- Tapere
A tapere or sub-district is a low level of traditional land subdivision on some of the Lower
Cook Islands . It is a subdivision of a district (the major island subdivision) or "puna", which is headed by a district chiefs or "pava". A tapere is normally headed by a "mataiapo" (a chief of a major lineage) or "ariki" (a high chief, the titular head of a tribe). It is occupied by the "matakeinanga", the local group composed of the residential core of a major lineage, plus affines and other permissive members. [http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-CroLan-_N70147.html]Most of the tapere lands are subdivided among the minor lineages, each of which was headed by a "rangatira" or "komono", or by the mataiapo himself. [http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-CroLan-c3-3.html]
Some of the larger minor lineages were again subdivided into segments known as "kiato", and the head of such a segment was also referred to as a "kiato". While kiato were generally junior relatives of the rangatira or other chief to whom they were subordinate, immigrant groups were sometimes also taken in and given the status of kiato. [http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-CroLan-c2-3.html]
Below that level, there is the "uanga", the extended family, the residential core of which occupied a household. [http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-CroLan-_N70147.html]
Historically, taperes were almost always wedge-shaped - the boundaries beginning at defined points on the outer reef and running inland to enclose an ever narrowing strip of land until converging at a point in or near the center of the island. By this type of delineation, any one tapere included every category of soil type and land surface of the island, from the typically mountainous interior, where forest products were colleted, through fertile valleys where the major food crops were grown, across the rocky coastal strip of elevated fossil coral (makatea), out to the lagoon and fringing reef. [http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/duffy/ARB/085/LTITCI.pdf]
External links
* [http://www.icomos.org/studies/cultural-landscapes-pacific/cultural-landscapes-pacific.pdf Cultural Landscapes of the Pacific Islands]
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