Pacific Islands (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (157 Records)
Progressive cultural and biological diversification and divergence over space and time is one of the grand meta-narratives of archaeological thought. Much of the method and theory employed in support of this narrative is arguably at odds with what Emirbayer and Goodwin label the "anti-categorical imperative" at the heart of social network relational thinking. Here we utilize spatial network models within the broader family of Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) to examine the relationship...
Deforestation of Pacific Islands Driven by a Combination of Land Use, Fire, and Climate (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. Remote islands in the Pacific Ocean experienced dramatic environmental transformations after initial human settlement in the last 3,000 years. Human causality of this environmental degradation has been largely unquestioned, but examination of regional records suggests a role for climate influences. Here we use charcoal and stable...
Dental Morphology of the Prehistoric Chamorro, Guam (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dental morphology has a long history of use in understanding the biological distance and migrations of past populations. Though distribution of the frequencies of morphological traits of teeth have been documented around the world, variation within Micronesia is the least studied among the peoples of the Pacific, leaving peopling of the region the least...
Determining the Chronology of Reef Island Development for Constraining Initial Human Colonization of Pacific Atolls (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. As recent worldwide news coverage has aptly reported, Pacific coral atolls are the most precarious landscapes for human settlement, yet many of them evidence continuous occupation for 2,000 years. Coral atolls are unique in their small size, low elevation, limited diversity of terrestrial flora and fauna, poorly...
A Different Way to View the World: Comics, Outreach, and Cultural Heritage in the Islands of Yap and Palau, Micronesia (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. Comics can not only be an engaging and accessible medium for public outreach in archaeology, they can also help strengthen connections between such outreach and other aspects of cultural heritage. Applied comics utilize specific kinds of visual storytelling devices such as explicitly identified narrators, visual...
Digging Deep: Place-based Variation in Māʻohi Agricultural Production Systems across the Late Pre-Contact Society Islands, French Polynesia (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. Understanding the socio-ecological contexts of past agricultural systems in complex societies requires expansive datasets, particularly when the goal is to mesh top-down and bottom-up perspectives that generate data at different scales of analysis. Here, we bring together ethnohistoric and...
Disturbed by Treasure Salvage Yet Still Significant: Exploring Manila Galleons Santa Margarita and Nuestra Señora de la Concepción in the Northern Mariana Islands (2021)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Islands of Time (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Of the 59 recorded Manila galleon shipwreck incidents between 1565 and 1815, only seven shipwreck sites have been identified today. Two 17th-century Manila galleons, Santa Margarita and Nuestra Señora de la Concepción (Concepción), are in the Northern Mariana Islands. Both sites, however, have been impacted by post-wrecking activities of...
The Dynamics of Māori Socio-political Interaction: Social Network Analyses of Obsidian Circulation in Northland Aotearoa (2018)
The Polynesian colonists who settled New Zealand touched off the creation of a type of society not found in remote Oceania. Over the span of several centuries relatively autonomous village-based groups transformed into larger territorial hapū lineages, which later formed even larger geo-political iwi associations. A social network analysis of the spatial and temporal distribution of obsidian artefacts, an important stone resource that was used for a variety of tools, evaluates where and when new...
Eating Pingelap: Archaeobotanical and Zooarchaeological Perspectives on the Settlement of a Micronesian Atoll (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. Pingelap Atoll, located in central-eastern Micronesia, was colonized by 1550–1700 cal BP. Although these settlement dates are only a few hundred years later than those of nearby high islands such as Pohnpei and Kosrae, the environment presents notably different challenges and opportunities for subsistence. In this...
Education, Conservation, and Research on Easter Island through Three-Dimensional Photogrammetry (2018)
For fifteen years, Terevaka Archaeological Outreach (TAO) has provided local students from Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) with hands-on experience to: (1) offer experiential learning opportunities about the local cultural and natural resources; (2) promote awareness and expertise in conservation measures and sustainable development; and (3) document and study the modern and ancient natural and cultural resources of the island. Three-dimensional ortho-corrected photogrammetry (3D OCP) is a...
Ethnoarchaeological Contributions to Interpreting Pacific Archaeofish Assemblages (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. In 1976, Tom Dye conducted an ethnographic study of marine resource exploitation on Niuatoputapu, Kingdom of Tonga, to help provide a reference from which to interpret prehistoric patterns evident in the archaeological remains. Ethnoarchaeology provides a point of control for an expanded comparative...
Ethnoornithological and Genomic Perspectives on Royal Hawaiian Featherwork (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontiers in Animal Management: Unconventional Species, New Methods, and Understudied Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hawaiian featherwork constitutes a treasured element of Hawaiian cultural heritage. Feather artefacts curated in museums today were acquired between the late 18th and the early 20th centuries and it is clear that their production required thousands of feathers sourced from Hawaiian forest...
Evidence for Forest Clearance and Food Production in Lapita and Post-Lapita Fiji (2018)
Investigations at the site of Qaraqara have sought to determine the antiquity of forest clearance and food production in Fiji. Located over 25 km inland from the coast, archaeological excavation has indicated that the site was used for habitation and cultivation, producing a ceramic-rich deposit that extends to a depth of 250 cm. Geoarchaeological analyses of sediment cores from Qaraqara reached 500 cmbs, and document the formation of stable soils by 3000 BP, during the Lapita period. Plant...
