The complexities and implications of animal translocations in Pacific prehistory

Summary

The Pacific region has some of the earliest evidence of animal translocation in the world. The use of transported landscapes – including the introduction of a range of plants and animals - was a major strategy for Pacific Island colonists, particularly in the settlement of Remote Oceania. We have been studying genetic variation in Pacific commensals for nearly 20 years and through these studies have had to constantly rethink our concepts of human and animal interactions generally and, more specifically, in regards to our understanding of Pacific settlement history. This paper will review this history and discuss some of the new questions that have been stimulated by our commensal animal studies thus far.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Islands and Invasives: The Archaeology of Plant and Animal Translocations   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage