Oceania (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Kahn.

I discuss comparative analyses of Society Island residential complexes to understand the role of smallholders in the advent of social complexity. In particular, I investigate the role of commoner production and its relationship to the elaboration of social inequality in late prehistory. Integrated spatial analysis of activity areas, artifacts, and sub-surface features provides data for understanding variation in production and consumption activities (tool production, subsistence production,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsten Vacca.

Archaeological investigations of pre-European contact Hawai’i rarely consider gendered space within the household—specifically, female spaces. Some scholarship addresses male spaces, yet few researchers currently attempt to understand the household and the landscape in terms of complex gendered interactions. In addition to this lack of household research, issues of androcentrism and historical linearity plague many Hawaiian ethnohistories, leaving fundamental gaps in knowledge that can be filled...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Codlin. Mark McCoy.

In ancient Hawai'i, elites employed ideology as a way of acquiring and stabilizing political and economic power. Material evidence of this is found in the numerous temples throughout the islands and in the formalized rules for constructing households. Ethnohistoric literature describes Hawaiian households as a collection of buildings with specific functional purposes. By segregating these activity areas, the Hawaiians were seen to observe kapu, a Polynesian ideological concept which, in Hawai'i,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jack Rossen. Mahealani Pai. Keonelehua Kalawe.

Two field seasons of excavation have been completed at Maluaka above Keauhou on Hawai`i Island. The project is a collaboration between Kamehameha Schools, which administers the site as an educational facility, and the University of Hawai`i at Hilo. We wish to describe the collaboration between academics, Hawaiians and the lineal descendent community interested in cultural practice and revitalization, as well as the integration of Hawaiian knowledge and archaeological science. The site has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yan Cai.

My analysis provide a picture how socioeconomic organization change in terms of changing ecology. Differences in aggregated artifact assemblages between households and sites in the KS phase have been taken to indicate participation in mutually exclusive economic activities (eg. Wood working, fishing, and animal processing), the products of which were then exchanged for those of other units. In contrast, a weak difference in the proportional composition of economic artifact assemblages between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mara Mulrooney. Andrew McAlister. Christopher M. Stevenson. Alexander E. Morrison.

On Rapa Nui (Easter Island), four geological sources of rhyolitic obsidian were utilized to manufacture obsidian artifacts, including tanged implements known as mata‘a. In this study, a total of 332 mata‘a from the collections of Bishop Museum were analyzed using portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF). Two analytical methods, Discriminant Function Analysis and Support Vector Machines Classification, were used to assign geographical provenance to these artifacts, which appear to be manufactured using...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Keating.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Toren.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carl Lipo. Robert Dinapoli. Alex Morrison. Terry Hunt.

The famous ahu and moai monuments of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) are features associated with multiple relatively small-scale communities distributed around the island. These communities are marked archaeologically by repeated sets of domestic architectural classes surrounding ceremonial features (i.e., ahu and moai) that potentially served to functionally integrate local populations. Described in this fashion, this settlement pattern offers the potential to explain the substantial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Janet Dixon Keller.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark McCoy.

Architecture holds a special place in archaeological reconstructions of past societies. I discuss how advances in the application of spatial technology in the study of architecture in the Hawaiian Islands has put us in a better position to describe how the creation of an archaic state society shaped this all-important material indicator of social change. I draw upon forms that are commonplace – house complexes, fields, and small temples and shrines – as well as less common classes of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Dodrill. Mila Lassuy. Nicholas Jew. Scott Fitzpatrick.

Abstract. In Palau, Micronesia, marine resources such as shellfish played a vital role in subsistence for millennia. At the Chelechol ra Orrak site, nearly 100 shellfish species have been identified in archaeological assemblages, but there is a dearth of data on nearshore paleoecology or prehistoric shellfish foraging practices. To address these issues, we employed stable oxygen isotopes (δ18O) on select shellfish species, which has been successfully applied in many coastal regions to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Jew. Taylor Dodrill. Scott Fitzpatrick.

For thousands of years and on a global scale, shellfish have been a key resource for peoples living in island and coastal environments. Not only were they critical food resources, but can act as records of paleoenvironmental conditions. In this study, we evaluated whether the crocus clam (Tridacna crocea) could satisfactorily record ambient water temperature via the incorporation of oxygen isotope ratios into the calcium carbonate matrix during shell growth. Modern Tridacna crocea were collected...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Hernandez. Julie Field. John Dudgeon. Christopher Roos.

Food production and manipulation, as well as associated technologies during Fijian prehistory are understudied archaeologically. Human colonization of Fiji occurred circa 2640 BP. Colonists subsisted on a diet composed of marine resources (fish, shellfish), and terrestrial fauna (bats, birds, tortoises). In contrast, 1,000 years later, most Fijians had transitioned to a fully agricultural diet. The contemporary Fijian diet centers on cultivated starches, imported originally by Fiji's colonists,...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Sophie Pascoe.

