Marae

A marae is a sacred place which served both religious and social purposes in pre-Christian Polynesian societies. The word also means “cleared, free of weeds, trees, etc.” It generally consists of an area of cleared land roughly rectangular (the marae itself), bordered with stones or wooden posts (called au in Tahitian and Cook Islands Māori) perhaps with terraces (paepae) which were used in olden times for ceremonial purposes; and with a central stone ahu or a’u (sometimes as in the Rapanui culture’s ahu on Easter Island “ahu” becomes a synonym for the whole marae complex).

The marae is still a vital part of everyday Maori life. However, in tropical Polynesia, most marae were destroyed or abandoned with the arrival of Christianity in the 19th Century and some of them have become an attraction for tourists or archaeologists. Nevertheless, the place where the marae were built are still considered as tapu in most islands and nobody would dare build anything on it. In the Cook Islands, a few marae (Arai-te-Tonga, Vaerota, Taputapuātea) are still maintained, and are quickly tidied up before the investiture of a new ariki.