</noinclude> [[Image:Marae, Raiatea 2.jpg|thumb|390px|Taputapuātea, an ancient marae at Ra'iātea in the Society Islands, restored in 1994.]]A '''marae''' is a sacred place which served both religious and social purposes in pre-Christian Polynesian societies and in some modern Polynesian societies, such as Māori, today. In all these languages, 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).
