Pacific Islands (Geographic Keyword)
51-75 (157 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Gender in Archaeology over the Last 30+ Years" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. My research examines ongoing issues of gender disparity in male-dominated academic professions like archaeology. Here, I investigate the link between gender and publishing of archaeological research in Oceania amongst a broad cross-section of archaeologists. Similar research conducted on North American archaeologists has found significant...
Geomorphological Development and Implications for Human Settlement of Southern Yap, Western Caroline Islands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human population dispersals across Remote Oceania were some of the most remarkable long-distance voyages in history. Recent collaborative research focused on the timing, drivers, and complexities of these voyages has led to an increased understanding of these movements, but many questions still remain unanswered. This is especially true for Yap, a group of...
A Geospatial Analysis of Sacred Trees and Archaeological Sites in the Precontact Society Islands (French Polynesia) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Entangled Legacies: Human, Forest, and Tree Dynamics" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological, anthropological, and historical sources speak to the importance of particular tree species for ceremonial and quotidian use in precontact Polynesian chiefdoms. Archaeological studies have largely discussed the spatial association of trees and archaeological sites in an ad hoc manner, thus more refined spatial analyses...
Hawaiian Archaeology & Disasters: (Re)unification with the Land to build a Resilient Future (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hawai'i is a dynamic landscape with a unique archaeological record. The archipelago's relatively short physical history has been subject to various disasters, including sea level rise, tsunami, wildfire, and drought. Predictions indicate that anthropogenic drivers of climate change will increase the frequency and severity of disasters in the Pacific. In...
Hawaiian Petroglyphs and Pictographs: Patterns and Interpretations from Hawai’i, Maui, Moloka’i, O’ahu, and Kaua’i (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Hawaiian Islands have a variety of rock art sites I have examined and photographed on five of the eight main islands over the past 50 years, with most of the research conducted more recently as summarized in this presentation. Some islands have only a few petroglyph locations, whereas the Big Island...
High-Precision Photogrammetry Mapping of the South Kohala Agricultural Field System, Hawai‘i Island (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many archaeologists employ high-precision remote sensing to study surface remains at a landscape scale. Hawaiian archaeologists pioneered remote sensing using aerial photography in the Kohala peninsula of north Hawaiʻi Island, beginning in the 1960s, and it was the location for the first regional-scale application of lidar in Hawai‘i. In March 2022,...
The Highways and Byways of the Winds: Exploring Sailing Capability and Climate Variability in Pacific Interaction (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Modeling Mobility across Waterbodies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Current debates over migration and mobility in Pacific prehistory hinge on the capacity of mariners to sail to windward. With this ability, voyages between any two points were possible, with ease of travel conditioned on the favorability of winds. Without it, movement in any given direction was dependent on winds traveling along a similar path, a...
Hinterlands and Mobile Courts of the Hawai`i Island State (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The eighteenth century Hawai`i Island state included more than 400 local communities divided among six districts, each with a resident elite. The king’s mobile court of as many as a thousand people frequently moved from one highly productive district core to another. The "capital" was wherever the king resided. Varying in time and space, hinterlands...
History, Archaeology, and the Lost Marines of Guadalcanal (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. In 2016 Garcia & Associates conducted forensic archaeological investigations for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. Beginning on 7 August 1942 the Battle for Guadalcanal was the first major Allied offensive of World War II in...
Holocene Paleoenvironment and Demography of the New Guinea North Coast (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Pacific islands are often used as model cases of human-environment systems and the development of biocultural diversity. In comparison to the smaller islands of the southwestern Pacific, the prehistory of the north coast of New Guinea remains poorly understood, particularly prior to ~2000 BP. We draw together a variety of archaeological evidence collected...
Human Ecodynamics in Central East Polynesia (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. Our understanding of Pacific paleoenvironments, how they changed with human arrival, and further transformations in the post-settlement period owes much to the research and insights of Steve Athens. This paper considers palaeoenvironmental records from central East Polynesian islands in relation to...
Ichthyoarchaeological Analysis of ScMo-350 on Mo’orea, French Polynesia (2018)
ScMo-350 is located on Mo’orea Island, northwest of Tahiti in French Polynesia. Our ichthyoarchaeological analyses assess which fish taxa were utilized by the pre-contact Ma’ohi, and how those taxa may have changed over time. Our diachronic approach investigates fishing activities over a c. 1,000 year period, between AD 900-1800. We broadly divided this beach ridge site into four excavation blocks to aid in spatial analyses of the recovered artifacts. Fish specimens were heavily concentrated in...
Iconoclasm Island: New Research on the Destruction of Rapa Nui’s Statues (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeologies and Islands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Monuments are a critical window into people’s values, beliefs, and social memories. The destruction of monuments is especially important since it can shed light on how these aspects of societies change over time. We describe new research aimed at understanding the destruction of moai (statues) on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Our first goal is to build a...
