If attention is turned first to the Southeast Asian portion of the Austronesian world, it is apparent that founders and their closest descendants frequently hold central positions of rank.^[6] A comparative survey of forms of ranking in traditional Austronesian societies across Indonesia has recently been presented by Slamet-Velsink, who suggests (Slamet-Velsink 1986:246) that:

As to the tribal societies hitherto treated [mainly Nias, Batak, Ngada, East Sumba, Flores, Timor and Sa’dan Toraja], I think that they may all be called ranked, since they are all marked by differences in status at least between older and younger branches of a “house” or clan, and between core villagers considered to be the descendants of the village founders and later arrived co-inhabitants of the same village or area …

This kind of ranking according to founder order seems to be particularly common in the societies of Nusa Tenggara. Forth (1981), for instance, describes it for Rindi, East Sumba, where founder clans have rights of land stewardship and maintain these rights even if secular power is taken from them. Perhaps the most striking description of such a system is that by Lewis (1988:51-60) for the Tana ’Ai domain of Tana Wai Brama in eastern Flores. The founding or source clan (called Ipir Wai Brama) of this domain was founded by two brothers with their male and female followers, according to a tradition translated as “The spread of the people through the firmament for empty land”. The members of this source clan have rights of precedence within the social system, and the domain leader termed “The Source of the Domain” inherits his role matrilineally (from mother’s brother to sister’s son) from the elder of the two brothers:

The Source of the Domain (tana pu’an) is heir to the earth of Tana Wai Brama by virtue of membership in the clan that first settled his domain (tana) and his descent from the elder of the founding brothers of that clan. It is from the precedence of his clan, which is related in the histories, that his status in the community is derived (Lewis 1988:71).

The descendants of the younger brother hold positions of political and secular authority, thus forming a dualistic status hierarchy similar to that found in many other parts of Austronesia. In addition, the clan Ipir Wai Brama retains ritual rights to and authority over all the lands of the domain. Founders who arrived subsequently to the ancestors of the source clan were given land by it and integrated into a single ritual system under Ipir stewardship. The clans that descend from these later founders are ideally ranked in descending status, the more recent the founder the lower the rank. As Lewis (1988:81) stresses, sequence is a principle that orders much of the social and religious life of the Tana ’Ai.

Within Oceania there are also many instances to be found amongst the societies of Melanesia and Micronesia of founder-focused ideology, together with clan ranking by founder chronological order. Sudo (this volume) gives an excellent example of the traditional ranking of matrilineal clans on Satawal (Carolines) according to sequence of founder arrival, despite the fact that the original founder clan has since been demoted owing to an unfortunate choice of marriage alliance. Elsewhere in Micronesia traces of clan ranking by founder order appear to be almost universal if one collates the observations and surmises of authors such as Oliver (1989) for Micronesia generally, Lingenfelter (1975:90) for Yap, Lessa (1966:27) for Ulithi, and Alkire for the central Carolines (“the Carolinean explanation of chiefly status emphasizes seniority of settlement on the particular island” [Alkire 1977:47]).

Given the complex prehistory of Melanesia already alluded to above, it need hardly be stressed that founder-focused ideologies and ascribed ranks are obviously very discontinuous in their distributions. Among the Mekeo of coastal Papua, however (Hau‘ofa 1971; Mosko 1985:112-114), chiefly titles descend primogeniturally within subclans which are ranked in terms of “prior residence, original land ownership, on the nature of other historical relationships among the subclans themselves, and often on numerical strength” (Hau‘ofa 1971:166). In New Caledonia, genealogical seniority (but not necessarily political power) is held by the descendants of original settler clans (Douglas 1979:18), and the same seems to have applied originally in Manus (Otto 1994). Young’s observations for the Kalauna community on Goodenough Island also seem relevant here:

Atuaha [ceremonial stone structures] are built by the men, generally a group of brothers, who settle a new hamlet. They name the atuaha and henceforth that name may be given to the hamlet. Subsequently, as the patrilineage (unuma) expands, it segments and the junior portion will establish its separate identity by building a new atuaha … The original settlers have the status of “elder brothers” to more recent arrivals as well as to junior lines of their own descent group, and they should provide the leader of the hamlet (Young 1971:22).

A classification of the descendants of the first settlers of a neighbourhood as “elder brothers” also seems to be characteristic of other Austronesian societies in western Melanesia, as amongst the Wamira people of Milne Bay (Kahn 1990:56).

In Polynesia, the richness of tradition about founders has fuelled anthropological debate for over a century. As noted by Buck (1932:16):

most Polynesians recognise the ancestral migrations to the islands they now occupy. The traditional history gives the names of the progenitors who came from another land and usually gives such details as the name of the canoe, the names of those who accompanied him and anything of note that was brought.^[7]

There are in Polynesia, however, few clear cases of ranking between kin groups relating directly to the chronological order of their founders, and I suspect this general absence may be due to the optative and non-segmentary methods of kin group recruitment and expansion characteristic of the region. The patrilineages of Tikopia are of course an exception here, as described by Firth (1961) and illustrated in the above quotation (page 24).

In the more stratified societies of Polynesia the patterning of founder-focused ideology has frequently been made more complex by a dualistic separation between political power and the ritual status derived by descent from an original, or at least more ancient, founder (e.g. Gunson (1979) for western Polynesia, especially Tonga). Developments of this type are certainly not unique to Polynesia and occur in many of the hierarchical social systems of other Oceanic islands, such as Fiji (Sahlins 1985), Rotuma (Howard 1985) and Pohnpei (Hanlon 1988). However, despite these complications due to the usurpation of rank from original founder lines, the elements of founder-focused ideology still occur so widely in Austronesia that one may suspect them of having a high antiquity and possibly of having played a major role in the Austronesian expansion process itself. Some time and place parameters of this expansion now require to be discussed, before moving finally to the process of founder rank enhancement.