Landscape, violence and social bodies: Ritualized architecture in a Solomon Islands society

This article considers the interplay between the bodily experience of lands cape and the formation of sociality. We investigate the social experiences of landscape in nineteenth-century Roviana Lagoon in the Solomon Islands, d ealing specifically with the ritualized architecture of a fortification on Nusa Roviana Island. Drawing on oral tradition and archaeological and histo rical data, we argue that the architectural remains reflect a powerful mode of shaping social experience and notions of personhood in the manipulation of ideology. The Roviana landscape creates a world in which genealogical l ines are sedimented to place, acid practices of ritual violence and head-hu nting are made to appear necessary and natural. Paying attention to both or al and material history allows a greater understanding of the ways in which such social structures are reproduced, and adds to the construction of a r ich historical anthropology.