Examining the Impacts of Non-human Animals on Sequences of Agricultural Change (2018)
Historical sequences of agricultural change are influenced by several key factors. While much attention has been paid to the political context of agricultural production, as well as environmental changes brought about by certain techniques, less has been paid to the active manipulation of productive environments by non-human animals. Within the context of some recent theoretical advances in archaeology and ecology, it has become apparent that animals - intentionally or unintentionally introduced...
Excavating and Interpreting Ancestral Action – Stories from the Subsurface of Orokolo Bay, Papua New Guinea (2018)
Orokolo Bay is a rapidly changing geomorphic and cultural landscape in which the ancestral past is constantly being interpreted and negotiated. This paper examines the importance of subsurface archaeological and geomorphological features for the various communities of Orokolo Bay as they maintain and re-construct cosmological and migration narratives. Everyday activities of gardening and digging at antecedent village locations bring Orokolo Bay locals into regular engagement with buried ceramics...
Expanding Our Remote Sensing Toolkit: The First Application of UAV Aerial Thermography in the Hawaiian Islands (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. Geospatial technology has allowed for significant advances in archaeological practice in Hawaii and Oceania as the equipment, software, and datasets have become more affordable and widely available. Remotely sensed data, notably aerial LiDAR and terrestrial laser scanning, are used in research and applied archaeology for site prospection...
An Experimental Archaeological Approach to Modeling and Testing Bone Artifacts in 3D Space (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, 3D modeling has become a more common method for evaluating archaeological materials, as it is a non-destructive method to test how artifacts will handle stress. 3D modelling has advantages over testing of physical artifacts because the exact same artifact can be reused multiple times to test different hypotheses. However, 3D models must be...
Exploration of Diminutive Spaces: The Connected Isolation of Micronesian Islands (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeologies and Islands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. More than 3,000 years ago peoples ventured into Remote Oceania using a combination of sophisticated watercraft, wayfinding techniques—including a celestial compass—and sailing strategies passed down orally through rote learning across generations. Over the course of 2,000+ years, different groups settled islands in Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia,...
Exploring Manufacturing Variability in Calcareous Sand Tempered Pottery on Yap, Western Caroline Islands (2018)
The oldest identified sites on Yap are identified by presence calcareous sand tempered (CST) pottery from deeply stratified deposits. With few exceptions, CST pottery, made from locally produced clay, has been recovered from Rungluw and Pemrang, two sites in southern Yap, western Micronesia (northwest tropical Pacific). Although poor preservation conditions and small sample sizes make it difficult to reconstruct vessel size, detailed analysis of sherds demonstrates at least two sub-types. Recent...
Exploring the Interpretative Roles of Microarchaeology, Ethnohistory and Ethnoarchaeology for Structuring Daily Life in Pre-contact Hawaiian Houses (2018)
Ethnoarchaeology provides a useful tool for understanding material patterns in the archaeological record. However, caution must be exercised in the application of this method to avoid projecting data onto times and places that are no longer represented by contemporary practices. In this paper, the authors argue that ethnoarchaeology is most useful for projects that focus on the longue durée when used in conjunction with a combination of micro and macro archaeological methods. Specifically, the...
Farms with a View: The Evolution of Agriculture at Kealakekua, 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. Above the 400 foot sea cliff at Kealakekua Bay on the leeward Kona coast of Hawai‘i are the remnants of extensive pre-Contact Hawaiian agricultural infrastructure. Inventory survey and data recovery on 100-plus acres at the top of the sea cliff provided an opportunity to examine a relatively large...
Feasting and Gift Giving in Pre-Contact and Spanish Colonial Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands of Micronesia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Feasting and gift-giving in the ethnography, history, and archaeology of native peoples in Southeast Asia and its islands in the Western Pacific are often given primacy in accounts of academic fieldwork. Some ethnohistoric accounts on the pre-Contact and Spanish Colonial Chamorro people indigenous to Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands of Micronesia also...
Field Systems, Urbanism, and State Formation in the Hawaiian Islands (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Fields: Locating and Interpreting Ancient Agricultural Landscapes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The significance of urbanization and royal centers in the development of productive agricultural systems and state formation has been minimized in the Hawaiian Islands. Today, thanks to several key methodological advances, especially remote sensing using lidar, we are closer than ever to an integrated and...
From Dune Stratigraphy to a Model-Based Cultural Sequence for the Marquesas Islands of East Polynesia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Marquesas Islands comprise part of East Polynesia, a culture area that also includes Hawai'i, New Zealand, and Tahiti. Calcareous sand dunes are rare in the Marquesas but play an outsized role in Polynesian archaeology. Dune sites yield remarkably rich evidence of human settlement and the preservation of organic remains is...
From the Mountains to the Sea: A Deep-Time Perspective on the Heritage of Foods in Papua New Guinea (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeobotany of Early Peopling: Plant Experimentation and Cultural Inheritance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) geography ranges from the high alpine mountains of its Highland provinces to remote oceanic islands and is home to a diverse spectrum of subsistence practices, most notably intensive tuber-focused horticulture, but also arboriculture and polycultures featuring many endemic...