Wellington - The United Nations this week honoured the memory of a 16th century South Pacific chief revered as a peacemaker for bringing warring tribes together in harmony but took at least 50 people - some while they were still alive - with him into a mass grave when he died. The biggest site of live burials in the Pacific was added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites by the committee that designates the most significant cultural landmarks on the globe at its meeting in Quebec City.
It listed Chief Roi Mata's Domain, in Vanuatu, the South Pacific archipelago nation which was jointly governed by Britain and France under the name of the New Hebrides until independence in 1980.
Eighty per cent of Vanuatu's 215,000-strong population continue to live traditional primitive lives.
Roi Mata was the last paramount chief of what is now the central region of Vanuatu's 80 islands, holding a title that went back centuries. Archeologists believe he died about 1600 and anthropologists say no chief since has had the mana to claim the title.
UNESCO designated locations on three islands - Efate, Lelepa and Artok - sites of the chief's residence, where he died and where he was buried. Roi Mata was interred along with at least 50 others, some while they were still alive, according to oral traditions passed down by generations.
Authorities differ on the actual numbers, but French archeologist Jose Garanger reportedly found more than 50 bodies placed around a central figure at the burial site on Artok Island - and his excavation did not discover the boundaries of the grave.
According to Douglas Meto Kalotiti, a local landowner and cultural heritage expert, and two Australian anthropologists who worked on the UNESCO nomination for four years, the mass grave could have contained "as many as 300 of his family and court retainers, some of whom went voluntarily to their deaths while others were put to death to accompany the chief into the afterworld."
Kirk Huffman, honorary curator of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, told the New Zealand Herald newspaper that the men who were willingly buried alive were allowed to drink kava - an intoxicating drink made from the roots of a shrub that is popular in the Pacific - before interment and their skeletons were found in a "relaxed pose" when archeologists dug up the site in the 1960s.
Women, however, were not customarily allowed to drink kava and many of their skeletons were uncovered with arms reaching up through the earth.
Kalotiti and the Australian anthropologists Meredith Wilson and Chris Ballard said Artok Island was declared tapu, or forbidden land, after the mass burial and abandoned for the next four centuries.
Headstones marking the graves were still in place when it was excavated, Huffman said. Ornaments of pig tusks and shells found accorded with oral histories.
The experts said Chief Roi Mata introduced a system of clans that still exists, as well as friendly feasts that brought peace to his home island of Efate after a long war.
He died on Lelepa Island after falling ill at a feast - some say poisoned by a rival chief unhappy with his reforms - and the cave where he succumbed contains rock art featuring a figure locals believe is him.
UNESCO'S citation says the new World Heritage sites were closely associated with the oral traditions surrounding the chief and the moral values he espoused.
"The site reflects the convergence between oral tradition and archaeology and bears witness to the persistence of Roi Mata's social reforms and conflict resolution, still relevant to the people of the region," UNESCO said.
