Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Anthropological Archaeology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaa Royal funerals, ritual stones and participatory networks in the maritime Tongan state Geoffrey Clark a, ⁎ , Mathieu Leclerc a , Phillip Parton a , Christian Reepmeyer b , Elle Grono c , David Burley d a Archaeology and Natural History, School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT0200, Australia b College of Arts, Society and Education, Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Studies, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland 4870 Australia c School of Archaeology and Anthropology, College of Arts and Social Science, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT0200, Australia d Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver V5A 1S6, Canada ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Pacific Royal funerals State participation Geochemistry Ritual ABSTRACT Archaic states were unstable entities and centralisation was threatened by fragmentation particularly at the death of semi-divine leaders. Royal funerals were therefore important state events as they engaged a significant proportion of the population in participatory behaviours and networks that linked individuals of different class and group affiliations to the politico-religious system. In the ancient Tongan state (CE 1250–1800), royal fun- erals involved the placement of exotic volcanic stones (kilikili) on the grave to mark the end of public mourning – a practice still followed by the Tongan royal family. To investigate the antiquity of the patterned ritual practice and the funerary contribution of specialists and non-specialists, we examined the composition of kilikili stones from chiefly tombs of known age. Analysis shows that voyages of 150 km were made to collect funerary stones from volcanic islands in Central Tonga for ~700 years. The development of royal tombs shows an increase in practical and ritual funerary activity that was likely overseen by a royal undertaker clan and participatory networks that spanned and integrated the scattered population of the Tongan maritime state. 1. Introduction The formation of states where none existed before required new social, economic and religious institutions that were frequently con- trolled by semi-divine rulers and hereditary elites. The death of state leaders marked a critical juncture where internal and external threats to society were negotiated by rituals that promoted the dominant hier- archy and orderly succession (Morris, 2008; Kirch, 2010). Royal fu- nerary traditions are therefore a key component of early states that have high archaeological visibility from the presence of monumental tombs and the valuables interred with deceased leaders. The study of royal mortuary architecture and preciosities tend to reify how ritual architecture and practice symbolised and justified social inequalities (Swenson, 2014); a perspective that detracts from knowledge of ancient belief systems and the composition of funerary rituals that commonly extended over a long period (e.g. Price, 2014) and involved thousands of people (McMullen, 1987). A focus on specific rituals and their con- text is important as it can illuminate the antiquity of traditional cere- monies, identify ritual specialists (Kahn, 2015), and the essential, but usually archaeologically invisible, corvée and kin-based networks that supported state events. While the performance of state ceremonies in- volved specialists and elites such events were only possible from the significant contribution of labour, materials and provisions obtained from the populace. The participatory networks involved in large-scale rituals are a poorly understood aspect of early states that helped unify a dispersed population by linking individuals of different class and group affiliations to the politico-religious system. In this paper, we examine a royal funeral tradition in the Polynesian Kingdom of Tonga (Fig. 1) in the South Pacific marked by the place- ment of exotic volcanic pebbles called kilikili on the grave. An archaic state emerged in the Tonga Islands that was notable for its maritime reach and political assimilation of islands spread over 600 km (Kirch, 1984; Burley, 1998; Sand, 2008). The Tongan state emerged ~CE 1250 when the paramount leaders of the Tongan state on Tongatapu Island created political centres and monumental royal tombs that were the focus of large-scale funerary and fertility rituals (Clark et al., 2008). Although the royal line of Tonga underwent significant change after civil war and the introduction of Christianity in the 19th century, kilikili https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2019.101115 Received 5 August 2019; Received in revised form 1 October 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: geoffrey.clark@anu.edu.au (G. Clark). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 57 (2020) 101115 0278-4165/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. T