German Colonial Jailhouse, Foaga, & Star-Cog Mound

UA MA student standing in doorway of Vaimea Prison, built at the end of the 19th century by the German colonial government of Samoa (formerly Western Samoa).

Monday, July 10, 2023

​Josh Lockhart (UA MA student), Grant Pethel (UA undergrad), and I went by the Centre for Samoan Studies (CSS) at the National University of Samoa (NUS) on Monday; our liaison and CSS cultural anthropologist Dionne Fonoti and archaeologist Greg Jackmond were just coming back from a site visit or something. We had a meeting with our translator-cultural assist Leota Sanele (he is listed as Sanele Leota on NUS sites, but Leota is his chief title and name he goes by, so I will have to probe this convention again to understand what I'm getting wrong) to work on our pile-sorting activity. We also made arrangements to go to Savai''i and buy ferry tickets, which I'll talk more about in the next post. 

Tuesday, July 11

The week before, we read an article in Samoa Observer about a colonial-era prison that CSS was working on interpreting as a new museum exhibit. We asked Greg and Dionne when we were hanging out at the CSS, and they told us about this new project with German scholars who were visiting and volunteered to show us the site. It's nice to know people, as these sites are not always easy to find or made accessible for anyone to visit, as they are usually on private property and not set up for tourism.

We met at the CSS office, and transferred over to a CSS car with Greg. Jackmond was in the Peace Corps in Samoa in the 1970s and was interested in archaeology. He was there when University of Utah archaeologist Jesse Jennings was conducting research and was asked to help. Jackmond worked for several years as an archaeologist there after the Peace Corps but eventually went back to the States. There he had a career as a school teacher specializing in computers. After retirement, Jackmond returned to Samoa to see what all had been accomplished in Samoan archaeology since he left. He was disappointed that Jennings had concluded no more could be found and that not much had been done in 20-30 years in Upolu or Savai'i. He has stayed on in Samoa and has been working with CSS to develop projects with investigators like me. Currently, the website he has set up to make LiDAR map interpretations open access is down, but hopefully I can share some of his material here soon.

Vaimea Prison is just outside of downtown Apia and was built by the German colonial government, which had occupied Samoa from the 1830s till WWI, when Germany lost its colonial holdings, and the administration of then German Samoa was turned over to New Zealand. The country became Western Samoa, and the prison continued to operate until the 1950s or 1960s. Records suggest that Chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III and other leaders of the Mau Movement, a non-violent independence movement that was violently suppressed, were held in Vaimea Prison for some period of time.

The building is smaller than we expected with only about 6 cells and a prison yard. The building has been used for storage for the past 70 years, so the full use and footprint of the building are still being uncovered. The week before, they had hauled all the junk out of these rooms, and in the coming weeks, NUS archaeology students would be documenting the graffiti all over the cell walls, which can be seen in several photos below.

"Overview of Malaefono platform." (Fig. 3, H. Martinsson-Wallin and J. Wehlin, 2010. "Archaeological investigations of a stone platform at the Malaefono Plantation, 'Upolu, Samoa," The Gotland Papers, pp.327-337).

​When we had arrived for the day, Greg had been ready for us with several backpacks of gear. These were kits he has prepared for teaching archaeology, and each contained a few supplies including a tablet set up with Greg's maps. We had tried to drive to a star mound the day before, but we neither had any idea how far we'd need to drive on rocky paths in the jungle (in a rental car that we worried would blow a tire), nor what a star mound would look like when we found it.

But I should back up. What is a star mound, and why did we think we could drive somewhere to find one? When I visited in March, Greg showed me the LiDAR maps that had been recorded in 2000 that showed dozens more "star" or "cog" mounds than had previously been known. Greg notes that they are well-known and documented in American Samoa, but that is only because American archaeologists have focused their efforts there. American Samoa is far smaller than Samoa, but bureaucratically, it is simply much easier for Americans to work there. But, honestly, it is not hard at all to work in Samoa; perhaps it was before CSS was developed by Malama Meleisea and Penelope Schoeffel, but the team there make working in Samoa a breeze and a pleasure.

At any rate, on the maps, these cog shapes are clearly visible, but what they were used for is more mysterious. Greg says that some of the interpretation is based primarily on work in American Samoa and is that they were for chiefs to pigeon-hunt. Archaeologists Helene Martinsson-Wallin and Joakim Wehlin excavated the star mound we would visit and summarize previous research that suggests pigeon-hunting may have been a late prehistoric use of some mounds but that the mounds were ultimately tied up in monumental ritual use over their lifespans.

A story we heard the following week in Savai'i associated with a tourist-friendly mound there is that it was a place for all the chiefs of the Samoan Islands to gather. As Greg points out, there appear to be some post holes in the star mounds we saw, which may have been used like fale posts now (to sit against). There was also a foaga (grinding stone) that was ostensibly dragged up from the water's edge (more on foaga below) to use for 'ava (kava) at one of them.

That star mound is on the western tip of Savai'i and is explained by the locals to be a site where chiefs from all the Samoan Islands came together to deliberate. Maybe, but there are no written records of anything and many stories. I don't know how much ethnoarchaeology has been done to try to elicit the folklore around these, so I will not speculate.

But the closest accessible star mound was a ways out of town toward the airport and ferry. So first Greg would show us a large foaga, or rock used as a grind stone.

​Like everything else, when Greg described these items to us and even when he showed us photos, the size was rarely captured. The foago Greg took us to was large and in the middle of a stream bed. They are typically near stream beds, but they get covered and uncovered by silt and other debris, or access to them opened and closed with village relations over the years.

Greg wanted to document the grinding surfaces of this foaga in case something happened to it. Human interference is also highly likely, as many foaga feature as parts of walls all over the place, Once you know what to look for, they are everywhere. We measured and photographed each grinding surface and added the data to the database. It was fun to do a little archaeology fieldwork and be of use in our exchange with NUS-CSS.

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Finally, Greg took us to see the star mound on the Malaefono Plantation in Tuamasaga that was excavated about 20 years ago. While going to and from, we stopped to photograph foaga alongside the road and driveway of the family who owned the star mound property and some embedded in the Nono'a Spring village swimming pool.

CSS and the family have talked about making the mound accessible for tourism, but the trees keep growing back while the family deliberates, making the mound difficult to access at times. Nonetheless, we got a good sense of its size and dimensions.

​All of the star mounds need to be surveyed with ground-penetrating radar (non-invasive) to see if common features can be found.

After all this archaeology, we dined well on a treat named for our primary research focus. They were much less satisfying than the rest of our day, but a new Mr. Cowboy video was on local TV that night. Mr. Cowboy is a Samoan country singer with a voice like Waylon Jennings (i.e., DEEP). He broke when he was 16 the last time I was here, and he now has a version of Hank Williams' "Jambalaya" (so meta!) and the Beatles "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da" (not my fave, but if Dolly can do rock, so can Mr. Cowboy!).

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