Pacific Islands (Geographic Keyword)
126-150 (157 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Defining and Measuring Diversity in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Due to the effects of drift on small and isolated populations, island environments pose particular evolutionary challenges in the retention of richness and diversity of cultural information. Such variation, however, can have significant fitness consequences particularly when environmental conditions change in an unpredictable fashion:...
Something About Kutau-Bao: Understanding Dominant Obsidian Sources (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. After c. 50 years of research using a diverse range of geochemical techniques, patterns of movement for obsidian in the Pacific region, dating from the Pleistocene up to the historic period, have been documented comprehensively. Although there are eight high quality obsidian sources, by far the largest quantity of...
Stewarding Cultural Landscapes: Managing an Eroding Coastal Site at Pu`uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Perched sand deposits and pocket beaches dot the shoreline at Pu'uhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park on the island of Hawai'i. Keone'ele Cove, situated along the northern boundary of the park, is a key part of the cultural landscape where Hawaii’s ruling class landed canoes and hosted gatherings, and where native Hawaiians continue these practices in...
Storage Pit Prospection and Capacity Estimation in Aotearoa New Zealand: A Comparison of Surface Detection Methods (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. LiDAR has revolutionized the way we survey for surface-visible archaeological features. Our ability to relatively quickly capture and assess large landscapes for features enables us to understand human activity across large spatial scales with significantly less time and financial investment than pedestrian or other forms of remote survey alone. As these...
Style vs. Function in Polynesian Fish Hook Shank Variation (2018)
Polynesian i’a makau, or fishhooks, may stand in for ceramics for the purpose of generating culture-historical units, facilitating relative dating of the three Hawaiian assemblages under scrutiny (Allen 1996). Artifact assemblages at Waiahukini, Makalei, and Pu’u Ali’i contained over 1000 intact or partial fishhooks and fragments of shaped pig bone representing unfinished manufacture. Allen’s (2015) conceptual style-function model of hook attributes necessitates a focus on stylistic shank...
Surveyed with LiDAR: Identifying Lo’i Pondfields in Windward Kohala, 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. This project is a demonstration of GIS methods for identifying irrigated agricultural complexes in the heavily vegetated drainage of Halawa Gulch, windward Kohala. Through use of GIS tools on a LiDAR data set I created slope interpolation and elevational profile graphs of potential agricultural sites. In some cases these could be verified...
Sustainable Visit to Rapa Nui: Global Perspectives (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeologies and Islands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, I present some research results deriving from a collaborative and interdisciplinary research project called Sustainable Visits in Rapa Nui - Global perspectives. The use of visits refers to tourism, colonization and migrations in the long term perspective, visits with colonial connotations, and research visits and Rapanui migrations, all...
A Synthesis of Windward Oahu Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Research and CRM Are Not Mutually Exclusive: J. Stephen Athens—Forty Years and Counting" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Steve Athens legacy has provided archaeologists working within a historic preservation context a reminder of the numerous opportunities available to conduct research within a cultural resource management setting. This paper argues that not only does historic preservation provide a plethora of funding...
A Tale of Tongan Chickens (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lapita peoples transported a number of animal species in their colonizing canoes as they settled the islands of the Pacific. Included among the domesticated animals introduced by Lapita peoples were chickens (Gallus gallus). Later, Polynesians also transported chickens as they settled many of the islands of the Polynesian Triangle. The discovery of...
A Tale of Two Bombers: Forensic Recovery of WWII-era Aircraft Crash Sites in the Jungles of Papua New Guinea (2019)
This is an abstract from the "A Multidimensional Mission: Crossing Conflicts, Synthesizing Sites, and Adapting Approaches to Find Missing Personnel" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The successful recovery of human remains from aircraft crash sites is significantly impacted by the circumstances of loss, to include how the crash occurred, the size of the aircraft, and taphonomic factors. Two WWII aircraft crashes in the East Sepik and Madang...
There Are No Chiefs Here: Contrasting Questions of "Marginality" in Kaupō, Maui, and the Mauna Kea Adze Quarry, Hawaiʻi Island (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While core-periphery studies have long been employed to highlight distinctions between areas within a shared sociopolitical sphere, less articulated is what it means to actually be "peripheral." Or, for that matter, "liminal," "a hinterland," or "marginal," among others. This paper uses examples from two regions, the district of Kaupo, Maui, and the...
Thermal Processes on Tropical Archaeological Shell: An Experimental Study (2018)
Tropical archaeological shell middens throughout Australasia provide valuable information about subsistence practices, environmental changes, and human occupation. One of the major anthropic processes that can occur in any midden site is burning or heating of the shell, either from cooking or heat-treating shell for working. Thermal influences on marine shell are poorly understood across all disciplines, including archaeology. Burning or heating may not always show any visual signs and rather...
Three-Dimensional Spatial Evidence of the Development of Agriculture in the Sigatoka River System, Viti Levu, 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. The transition from coastal foraging to inland/upland horticulture in Viti Levu, Fiji appears to be marked by the early incorporation (~3000 BP) of fruit arboriculture in the primary tributaries of the Sigatoka River, with later (~2500 BP) evidence for the development of more intensive agriculture involving root and tuber farming and pond...
