Stone monuments
Explore Samoa’s ancient stone heritage through the "Living Monuments" project. This evolving gallery begins with the Pōtini mound and will grow to feature other remarkable stone mounds, each documented in high-resolution 3D imagery and enriched with cultural context. Support for this initative has been provided under the ACP-EU Programme Enhancing capacity for the sustainability of the cultural and creative industries in the Pacific. The full name of the project is “Living Monuments: Exploring Samoa's Heritage Through virtual space.”
Click on this link to take a virtual tour of the Pōtini mound.
There are many high prehistoric stone mounds found throughout the Samoa archipelago and they are typically referred to tia seulupe, pigeon snaring mounds. It is possible that pigeon-snaring was a secondary use of the mound and their original purpose has been lost to time. Read more.
The Megaliths of Samoa
Did you know that there are hundreds of tia ma’a, prehistoric megaliths or large stone mounds, that have been found throughout the archipelago of Samoa and American Samoa? Some of these ancient monuments are truncated pyramids such as one of the largest and perhaps oldest in all of Polynesia known as Pulemelei. That particular structure is also aligned to the cardinal points, further deepening the mystery of why these monuments were first built. Other stone mounds have radial arms or “cogs,” and they are referred to as star mounds and cog mounds. One common characteristic of high mounds—such as the megaliths in Pōtini (Sa’anapu) and Pulemelei (Vailoa, Palauli)—is that anyone standing on top of these structures commands a wide view of the surrounding terrain and ocean. The tops of these mounds can be above the trees growing around them. The Tiapapata Art Centre, with support under the ACP-EU Programme Enhancing capacity for the sustainability of the cultural and creative industries in the Pacific, has begun the second phase of a project now titled “Living Monuments: Exploring Samoa's Heritage Through virtual space.”