DEMYSTIFYING THE SAWEI, A TRADITIONAL INTERISLAND EXCHANGE SYSTEM

This article suggests that competition over land in Yap gave rise to a cultural regime characterized by warfare, shifting defensive-offensiv e alliances among socioterritorial units, and conventions by which soc ioterritorial units communicated their worthiness as alliance partners . By assuming sawei obligations, Gagil communicated its worth as an al liance capable of supporting the large Carolinian dependency in additi on to its Yapese constituents. We propose also that the inverse relati onship between an Outer Island's rank in the sawei and its distance fr om Yap reflects the order in which islands joined the system: The clos er the island to Yap, the earlier it joined. We argue that Gagil did n ot participate in the sawei to control navigational knowledge or laval ava distribution on Yap. In the Yapese-Carolinian cultural context, tr aditional technical knowledge and valuables could not be translated in to political power, and tribute-related phenomena had no economic func tions. Neither Yapese culture nor the sawei manifests an evolution of stratification and centralization.