Tracking Changes in Nearshore Ecology over 2000 Years in Southern Yap, Western Caroline Islands (2018)
The initial human settlement of Yap, Western Caroline Islands (northwest tropical Pacific), is one of the least understood in Pacific prehistory, although new archaeological research is beginning to address this issue. Excavations at the southern site of Pemrang in Yap, western Caroline Islands (northwest tropical Pacific) have revealed multiple rich, well-stratified deposits of shell and pottery spanning the known occupation sequence of Yap and extended the date of early human activity by ca....
Tracking Human Dispersals to Palau Using Ancient DNA: Results from the Chelechol ra Orrak Site (2021)
This is an abstract from the "When the Wild Winds Blow: Micronesia Colonization in Pacific Context" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Initial settlement of Remote Oceania represents the world’s last major wave of human dispersal. While transdisciplinary models involving linguistic, archaeological, and biological data have been utilized in the Pacific to develop basic chronologies and trajectories of initial settlement, a number of elusive gaps remain...
Transforming Ideologies and Hopes of the Past in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea (2018)
In the wake of several decades of resource extraction (logging and oil/gas exploration), the past as articulated in particular places, material things, names and narratives has taken on new urgency in the Purari Delta. For over a decade communities have struggled to marshal these assemblages of cultural heritage to demonstrate their traditional ownership to acquire resource royalties. An imperfect and highly political process, claimants must overcome the legacies of out-migration, Christianity,...
Underwater Cultural Heritage Protection and Management in Pacific Island States (2018)
The waters of the Pacific Ocean contains a wealth of Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) encompassing the history of humanity from the Stone Age to the Atomic Age and witnessing climate change. This paper presents a summary of the outcomes of the UCH Programme in Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Notable progress includes the reference to the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the UCH in SAMOA Pathway outcome document (2014), national and regional capacity building workshops, and...
Unearthing the History of Mokil Atoll: A Fresh Perspective through Zooarchaeological Exploration (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There has been a dearth of research on atolls in the central-eastern part of the Caroline Islands, especially from a zooarchaeological perspective. We present the first zooarchaeological analysis for Mokil atoll, which has been continuously inhabited since 1700-1500 cal. BP. The material was excavated in 2013 on the islet of Kahlap. The majority of the...
UNESCO. Existing Legislative Protection of the Cultural and Natural Heritage of the Pacific Region (1982)
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Unsettling Settler-Colonial Archaeology: Constructing Indigenous Futurities at Puʻukoholā Heiau (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Often thought of as a discipline that concerns itself with ruins—that which is in the past—archaeology also serves the settler-colonial project, in the present and the future. For that reason, archaeology inherently functions as a political tool, even if typically imagined as an apolitical means of “preserving” the past. In other words, archaeology offers...
Urbanization in Ancient Tonga: The Tongatapu Low-Density Urban System (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of low-density urbanization has been an important development in recognizing the diversity of past human settlements. However, the key challenge to studying low density urbanization with archaeological data, particularly in tropical zones, has been the...
Utilization of Fish Resources at the Hopoate Site on Tongatapu, Kingdom of Tonga (2018)
Analysis of archaeological fish remains from the Hopoate site, on Tongatapu in the Pacific Island Kingdom of Tonga, identified 18 different families. Significant change in relative abundance was evident in Lethrinidae (emperors) and Acanthuridae (surgeonfish, unicornfish), two families common as food fish in Tonga. Frequencies of the families were compared between the early settlement period (~2850-2900 cal BP) and the subsequent Plainware/Aceramic period. Larger-bodied Lethrinidae, which are...
Utilizing Ancient Oral Microbes to Track Human Migrations across the Pacific Islands: Insights from Palau and Beyond (2021)
This is an abstract from the "When the Wild Winds Blow: Micronesia Colonization in Pacific Context" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient human migrations underpin the origin of past cultures, health, ecological interactions, and identity. However, recent or rapid migrations are difficult to track using classical demographic tools that monitor human genetic mutations over time. A new method—tracking human migrations by assessing microbial genome...
Varied Outcomes of the Colonial Encounter in Hawaii Island's Hinterlands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beginning in the late 18th century CE, the Hawaiian archipelago's sustained interaction with foreigners transformed the islands from independent kingdoms at the center of their world to a globalized frontier, trade entrepôt, military outpost, and, ultimately, an economic and political colony. At the same time, the seats of power and settlement...
WDXRF Analyses and Understanding Variability in Time and Space: Trade in the Complex Society Island Chiefdoms (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. Our WDXRF sourcing program of geological and archaeological specimens (n=177) from the Society Islands, outlines the dynamics of inter- and intra-archipelago exchange over an 800 year period. Adzes from 21 sources were identified. Those traded in from the Marquesas Islands, an over 1,400 km voyage, are found with low...