This resource is an application for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. While environmental governance initiatives, such as climate change mitigation mechanisms, are often framed in scientific and economic terms, they are entangled with diverse processes of socio-environmental change that cross ontological and epistemological borders. This research is an attempt to complicate the stories that are told about environmental governance and develop a narrative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scarlett Chiu. Nicholas Hogg. Yu-yin Su. Shih-Ya Chang.

In previous research, employing a dataset composed of motifs recorded from 60 Lapita sites spread across the southwestern Pacific, we argued that a general trend of making highly similar, but not identical, motifs can be seen when motif repertoires of different island groups are compared. We thus proposed that the elements of surprise or amusement, generated from making something similar yet different from what the intended audience expected to see, was employed to stress shared traditions while...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Hunter. Paul Hundley. Kieran Hosty. Irini A Malliaros.

In February 2017, maritime archaeologists affiliated with the Australian National Maritime Museum and Silentworld Foundation conducted a survey of Kenn Reefs. Located at the far eastern extremity of Australia’s Coral Sea Territory, this reef system was an uncharted hazard to navigation in the middle of the ‘Outer Route’, a shipping corridor used by nineteenth-century mariners wishing to avoid transiting through the Great Barrier Reef. Not surprisingly, several shipwrecks occurred at Kenn Reefs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rhiannon Stammers. Andy Herries. Nicola Stern.

The heat treatment of silcrete for lithic production has been identified as far back as 72,000 years ago, using a variety of scientific techniques. However, in most contexts simple visual assessment, notably the appearance of a lustrous red surface, is used to identify the use of heat treatment. Mass Gloss Analysis (MGA) is a quantitative, non-destructive method designed for measuring the increase in lustre noted on heat-treated lithics. Initially developed to investigate microcrystalline...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Swogger.

Comics are an effective medium for promoting engagement with archaeology, as they are able to communicate complex and detailed archaeological information to audiences unfamiliar with its concepts and practice. This communication is facilitated both through the comic itself and the process of creating it. During the University of Oregon's Palau Archaeology 2015 field school on the island of Palau, Micronesia, comics were used to present the ongoing results of excavations to multiple audiences....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seth Quintus. Jeffrey Clark.

Star mounds, named for their star-like shape, have been an enigmatic feature class in the Samoan Archipelago. Researchers have posited several potential functions for these monumental architectural features, including grave and territorial markers, but their primary function appears to have been as surfaces for pigeon catching. But, excavations of these features have been few and data limited. Here, we review old as well as recent data on star mounds relating to their physical attributes (size,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Flexner. Mark McCoy.

Hawai‘i occupies a somewhat unique position as one of two Polynesian archipelagos thought to have been the location of "primary" or "archaic" states in the time before European contact (the other possible example being Tonga). Hawaiian people created an elaborate ritual hierarchy that accompanied the emergence of state religion, which was associated with the construction of monumental stone temple complexes known as heiau. Heiau have long been a staple of archaeological investigation in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Lorey.

Archaeologists and researchers in heritage-based disciplines frequently study the complex interactions between human societies and natural environments. All too often, however, research proceeds from the premise that natural patterns, stressors and events promote direct cultural changes or adaptations on the part of human societies. Instead of perpetuating this linear and causal understanding of the relationships between nature and culture, this paper develops a new, holistic framework that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Greig. Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith. Richard Walter.

Dogs were introduced to the islands of Australasia and the Pacific during human migrations and colonisations, but the timing and dispersal routes are unclear. To investigate these Oceanic dog introductions and movements, we generated complete or near complete ancient mitochondrial genomes from archaeological dog specimens from Thailand, Island Southeast Asia and Pacific islands, and from modern dingoes. When combined with additional published complete mitogenome sequences from modern dogs from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiina Manne. Peter Veth. Fiona Hook. Kane Ditchfield. Ingrid Ward.

Barrow Island, located 50km off the modern Pilbara coast, contains the longest and richest archaeological record of Pleistocene coastal settlement in northern Australia. During lowered sea levels of the Pleistocene, the island was part of the greater Australian continent. Archaeological survey has revealed an array of sites in cave, rockshelter and open air-settings. The most diverse record has been recovered from a large limestone cave, where repeated visits began at c. 50 ka BP and continued...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Sheppard.

Thanks to the efforts of Bill Dickinson petrographic analysis of ceramic thin sections has been able to make an almost unparalleled contribution to sourcing studies in Oceania. In this paper I will report on use of one of the new generation desktop SEMs which will help us continue and build on Bill’s work. Examples will be drawn from studies of Lapita period ceramic assemblages in the Solomon Islands. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and...