MORE than 200 years ago, on September 6, 1813, a Swedish man named Charles Savage found himself surrounded on an isolated rock in Bua (Vanua Levu) by hundreds of Navakasiga warriors.
Thinking he might reason with them, Savage came down but was drowned in a pool at a place called Koroipita close to the modern village of Naviqiri.
The most plausible account of the events leading up to this is that Savage, at the behest of his Bauan masters, had landed in this part of Bua intent on subjugating its people.
He and his men burned a coastal village, forcing the people of the area to retreat to their fortified mountain-top settlement at Uluinavakasiga.
Savage made an attempt to follow them, using the near-vertical cave shaft that they had used to reach the safety of the summit, but the Navakasiga people blocked it with a large rock, forcing Savage and his party to retreat. Then they retaliated.
Using their intimate knowledge of the landscape, shown in the photograph, the Navakasiga warriors tricked Savage’s group into following a small number of them but then suddenly he found himself surrounded by hundreds more. Savage could not escape and, most Buans seem to agree, met the fate he deserved for his aggression.
The people of Navakasiga today know the old stories and can guide you across the landscape where these historic events took place.
You can peer into the cave by which the people used to access the summit of Uluinavakasiga, you can walk across the old house mounds and rock defences of the area below the summit where people used to live during the “hillfort period” of Fiji’s history.
But no one knows very much about this period, which perhaps lasted from AD 1400 until AD 1800 in every part of Fiji and many other Pacific Island groups. Why did people live in hillforts and not along the coast at this time? How did they live, what did they eat and drink? Were they at peace … or at war?
Recent research by the Fiji Museum, the University of the Sunshine Coast (Australia) and the University of the South Pacific is helping answer some of these questions.
An earlier phase of this research project focused on the hillforts (koronivalu) of the Ba Valley and nearby Vatia Peninsula. At least 14 hillforts were mapped on the Vatia Peninsula including the massive one named Vatutaqiri.
It is estimated that Vatutaqiri, which is built along a steep-sided ridge line, may have once housed several hundred people.
On its exposed side, where there is no natural defence, a broad ditch was dug (probably with sharpened stakes sticking out of its floor to impale attackers) and five lines of stone walls.
The highest point, named Vatuvatuva, has a flat top and may be an entirely artificial mound made from boulders piled 15 metres high.
Hillforts such as Vatutaqiri tell us that the Fijians who once lived there were at war, fearful of attack, and yet able to muster almost unbelievable amounts of muscle to roll boulders up slope and pile these up into stone walls.
Another impressive hillfort, which the research group has been studying recently, is that of Seseleka in Bua which is one of a number of hillforts in the area, probably also abandoned in the early nineteenth century as sandalwood traders and later missionaries began to impact local populations.
Yet because of its early contact with Europeans, we also have some of the earliest written descriptions of hillforts when they were occupied.
The account of William Lockerby includes a description of the hillfort at Tacilevu, which the research team excavated this year, while that of Wilkes (US Exploring Expedition) in the 1840s provided descriptions of both Seseleka and Ivaka (Naivaka) at a time when there were “war-towns” on top of them.
Which brings us back to Uluinavakasiga where the researchers focused considerable energy in January this year, digging pits in the floor of a rockshelter below the summit.
Samples of edible shells taken from the lower parts of these pits will be radiocarbon-dated to give precise ages for the early occupation of this hillfort.
Pottery fragments will be analysed at the Fiji Museum to help us understand how long people lived here.
This research is important because it will help fill in a sizeable “blank” in Fiji’s history.
We know the first people to come to Fiji, probably more than 3000 years ago, lived on the coast. So too did most of their descendants until about 650 years ago when coastal settlements were abruptly abandoned in favour of inland upland settlements like hillforts.
It is possible that climate change drove this change in settlement.
For about 700 years ago, there was a rapid cooling in the tropical Pacific that caused a lowering of sea level.
This would have devastated food resources, both onland and offshore, and led to a food crisis.
Conflict would have ensued and people would have found more secure places to live. Like the tops of mountains.
* The author is a professor of geography at the University of the Sunshine Coast and also adjunct professor in Pacific studies at the University of the South Pacific. He is giving a talk about this hillfort research at 3pm today USP’s Oceania Centre Outdoor Theatre.
