The Tiapapata Art Centre, a charitable trust promoting traditional and contemporary arts and crafts in Samoa, has been awarded a grant under the ACP-EU Programme Enhancing Capacity for the Sustainability of the Cultural and Creative Industries in the Pacific.

The scheme provides financial support, technical advice, mentoring and capacity-building schemes to artists and cultural producers from across the Pacific region. It seeks to increase the contribution and recognition of the culture and creative sector to economic revenue and commercial engagement in the Pacific Island region. The project is funded primarily by the ACP-EU Programme for the Pacific region and is implemented by the Pacific Community’s (SPC) Human Rights and Social Development Division and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).  

Rock-Paper-Scissors is the title given to the Tiapapata Art Centre’s project with rock representing stone tools and clay (with links to Lapita pottery), paper referring to the creation of innovative paper products (with links to siapo), and scissors being the equipment and methodologies needed.

Rock: Reviving cultural knowledge

Among the activities to be funded in Samoa are a series of stone tool-making workshops and field trips to archaeological sites in the archipelago scheduled to take place in May 2024. Two symposia open to the public will be held on World Museums Day, 18 May, and World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development on 21 May.

Professor Mark W. Moore, an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology at the University of New England, in Armidale, Australia, is the primary facilitator in the stone tool-making workshops and symposia. He is also the Director of the online Museum of Stone Tools and will be accompanied by two archaeology students at UNE and a PhD student who will assist with stone flaking and 3D modeling. Moreover, arrangements are currently being made for seven stone adzes found in Samoa of unknown age and provenance to be sent to the Museum of Stone Tools for 3D modeling. Oceanic basalt considered suitable for making adzes will also be sent to Professor Moore so he and his students can gain some knowledge and experience working with the Samoan stone, a process known as knapping or flaking.

Project Manager Galumalemana Steve Percival, who refers to himself as an experimental archaeologist and documentarian, has been using machines to make stone adzes for a number of years. With the assistance of Professor Moore, he and other participants attending the workshops in May will learn ancient knapping techniques. His most recent hafted adze was partially knapped by hand and was presented as a gift by Afioga Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi Efi to the Great Council of Chiefs during a recent Pacific Traditional Leaders Talanoa.