ARTHIST115 Chap.3 Tā Moko and Tatau
Tā Moko and Tatau
Week 2 turns from carved wood to the adorned body. Moko is the chiselling of skin and insertion of pigment, related to tatau, the Pacific practice of puncturing and colouring the flesh. What distinguished the Māori tradition was the engraved face, cut into a textured relief, which is why a plaster life cast taken in 1837 could record Matoua Tawai's moko.
Placement followed gender: men from waist to knees and above all the face, women on the chin, abdomen, back, thighs and calves. Missionary and settler disapproval drove moko into decline by the 1860s, but women kept moko kauae alive into the twentieth century and its revival has grown since the 1980s. Ornaments extend the same logic.
Whale ivory and greenstone, huia feathers, heirloom combs and cloak pins, the Hawaiian lei niho palaoa and Tongan nifo koula all announce rank through material, placement and inheritance. The readings by Nikora and White and by Peter Buck give precise vocabulary for each of these, and precision is what turns an answer on adornment from description into analysis.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Moko as chiselled relief and tatau as punctured colour
- 02
Customary placement of moko for men and for women
- 03
Decline in the nineteenth century and the twentieth-century record
- 04
Moko kauae taken by Tainui women in 2007
- 05
Whale ivory, greenstone and huia feathers as status materials
- 06
Lei niho palaoa and nifo koula as inherited adornment
Worked example · free
Explain why moko kauae is a mark of remembrance
- 1Give the occasion: Waikato women chose moko kauae to honour Te Arikinui Te Atairangikaahu after her death in 2006 and the accession of King Tuheitia.
- 1Give the event: on 9 and 10 June 2007, sixteen women took their kauae in the house Pare Waikato at Tūrangawaewae Marae.
- 1Connect to precedent: women had long taken moko kauae to commemorate others, such as a kuia who received hers in the 1890s at King Mahuta's request.
- 1Conclude: the chin carries a public, permanent record of loss and allegiance, which also raises concerns about image-snatching.
Key terms
- Moko kauae
- The chin moko of Māori women, taken for beauty, identity and remembrance.
- Pukanohi
- The full facial moko of men, still taken by relatively few compared with moko kauae.
- Rei puta
- A whale-tooth breast ornament cut flat towards the root, with incised eyes on the crown.
- Waka huia
- A carved box with a lid used to store huia feathers and other valuables.
- Nifo koula
- Tongan body adornment in which gold is sealed onto the visible surface of the teeth.
Tā Moko and Tatau FAQ
Why did moko decline in the nineteenth century?
Christian missionaries and then settlers condemned moko as ungodly and pagan and encouraged its end. By the 1860s few tohunga tā moko remained, and they worked mainly in regions of active resistance. Interviews in the late 1960s suggest that women's moko kauae declined because practitioners were scarce, not because women stopped wanting it.
What is the difference between moko and tatau?
Tatau is the Pacific practice of puncturing and colouring the skin and gives English the word tattoo. Moko is related but chisels the skin and inserts pigment, and on the face it produced a textured relief. That relief is why moko could be captured in plaster life casts while surface tattoo could not.
Why are whale ivory and hair important in Pacific adornment?
Because the head is the body's most tapu part, ancestral hair carries mana. Whale ivory was hard to obtain and, in Hawaiʻi, linked to the ocean deity Kanaloa. A lei niho palaoa combines both, so wearing it gathers ancestral and divine authority at the neck.
Why did Tainui women take moko kauae in 2007?
To honour Te Arikinui Te Atairangikaahu, who died in August 2006 after more than forty years leading the Kīngitanga, and to celebrate the accession of her son King Tuheitia. Sixteen women took their kauae at Tūrangawaewae Marae in June 2007, and a book recorded the stories of twenty Waikato women in their own voices.
Exam move
Build a two-column card for moko and tatau covering technique, placement and history, then add one named work or event to each column. For ornaments, learn three by material and one fact of inheritance each, for example the heirloom whalebone comb in the Ruatapu story.
In timed practice, open every adornment answer with technique and placement before you discuss meaning, because those details separate an informed response from a general one. Add one contemporary work, such as Ane Tonga's Grills, to each revision card on adornment.
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