The Maori Art is a classic traditional Pacific tribal art. The creative styles and skilled craftsmanship yield objects of great beauty. Of the various arts -- carving, music, dance, rock-drawing and tattooing -- wood-carving or as the Maori says, whakairo rakau is the most important form of art. Canoes, storehouses, dwellings, village fortifications, weapons, domestic bowls, and working equipment were basically made of wood. Hence, the Maori culture was also a wood culture.
Periods of Maori art merge, yet there are four distinctive eras with characteristic features:
Archaic, Classic, Historic and Modem.
The Archaic Maori or the moa hunters were the earliest settlers and survived on hunting, fishing. Their artwork include carvings and bone and stone work. These works, though plain and not as elaborate, surpasses the works of the later centuries.
 

Fish Hooks made from bone
Life became more settled with the cultivation of crops and the ability to develop natural resources of the forest and ocean. This brought changes -- food supplies a more organized and stricter tribal system and territorial boundaries evolved. People of this period known as Classic Maori. Classic Maori culture and art reached it's peak in the 18th century. Warfare was an accepted way of life and great war canoes were the pride of the tribe. Various weapons were made of bone and wood and stone. Men were glorified with tattoos, ornaments and their garments.
Due to the adoption of metal tools, Christianity, Western fabrics, newly introduced crop plants, muskets and cannon, Historic period of Maori art underwent rapid changes. Great war canoes, once useful were replaced with gunpowder weapons. Beautifully carved storehouses were taken over by the more practical , larger Western-style storehouses with the changing economy.
The fourth period, the Modern art period stepped up with the interest in Maori culture. The revival of Maori culture was inspired by the new social identity and the new aspirations of the Maori race.
Tattooing was a way of indicating the different classes. Men were tattooed over the face in deep-grooved, painful cuts made by bird bone chisels dipped in a sooty pigment which looked blue under the skin. Northern warriors often had additional tattoos over their thighs and buttocks. Women were deeply tattooed about the lips and chin. High-ranking women made fine garments while chiefs filled their leisure hours chiselling away on small items.
Personal items of the Maori reflected their most intricate and exquisite works of art --combs, weavings, feathered garments, treasure boxes, cloak pins, greenstone ornaments of many types.
  
(Left) Fisherman's hat made from Harakeke, flax
(Middle) Hand crafted wooden comb or Heru
(Right) A Tekoteko

People, hand-made things and natural objects were thought to have an inner psychic force. Hence religious objects and items for worship were often hand-made. Wooden stickgods, stone crop gods were among some hand-carved objects the Maoris used. Wooden burial chests, intricately and beautifully carved were used to contain bones of the deceased. Structures of various forms were erected in memory of the dead. Some were carved wooden posts while others took the form of canoes buried deep in the earth to stand vertical. Posts were Elaborate carving can be seen in important meeting houses. The meeting house is conceived as a living being. The head is represented by a central mask below a standing figure. The arms are the ornamental boards covering the edge of the roof, often completed with fingers at the lower ends. The ridgepole is its spine, the rafters its rib cage, and the interior, its belly. The carvings are elaborate and painfully and skilfully done. Carving human figurines is another popular form of art. A distorted human figure, male or female is the most common subject in Maori carving. The head is magnified as it is the container of life's spirit. Slanted eyes and three-fingered hands are included. Common figurines include the beaked manaia, a half-bird, half-human deity.

Bone carvings of the Manaia, half-bird, half-human deity

The Manaia is an ancient mythical being with a bird's head and a human form. It is said to be
the messenger between the earthly world of mortals and the domain of the spirits. The
Manaia is a holder of great spiritual energy and is a guardian against evil. The Manaia can be
seen blended into many Maori designs with subtle differences between tribes.

The marakihau, half-fish, half-human which has a tube-like tongue.
The tools used were limited to wood, stone, fibres and shells: metal tools did not exist. Greenstone was a valuable blade material. Bones were obtained from whales, small sea mammals, birds, dogs, and humans. Objects made from bones were skilfully and ornately carved.

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