Choiseul Island, native name Lauru, is the largest island (2 971 km²) of the Choiseul Province

Choiseul Province

The Choiseul Province is one of the nine provinces of the Solomon Islands. It lies between the island of Bougainville and Santa Isabel in the west of the Solomon Islands....

, Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of . The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal...

, at 7.08°S 157°E.

Description

This island is named after Étienne François, duc de Choiseul

Étienne François, duc de Choiseul

Étienne-François, comte de Stainville, duc de Choiseul was a French military officer, diplomat and statesman. Between 1758 and 1761, and 1766 and 1770, he was Foreign Minister of France and had a strong influence on France's global strategy throughout the period...

.

Choiseul was visited by Austrian

Austrians

Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....

 anthropologist and photographer Hugo Bernatzik

Hugo Bernatzik

Hugo Adolf Bernatzik , was an Austrian anthropologist and photographer.Bernatzik was the founder of the concept of alternative anthropology.-Biography:...

 in 1932. Bernatzik documented some of the few remaining ancestral customs of the island people which are included in an ethnography

Ethnography

Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

that he published a few years later. He also took some photographs of the islanders and brought back a stone urn with carvings, reflecting a culture that he deemed was dying in contact with the modern world.

The administrative headquarters of Choiseul Province is situated in the town of Taro.