Tikopia estimation … rates autochthonous origin as the most worthy and immigrant origin as the lowest … In Tikopia theory, priority of origins gives status and power (Firth 1961:178).

Despite the unimportance of ascribed rank in many Austronesian societies in Island Southeast Asia and Melanesia, certain features of rank-focused ideology nevertheless stand out as being very widespread in the Austronesian world as a whole. These include a reverence for kin-group founders extending to ultimate deification in some cases, a common practice of naming kin-groups after such founders, and a ranking of status positions by descent, often primogenitural (but not always patrilineal), from them. High rank derived from genealogical closeness to an important founder would also give access to the economic rights usually associated with chiefs: stewardship over land, rights to demand labour and services from other kin-group members, and in some cases polygynous marriages. Most kin-groups obviously recognize successive and multiple founders rather than just one, but often the highest traditional rank is held by the descendants of the first founders and the lineages founded by later arrivals have lesser ritual statuses.

Political contestation, of course, has often allowed younger or intrusive lines, autochthonous or foreign, to acquire considerable authority, to the extent that many societies have dualistic chiefly structures or “stranger king” myths about leadership (Sahlins 1985; and see also Hanlon (1988) on Pohnpei). Nevertheless, despite all such ramifications of rank and aristocracy there does seem to be a common set of principles found right across Austronesia based on what I will term a “founder-focused ideology”. One of these principles, which I will identify specifically as “founder rank enhancement”, was, I believe, an integral part of the phenomenon of Austronesian expansion.