Baessler-Archiv, Neue Folge, Band XX (1972) 
79 
just as land rights to Pileni agricultural plots are held by people who are 
not resident on that island. 
Nifiloli is supposed to maintain the same system. However, the situation 
seems to have become somewhat ambiguous for several reasons. When Nifiloli 
was abandoned the corporate control of land there became merged with 
Pileni wards. This is probably due to the fact that Nifiloli suffered great 
depopulation before it was vacated, while Nukapu was abandoned rather 
suddenly after one year’s blight. When Tevake led a group back to Nifiloli, 
he set up corporate control of the lands there in terms of a single residential 
group of which he was nominal head. This headship was not totally 
recognized on Pileni. More recently his leadership has been questioned by 
some Nifiloli residents who have moved away from him to establish separate 
residential wards. On Pileni those who question Tevake’s independence and 
leadership urge Nifiloli residents to regard that island as only a secondary 
residence, as living on Makalobu would be recognized, and to maintain their 
domiciles on Pileni. Thus with regard to land control, the resettlement of 
Nifiloli can be regarded as involving the process of corporate division and 
this process has not fully completed itself. 
Residence in a ward is quite fluid. A married couple can choose the 
location of their dwellings from among several possibilities. They can claim 
some inherited right to a dwelling site from parents of either spouse or they 
can ask for the loan of a dwelling site from the head of a ward where 
they have no inherited rights. The determining factors include available 
space, kinship with the head and friendship with potential neighbors. Where 
a couple locates its dwelling in no real way affects the inheritance of rights 
by their children. Moreover, households do not always remain in the same 
ward. From the point of view of the household, it will be using plots of land 
associated with several wards — those over which rights were inherited from 
parents of both spouses, who in turn inherited them from their parents, and 
rights to plots borrowed from individuals or the head of other wards. In fact 
there is very little correlation between the ward location of a dwelling and 
the ward associations of properties utilized by the household. The control of 
land rights by the head of a ward only amounts to a loose regulation of the 
allocation of use rights to plots and other property. It is not a lineage-like 
system in which there is a high degree of congruence among descent, post- 
marital residence and land use. 
The corporate control over land rights on Pileni, Nifiloli and Nukapu is 
quite dissimilar to the control and regulation of land on Nupani and Matema. 
On the latter islands the transfer of rights is by inheritance and sale only.