Republic of Vanuatu (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
176-200 (249 Records)
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...
Push and Pull, Part II: Modeling the Inland Exploration and Settlement of Fiji (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Geospatial Studies in the Archaeology of Oceania" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous GIS-based analyses (2017) by the authors have identified the ranges of several classes of terrestrial fauna that would inhabited the island of Viti Levu in prehistory. The ranges and habits of reptiles (giant tortoises, iguanas, and snakes), flightless birds (megapodes and giant pigeons), and bat and seabird colonies intersect in...
Quantifying Energy Investment in Monuments (Ahu) on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) Using Structure from Motion Mapping (2018)
Pre-European contact Rapa Nui (Easter Island) society is well-known for its substantial investment in monumental architecture, including over 300 platforms (ahu) and almost 1000 statues (moai). Recent theoretical and empirical research on the island suggests that ahu and moai were focal points for competitive and cooperative signaling by relatively small-scale communities dispersed across on the island. Evaluation of this hypothesis, however, requires the measurement of the amount of energy...
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...
Queer Feminist Science in Hawaiian Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Future Is Fluid...and So Was the Past: Challenging the 'Normative' in Archaeological Interpretations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Queer theory is an important tool for critically analyzing ideas about the past that are normalized and reproduced to the detriment of descendant populations. This approach is particularly relevant when investigating the social structures that governed daily life in the past....
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...
Recent Investigations at Western Raiatea (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The island of Raiatea in the Leeward Society Islands of French Polynesia is viewed as a central place for the initial colonization of East Polynesia and the dispersal of pre-contact voyaging populations to distantly located islands of the Pacific Ocean. This history is embedded in the oral traditions of Pacific Island peoples and supported by...
Reconstruccions del passat. Un recorregut per l’història d’Europa i Amèrica (1994)
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 EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these 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 using the...
Reconstructing Ancient Pottery Transfer Patterns through Petrographic Analysis: A Case Study of New Caledonian Lapita Pottery Assemblages (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Humans first arrived in New Caledonia during the Lapita seaborne expansion from New Guinea to Tonga between 1250 and 800 cal BC. We use stylistic and petrographic analyses of Lapita pottery to study social relationships among Lapita communities. New Caledonia has a large island (Grande Terre) with...
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...
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 Role of Short-Term and Catastrophic Climatic Events and Human-Induced Landscape Change in Society Island Cultural Transformations (2018)
As studies of sustainability and resilience in pre-contact Polynesian societies proliferate, records of small-scale and large-scale environmental change are being refined. Yet the question of what drives social change, human actions or climatic factors, is still quite hard to discern. My case study focuses on non-human agency, particularly eroding landforms and climatic conditions, as forces of change in pre-contact East Polynesia. A Society Island case study outlines varied human responses to...
Sailing characteristics of Oceanic canoes (1962)
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 EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these 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 using the...
Scanning Electron Microscopy and Geoarchaeology of Naihehe Cave, Fiji (2018)
This poster reports on field-work and laboratory investigations conducted on geoarchaeological samples from Naihehe Cave, located in the Sigatoka river valley of Viti Levu, Fiji. This research employs novel and exploratory methods, including Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) to determine the elemental content of sediment samples and for detailed imagery useful in grain size and shape...
Scientific experiments: a possibility? Presenting a cyclical script for experiments in archaeology (2005)
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 EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these 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 using the...
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...
The Seraglio of the Great Turk: Ethnosexual and Engendered Violences in the Mariana Islands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After the arrival of a group of Hispanic Jesuits to the Mariana Islands in 1668, an ethnosexual conflict emerged between the colonists and the local communities (the Chamorros). After that conflict, Chamorro communities were relocated in new villages, the so-called reducciones, under the close surveillance of the Spanish colonial powers. This reduction brought...
Setting the Agenda for the Next Phase in Obsidian Studies in Aotearoa (New Zealand) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of obsidian artifacts from sites across Aotearoa (New Zealand) in the 1960s-80s, were critical to identifying a major decrease in mobility, just prior to the onset of endemic warfare, marked by the construction of thousands of fortifications by the ancestors of Māori. Unfortunately, initial enthusiasm was...
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 Islands and Constructed Landscapes: A Bayesian Cultural Chronology of the Manuʻa Group (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Supporting Practical Inquiry: The Past, Present, and Future Contributions of Thomas Dye" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Radiocarbon and other radiometric dating techniques are pivotal for archaeological inquiries about cultural and environmental change. How we use these techniques and interpret their results to analyze and draw conclusions about archaeological data, however, can vary somewhat from one researcher to...
Small Islands and Hinterlands: Exploring Scale and the Sāmoan Archipelago (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of a "hinterland" is a tool. As such, the concept is only beneficial if it can help us understand human behavior or the archaeological record better than alternatives. Recent research has shown that it can be usefully applied in Polynesia, but its application is geographically and substantively limited. This paper will explore the use of...
The Social Organization and Engineering of Agriculture at Maluaka in the South Kona Field System, Hawai`i Island (2017)
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...
Soil and Water Management in the South Kohala Field System, Hawai‘i Island (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Geospatial Studies in the Archaeology of Oceania" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The South Kohala Field System (SKFS), Hawai‘i Island, is a network of contoured and sloping field borders first constructed in the prehistoric period but utilized into the 19th century. Many features are located below the 750 mm rainfall isohyet, the lower boundary for rainfed agriculture in Hawai‘i. In order to sustain agriculture in...