analysis to show that adzes of Samoan type or style found in Tokelau, Fiji and the eastern Solomon Islands originally came from Tutuila (1). Within the last 600 years or so, Tutuila basalts were reaching the Cook Islands, and by 300 years ago they were in Tonga (2).

Manufacture

To make a blade an adze maker would take a suitable piece of stone and roughly chip it into the desired shape by striking it with a hammer stone. They would then take it to a location near a water source, where they could grind the roughly shaped adze to produce a useable edge. Boulders on the river or sea shore were used for this purpose, and to this day remain pitted with round smooth dish like concave areas and grooves where the cutting edges of the adze blades were sharpened (3). The adze maker would lash the finished adze head to its wooden handle.

New technology

Adze makers created several types of adze and stone tools to fulfill different requirements and tasks - larger blades for heavy duty work and shaping, smaller blades for detailing and finer work. However, soon after the arrival of Europeans and the introduction of metals such as iron and steel, stone adze blades quickly disappeared from the carpenter’s tool kit and the basalt quarries were soon abandoned. Steel adzes, axes, chisels and planes became the most popular and common tools for the woodworker.

Acquisition History

This adze is part of a collection made by Rhys Richards in 1987-88 when he was Second Secretary at the New Zealand High Commission in Apia (4). He had collected the to‘i ma‘a mostly from the villages of Solosolo, Lufilufi and Luatuanu‘u where they were surface gathered by children. The collection consists of over 700 to‘i ma‘a, mostly complete and most localized to a village or to a particular section of a village. This example is from Luatuanu‘u.

References

1. Best. S. P.Sheppard, R.Green., R.Parker. 1992 Necromancing the Stone: Archaeologists and Adzes in American Samoa. Journal of the Polynesian Society 101: 45-85

2. Clark.J.T. 1996 page 453  Samoan Prehistory in Review. In Davidson,J.M., Irwin,G., Leach,B.F., Pawley,A., and Brown,D.,(eds) Oceanic Culture History: Essays in Honour of Roger Green 1996, New Zealand Journal of Archaeology Special Publication, pp.445-460

3. American Samoa Historic Preservation Office 1997 Culture history of American Samoa. http://ashpo.org/Samoan_Cultural_History.html

4. Richards, Rhys 1990 "On a surface collection of Western Samoan stone tools," Archaeology in New Zealand, 1 (3) 132-151