Illuminating the Obscure: Using Legacy LiDAR Data to Define and Interpret a WWII Airfield on the Island of Tinian, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) (2018)
Tinian International Airport in the CNMI is a repurposed portion of West Field, a WWII U.S. airbase constructed in 1944 for B-29 operations against Japan. In 2017, HDR conducted a cultural resource inventory for proposed airport infrastructure improvements, focusing on West Field and the adjacent Japanese-built Gurguan Point Airfield. Survey was complicated by dense secondary forest that obscures the two airfields, rendering many features invisible from the air. To assist with mapping these...
Interaction and Isolation in Manislan Mariånas: 1500 BC–AD 1769 (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeologies and Islands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper addresses long-term processes of inter- and intra-island interaction and isolation in the Manislan Mariånas (Mariana Islands), spanning their first occupation (ca. 1500 BC) to the end of the Jesuit colonial mission (AD 1769). I focus on mobility, ocean communication and networking, engagement with the sea, and social intersectionality. CHamoru...
Islands of Ideology: Exploring Group Formation in Hawaiʻi and Sāmoa (2024)
This is an abstract from the "States, Confederacies, and Nations: Reenvisioning Early Large-Scale Collectives." session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social consent was essential to promote cooperation and group identity. Because of disciplinary attention to top-down processes of power accumulation and political classification, how social notions of social consent in middle-range societies were modified and diversified is poorly understood. The societies...
I‘a, Loko, and Loko I‘a Kalo: The Riches of Pu‘uloa Lagoon and How They Came to Be (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. I‘a (fish), loko (fishponds), and loko i‘a kalo (taro fishponds) represent the traditional riches of Pu‘uloa Lagoon, now called Pearl Harbor. With a single narrow entrance, the deeply indented and multi-lobed embayment cut 8 km deep into the central southern O‘ahu coastline, creating a calm,...
Kahalu`u and Keauhou on Hawai`i Island as Living, Dynamic Landscapes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper analyzes the ahupua`a Kahalu`u and Keauhou on the west coast of Hawai`i Island as living, dynamic landscapes applying methodologies from archaeology, ethnohistory, and heritage studies as well as the framework of memory. Kahalu’u and Keauhou appear to be an incredibly interesting archaeological landscape...
Kanaloa: Lessons from Paleoecology of a Once Common Lowland Forest Species in Hawai'i (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. During the late 1980s and early1990’s paleoenvironmental investigations at wetland sites in coastal lowlands of O‘ahu and Mau‘i revealed a very common unknown mimosoid pollen type occurring during pre-Polynesian times. Following Polynesian arrival in the islands around AD 1000, sediment profiles...
Land Use and Settlement Pattern Change in Mauka Kawaihae, Hawai‘i Island, 1790-1930 (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pre-1778 land use in Hawai‘i Island’s leeward Kohala uplands has been extensively documented by archaeologists, particularly those studying the ancient mauka (upland) Leeward Kohala Field System. However, “historic” (post-1778) land use – particularly in the uplands – is not as well understood. In this poster, I provide a review of the documentary and oral...
Land, War, and Optimal Territorial Size in Neolithic Society: Why New Guineans Rarely ever Occupied the Territories They had Conquered (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Not infrequently, New Guinean warriors managed in war to displace or annihilate the members of a neighboring territory, yet almost never did they then move in and occupy the territory they had won. Instead, they either left it vacant, allowed allies to take it over, or (most commonly) invited the original owners back a couple of years later. This seemingly...
Large Things Forgotten: The Hawaiian Monarchy’s Sailing Fleet, 1790–1840 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Pacific Maritime History: Ships and Shipwrecks" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beginning in 1790, Hawaiian ali’i (royalty) appropriated Western sailing technology to facilitate fundamental transformations of interisland tributary systems, alliance building, exchange systems, and emergent forms of Indigenous capitalism. By 1840 ali’i had either built or purchased over 60 sailing vessels that we know the names of....
Little Ice Age Impacts on Traditional Māori Fisheries: Preliminary Results from North Island, New Zealand (2018)
Numerous paleoclimate proxies indicate the Little Ice Age caused marked declines in New Zealand’s atmospheric and sea surface temperatures for much of the period between 1450 C.E. and the end of the nineteenth century. These trends could have keenly affected the productivity of marine fisheries, which have always been critically important to Māori, the indigenous peoples of New Zealand. Considering the close connections that continue to exist between traditional fisheries and Māori economic,...
Living on the Edge: Dogs and People in Early New Zealand (2018)
New Zealand is situated on the southern margins of the Polynesian triangle in the Pacific Ocean. Its temperate climate and environment differs greatly from the tropical central East Polynesian islands, from where its first human colonists originated. Although possessing plentiful bird life, sea mammals and other marine taxa, people faced challenges adapting their tropical horticultural practices to this new land. This paper explores the changing fortunes of people and dogs during the settlement...
Local Trajectories, Regional Patterns, and Human Ecodynamics in Northern Māori Fisheries (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological fishbone assemblages are the product of dynamic interactions between human fishers and fish stocks, both of which are enmeshed in broader, dynamic socioenvironmental contexts which are continually transformed and sustained by people and non-human entities. Understanding the history of fisheries therefore depends on careful consideration of...