Systems of Measurement on Woleai Atoll, Caroline Islands

Alkire, William H. (1970). "Systems of Measurement on Woleai Atoll, Caroline Islands". Anthropos. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH. 65 (1/2): 1–73. ISSN 0257-9774.

Abstract: This major ethnographic study presents a highly detailed examination of indigenous systems of measurement, classification, navigation, and sociopolitical organization on Woleai Atoll in the western Caroline Islands. Based on fieldwork conducted from January 1965 to January 1966 on Wottagai and Falalus Islands, together with comparative material gathered earlier on Lamotrek Atoll, Alkire investigates how Woleaians conceptualize counting, length, time, distance, and territorial organization. The article opens with a broad introduction to Woleai’s geographic and political setting within the former Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands and situates the atoll within wider western Caroline exchange systems such as the sawei and Hook networks. Early sections document numeral systems and classifiers in remarkable detail, including specialized counting terms for people, fish, canoes, cloth, coconuts, and ceremonial distributions. Particular attention is devoted to the ceremonial counting of coconuts during funeral exchanges, where groups of eight are conceptually treated as tens, revealing underlying mathematical and symbolic principles associated with dualism, halving, and ritualized enumeration. Extensive discussion follows concerning knot divination systems, including the sixteen divination spirits associated with combinations of counted knots, methods of forecasting voyages and storms, and the integration of divination into fishing, navigation, and medicine.