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Religious change is at its core a material as much as a spiritual process. Beliefs related to intangible spirits, ghosts, or gods were enacted through material relationships between people, places, and objects. The archaeology of mission sites from Tanna and Erromango islands, southern Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides), offer an informative case study for understanding the material dimensions of religious change. One of the primary ways that cultural difference was thrown into relief in the Presbyterian New Hebrides missions was in the realm of objects. Christian Protestant missionaries believed that religious conversion had to be accompanied by changes in the material conditions of everyday life. Results of field archaeology and museum research on Tanna and Erromango, southern Vanuatu, show that the process of material transformation was not unidirectional. Just as Melanesian people changed religious beliefs and integrated some imported objects into everyday life, missionaries integrated local elements into their daily lives. Attempts to produce ‘civilised Christian natives’, or to change some elements of native life relating purely to ‘religion’ but not others, resulted instead in a proliferation of ‘hybrid’ forms. This is visible in the continuity of a variety of traditional practices subsumed under the umbrella term ‘kastom’ through to the present alongside Christianity. Melanesians didn’t become Christian, Christianity became Melanesian. The material basis of religious change was integral to this process.

Archaeology and religion. --- Archaeology --- Religion and archaeology --- Religious aspects --- Religion --- Archaeology and religion --- Christian antiquities --- Tanna Island (Vanuatu) --- Eromanga (Vanuatu) --- Church history --- Antiquities, Christian --- Antiquities, Ecclesiastical --- Archaeology, Christian --- Christian archaeology --- Church antiquities --- Ecclesiastical antiquities --- Monumental theology --- Antiquities --- Byzantine antiquities --- Erromanga (Vanuatu) --- Erromango (Vanuatu) --- Aipere Island (Vanuatu) --- Ipari Island (Vanuatu) --- vanuatu --- archaelogy --- religion --- Erromango --- James Thomas Flexner --- Melanesians --- Missionary --- New Hebrides --- Tanna Island --- Terra Australis --- archaeology

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Over a span of 1000 years beginning around 800CE, the people of the Pacific Islands undertook a remarkable period of voyaging, political evolution, and cross-cultural interactions. Polynesian navigators encountered previously uninhabited lands, as well as already inhabited islands and the coast of the Americas. Island societies saw epic sagas of political competition and intrigue, documented through oral traditions and the monuments and artefacts recovered through archaeology. European entry into the region added a new episode of interaction with strange people from over the horizon. These histories provide an important cross-cultural perspective for the concept of 'the Middle Ages' from outside of the usual Old World focus.

Oceania --- History. --- Civilization.

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Biographies. --- History of medicine --- North America.

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