In the prehistoric cultures of Polynesia, two conspicuous themes figure largely: the ceremonial ground (the marae/ahu complex, known by varying local terms) and personal ornaments. The ceremonial ground was a place of worship. It usually took the form of an enclosure (marae), which was raised or walled or in some other way delineated, with a raised platform (ahu) across one end. A row of upright stone slabs along the ahu were backrests for the gods, while other stones indicated the places of human officiants. The grounds went through various phases of development in the island groups and were the Polynesians’ most conspicuous architectural achievements.

Early Polynesian cultures shared a number of traits deriving from a common tradition. Types of adzes, fishhooks, and certain ornaments recur, including reel-shaped necklace units and pendants of whale teeth, unshaped or shaped by carving a sliver from the lower end. Shaped whale-tooth pendants are found in the earliest phase of Marquesan culture (ad 300–600), as are small perforated shell disks that might have been attached to the coronets typical of later periods. A few simple stone figures belong to a “developmental” phase (ad 600–1300); one closely resembles small stone figures from Necker Island, the most northerly of the Hawaiian group. These are posed frontally, have circular faces with clumsily delineated features, and may date from about the 10th century. They would seem to be representative of an ancestral Polynesian carving style and are the earliest sculpture from Hawaii. Monumental stone figures of gods, in a style that persisted into the 19th century, were being carved and installed on marae in the Marquesas about 1500.

Easter Island, remote and isolated, is the site of the most famous monuments of the Pacific. Among the monuments are some 300 stone platforms, some of which were used for burials and some of which supported the island’s spectacular colossi. Work on the statues, which were carved from a soft volcanic stone, seems to have begun about ad 900. The first figures were relatively small, about 2 metres high; later statues were as much as 12 metres high. The statues’ heads and torsos are in an extremely rigid frontal style, with the slender arms and elongated hands carved down the sides and across the belly. Necks are barely indicated; the faces have deep-set eyes, long pointed noses, and massive chins. The statues originally had barrel-shaped topknots of red stone and eyes of white shell and black stone. The Easter Island tradition of statue carving came to an end by about 1600, probably as a result of a serious breakdown of the culture caused by internecine wars.

The earliest New Zealand Maori culture had strong relationships to the contemporary art of eastern Polynesia, whence the Maori migrated about the 9th century. The use of tapa cloth was presumably common, and tattooing was practiced. Fishing lures (some carved as fish), fishhooks, and adzes follow Polynesian types, and the patu type of club in whalebone existed in both areas. In this early phase, the whale-tooth pendants and reel-shaped ornaments of Polynesia became in New Zealand massive stone versions, which were used as pendants or strung as necklaces. Other stone pendants were divided spheres and plaques with stylized fish or zoomorphs carved in relief. Wood carving has not survived, although suitable stone chisels have been found.

The following phase represented the inception of specifically Maori styles. One indication is an increasing complexity exemplified by the elaboration of whale-tooth pendants. The original simple forms of central Polynesia became, by the 14th century, the so-called chevron pendants, which were probably worn in symmetrical pairs. They retain the tooth form but are flat and bordered with series of chevrons representing human limbs. A few small wood carvings from this period exist, as well as one major piece, the decoration for the roof of a house from Kaitaia. Although the roof decoration shows some Polynesian influence, it also powerfully states a major theme of Maori art: a human figure flanked by figures in profile, prototypes of the later manaia monsters. It is identical in composition to the lintel panels of later Maori art. Among other surviving carvings are a remarkable 16th-century stern piece and a canoe prow cover, both from the North Island; the bow cover is the oldest known work to be decorated with pecked spirals—the most dominant feature of later Maori art.

A series of combs found in a sacred deposit at Kauri Point Swamp on New Zealand’s North Island illuminates the development of forms in the 16th to 18th centuries; the combs progress from square panels with engraved geometric designs to rounded forms with near-figurative decoration. Some of the later engraved features have spurs projecting from edges of parallel lines and are highly reminiscent of the carving on a canoe prow and stern post from Doubtless Bay and a relief panel from Awanui, both sites in the far north of North Island. In general, all these objects show a move away from the simple forms and plain surfaces of the earliest Maori art to more complex forms that are variegated with small areas of intensive bas-relief. This trend reached a culmination in a series of chests, for the bones of high-ranking people, carved in human form.

Following this, a highly vigorous revolution of Maori art took place. Cloaks, the primary garments, were still given geometric patterns on their borders, but otherwise there was a new emphasis on flowing, curvilinear designs and a wealth of surface decoration. Pendants of whale teeth persisted, but only with minimal carving of a human face at the tip; and jade, from the mountains and streambeds of the South Island, became the most prestigious material for blades, weapons, and a wide range of ornaments.