Oceania (Geographic Keyword)
176-200 (240 Records)
Most studies of East Polynesia religion focus on the largest monumental sites, those related to the "marae complex". Yet ethnohistoric documents indicate that a wide range of site types had ritual importance, including specialized structures within monumental ritual centers that had diverse functions. Priest houses form one element of the architecture of ideology. Can we identify the houses of full time ritual specialists in the archaeological record of East Polynesian in order to enrich our...
Push and Pull Factors in Inland Settlement (2017)
Archaeological investigation along the coastlines of the islands of the Western Pacific have documented the distinct deposits of human colonizers and their descendants. Recent research has indicated that the first colonists were marine foragers, but also directed their forays into the interiors of islands to collect reptiles, bats, and birds. The research presented here reveals how predictive modeling and directed survey can aid in the detection of post-colonization sites located in the...
Quantifying the Number of 14C Determinations Required to Improve Dating Accuracy for Lapita Deposits (2017)
The use of radiocarbon dating to calculate the dates of Lapita deposits remains largely a single-step, ad hoc procedure. The accuracy of dating results can be greatly improved through Bayesian modeling. However, this depends on the number and stratigraphic distribution of radiocarbon determinations and the shape of the calibration curve. To evaluate these issues, we used Oxcal 4.2 to simulate, through the process of back-calibration, radiocarbon determinations that we could expect to receive as...
Radiocarbon Dating in the Mariana Islands (2017)
One of the most enigmatic human dispersals into the Pacific is the colonisation of the Mariana Islands. Here the interpretation of radiocarbon (14C) dates from early settlement sites are hotly debated. One interpretation suggests the Marianas were colonised directly from the northern Philippines around ~3500 BP. However, the age of one of the earliest Mariana sites; Bapot-1, has recently been revised down to ~3200-3080 cal. BP following research by Petchey et al. (in press) which demonstrated...
The Rat’s-Eye View: Tracing the Impacts of the Human-Introduced Pacific Rat (Rattus exulans) on Mangareva through Stable Isotope Analysis and Zooarchaeology (2015)
Early Polynesian voyagers transported a suite of plant and animal species to each new island they colonized, forming the foundation of the Polynesian subsistence economy and leading to long-lasting transformations of island landscapes. The Pacific rat (Rattus exulans) was nearly ubiquitous on these journeys, perhaps as a potential food source or simply an inadvertent stowaway. With few natural predators, rat populations multiplied quickly after arrival and spread across island landscapes. Their...
Recent Archaeological Work at Batavia's 1629 Graveyard, Western Australia (2016)
The archaeological sites related to the wreck of the 1629 VOC Batavia and subsequent mutiny have been studied since the 1960s. As part of the 'Shipwrecks of the Roaring 40s' Australian Research Council project, new discoveries have been made at several Batavia sites, particularly of victims on Beacon Island and the first European execution site on Long Island. These and other innovations help illuminate one of Australia's grimmest moments in history.
Representing space in Oceania: Culture in language and mind (2002)
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Resiliency in Hawaiian Irrigated Agricultural Systems : A GIS Approach (2017)
Pre-contact Hawaiian agriculturalists created irrigated cropping systems of considerable complexity across all of the Hawaiian archipelago. While many of these systems are concentrated in short but broad alluvial valleys, the windward coast of the big island of Hawaii presents a unique hydrological landscape. Here the geologic youth of the island presented Hawaiian agriculturalists with a landscape dominated by relatively small, narrow gulches with limited space for cultivation and a propensity...
Resource Structure, Economic Defendability, and Conflict in Rapa Nui and Rapa Iti, East Polynesia – an agent-based modeling approach (2016)
East Polynesian populations are closely related both culturally and genetically, yet their islands are environmentally diverse. The common ancestry and strong environmental differences make East Polynesia uniquely suited to the study of divergent sociocultural evolution. Following human colonization, populations diverged in subsistence practices, settlement patterns, ritual architecture, intensity of competition, and social organization. Here we explore differences in the intensity of conflict...
