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Sailing in the Wake of the Ancestors: Reviving Polynesian Voyaging, by Ben Finney. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 2003. ISBN cloth, 1-58178-025-7; paper, 1-58178-024-9; vi + 168 pages, maps, notes, glossary, bibliography, photographs, index. Cloth, US$24.95; paper, US$19.95.
Since the 1960s, Oceanic voyaging has become a well-developed area of anthropological inquiry. Most investigations of the subject have adopted one of three approaches. Ethnographic studies commenced with the work of William Alkire (Lamotrek Atoll and Inter-Island Socioeconomic Ties [1965]) and Thomas Gladwin (East is a Big Bird [1970]) in Micronesia, and with David Lewis's survey of maritime practices throughout the tropical Pacific (We, the Navigators [1972]). Around the same time, M Levinson, R Gerard Ward, and John W Webb pioneered the use of computer simulations (The Settlement of Polynesia [1973] and "The Settlement of the Polynesian Outliers," in Ben Finney's edited volume, Pacific Navigation and Voyaging [1976])-an approach that was later impressively applied by Geoffrey Irwin (The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific [1976])-to assess the relative probability of early settlement resulting from intentional, as opposed to accidental drift, voyages. The third line of inquiry involves experimental voyaging in reconstructed sailing canoes.
For four decades, Ben Finney has been a leading contributor to experimental voyaging. He was a founder of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, sailed on the first Hokule'a expedition from Hawai'i to Tahiti in 1976, and has continued to be involved in voyaging studies through the present time. He has authored several critically important books and articles documenting the accomplishments of Hokule'a and other replica voyaging canoes. In addition, he has worked for NASA and the International Space University, applying the lessons of Polynesian voyaging to prospects for space travel in the twenty-first century.
Ostensibly, Sailing in the Wake of the Ancestors is an account of...