Ritual armour limits violence

Material culture can encode social rules: Kiribati coconut‑fibre armour and shark‑tooth arrays were not just weapons but part of ritualized combat practices designed to contain lethality and manage honour disputes. Recognizing such artefacts as violence‑regulating technologies reframes how we read indigenous warfare and corrects colonial narratives that conflate impressive armaments with endemic belligerence. — This reframes debates about militarization, colonial misinterpretation of non‑Western societies, and heritage preservation by showing objects can institutionalize restraint as well as aggression.