Returning to the Gardens of Lono: New Investigations in the Kona Field System, Hawaii Island (2016)
Hawai‘i Island’s Kona Field System is the largest dryland field system in the Hawaiian Islands. The chronology for the development of this system has been addressed through several major studies, including the landmark volume ‘Gardens of Lono’ which described intensive survey and excavations on the grounds of the Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in Kealakekua. Since its publication, radiocarbon dates from this and most other excavations in Kona have been rejected due to a lack of control for...
A review of the Submerged: stories of Australia’s shipwrecks program. (2018)
The Australian National Maritime Museum and the Australian Maritime Museums Council invited regional maritime museums to submit local content, or ‘shipwreck stories’, for a nationally travelling banner exhibition on Australian shipwrecks. The final graphic panel exhibition, Submerged: stories of Australia's shipwrecks, is produced by the ANMM, touring nationally and free of charge from 2018. Host venues may display their own/loaned objects with the graphic panel exhibition and are provided...
Ring Graph Analyses of Early Communities on Rapa Nui Measuring the Distribution of Stone-lined Earth Ovens (umu) (2015)
Agricultural societies are commonly thought to have begun as small, kinship-based groups of people that eventually extended their social interaction beyond the household level and intensified their adaptive efforts through a variety of means. Most of these early, sedentary communities began to demonstrate aspects of social inequality and had cooperative, centralized settlements which have left a detectable pattern in the archaeological record. For this paper, stone-lined earth ovens from the...
Ritual and/or Transformation: The Anadara granosa-Dominated Shell Mounds of the Australian Tropics (2017)
Mounded shell deposits dominated by the mudflat bivalve Anadara granosa are highly visible features on the north Australian coast. Because of their distinctive, often monumental, features they have been a focal point for research into hunter-gatherer groups in these coastal environments. Interpretations of these mounded deposits have oscillated between those concerned with the functioning of prehistoric economic systems and those invoking ceremonial and ritual behaviours. In this paper we review...
the rock art database: centralizing and streamlining heritage data using the CIDOC reference model (2015)
The Rock Art Database is a rock art heritage project at the Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit (PERAHU) at Griffith University. It is designed to bring members of the greater rock art community together in one centralized global network to discuss and share rock art information. The platform functions as a hub including data repository and data visualization tools to curate and share digital data sets and encourages members to contribute to the system to improve and streamline rock art...
Routes Of Removal: Vessel Biographies And The Island Transfer Of Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Queensland, Australia (2018)
Removal—the forcible movement of a person to a church or state-run institution, brought about or sanctioned by the state (often through the use of race-based legislation)—affected every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community in the state of Queensland in the 19th and 20th century. With many missions, stations and reserves located on islands, the watercraft engaged in removals are often implicit in the historical archives. Targeted research of these vessels including use and function;...
Searching for the lost Marines of Guadalcanal (2017)
In early 2016, Garcia & Associates conducted forensic archaeological investigations for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. DPAA (formerly JPAC) is the Department of Defense agency tasked with providing the fullest possible accounting for missing American service personnel from past wars. During World War II, the Battle for Guadalcanal lasted from 7 August 1942 to 9 February 1943 and included intense ground fighting to secure the airstrip known as...
Second-hand? Paint chemistry and the age, authenticity and conservation/management of hand stencils from the Sunshine Coast, Qld, Australia. (2017)
The materials used to created rock art preserve information regarding how, and in some instances when, it was made. Here we outline the field based, geochemical study of three white hand stencils on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia. Portable X-Ray Fluorescence analysis determined that the stencils were made using a titanium dioxide pigment, almost certainly commercially produced white paint. Significantly, this helped us assign a chronology as the rock art must have been produced...
Selection-Driven Range Expansion Explains Lapita Colonisation of Remote Oceania (2017)
Archaeological explanations of colonization often focus on presumed human motivations. What drives humans when faced with the potentially risky and rewarding colonization of unoccupied island regions: curiosity, wanderlust, opportunity, escape? At best, human motivation is only a partial explanation for colonization and one that is difficult to evaluate with archaeological data. In contrast, archaeologically visible, population-scale patterns of human colonization are explicable by the natural...
Sensory Exploitation, Monumentality, and Social Stratification: A Multisensory Survey of Puʻukoholā Heiau, Hawaiʻi (2016)
Monumental architecture is often theorized as a costly signal in prehistoric complex societies, including Oceania in general and Hawaiʻi in specific. In this paper I explore sensory exploitation theory, which suggests that the costliness of monumentality may have contributed to social stratification and the multifaceted function of religion through specific sensory sensitivities. Puʻukoholā heiau, a large temple on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi with notable archaeological, historic, and contemporary...
Shaken Apart: Community Archaeology In A Post-Industrial Earthquake City (2018)
This paper explores the interplay of a post-industrial setting, heritage and archaeology following a natural disaster. The setting is Christchurch, New Zealand, and the natural disaster was the devastating earthquakes that struck the city in 2010 and 2011, leading to the demolition of thousands of buildings across the city and its surrounds, followed by extensive rebuild-related earthworks. Throughout this process, numerous archaeological sites have been found and much of the built heritage has...
Simulating Late Holocene landscape use and the distribution of stone artefacts in arid western New South Wales, Australia (2015)
The archaeological landscapes of arid environments often feature surface scatters of stone artefacts, which are used to infer past human activity and organization. For hunter-gatherer groups this typically involves some interpretation of mobility; however, the scales of activity inferred from these assemblages usually extend beyond the boundaries of study areas. Understanding what these assemblages mean in terms of human mobility requires assessment of how samples fit within a wider landscape...
Small commercial aerial platforms for the generation of systematic, high-resolution, multi-spectral imagery and photogrammetry: Trimble UX5 and X100 (2015)
In the last 5 years, the commercial availability of embedded computer systems and low-cost hardware has led to an explosion of lightweight aerial platforms for photography. Offering multispectral imaging with outstanding spatial resolutions, these platforms offer researchers an inexpensive means of systematically documenting the archaeological record on the scale of landscapes. Through our exploration of hobby-class vehicles and the Trimble X100 and UX5 aerial platforms, we learned that the...
Small is not Necessarily Bad: 2000 Years of Sustained Habitation on Ebon Atoll, Marshall Islands (2015)
Islands have long been extolled as ideal ‘laboratories’ where comparative analyses between high volcanic, continental, makatea (or raised limestone) and low coral islands or atolls have provided insights into the speed and tempo of social, technological, and economic change of insular societies over centuries to millennia. The severity and chronology of human impacts on pristine landscapes is a common theme in island archaeology. Ironically, the diminutive atolls—most only a few square...
Small Island Adaptations in the Initial Colonization of Fiji and Tonga (2017)
Current research into the earliest Lapita occupation of Fiji and Tonga emphasizes the importance of small offshore island settlement choices for founder populations. Associated faunal data typically illustrate reliance on reef and marine resources that, in turn, have resurrected 1960s "strand looper" interpretations for Lapita economy, with little to no reliance on agricultural production. Recent studies at early Lapita sites at Kavewa (northern Fiji) and Nukuleka (southern Tonga) provide an...
Small Island, Big Mission: Landscapes of Presbyterianism in Aniwa, Vanuatu (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "In Small Islands Forgotten: Insular Historical Archaeologies of a Globalizing World", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In November 1866, following a failed attempt at establishing a mission on the neighbouring island of Tanna five years earlier, the Presbyterian missionary John G. Paton landed on the small coral atoll of Aniwa. The inhabitants of this Polynesian Outlier in Southern Vanuatu (formerly New...