Oceania (Other Keyword)
1-9 (9 Records)
A mounded landscape in south Vanuatu provides archaeological evidence relating to chiefly performance, voyaging, and ritual transformation during a period of cross-cultural contacts spanning 400 years or more. The site of Kwaraka is located at the southern end of Tanna Island. The area has a view on clear days of the neighbouring islands Futuna and Aniwa, and there is ethnohistoric evidence of long-term patterns of interaction between Tannese people and the people of these nearby islands....
An Archaeological Pilot Study on Manihiki and Rakahanga, Two Remote Atolls in East Polynesia. (2016)
Here I report the findings of a 2015 archaeological and oral-history based reconnaissance survey of two remote Oceanic atolls. Manihiki and Rakahanga are located in the in the Northern Cook Islands of East Polynesia. This dual island system has been the subject of few systematic archaeological studies. Yet, the existing data for the atolls suggests that they may be ideal for the archaeological study of the social-ecological dynamics of sustainability and resilience in small island environments....
Chapter 3. Origins and Development of Islands (1994)
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Institutions of the Reformation, Institutions of Reform: Archaeology, Protestantism, and Modernity in the South Pacific (2013)
When scholars speak of "the Modern World", they often refer to capitalism, nation states, and colonialism. It is often assumed that the transition to modernity correlates with increased secularism, though recent scholarship challenges this idea, specifically linking certain concepts about modern subjectivity to the philosophy of the Protestant Reformation. Tracing the impact of the Reformation across time and space is crucial to understanding modernity, especially in situations where some of the...
Lapita - the Australian connection (2015)
Recent research in southern New Guinea, Torres Strait and northeastern Australia suggests that Lapita users and possibly makers may have been present in regions hitherto believed to be beyond their reach. In New Guinea, the discovery of late Lapita near Port Moresby has just been complemented by findings of late Lapita ceramics in the western Gulf of Papua. Southwest of the Gulf, undiagnostic ceramics dating to perhaps 2500 years are now known in the Torres Strait. Bill Dickinson showed that...
Late Holocene Human Expansion into Near and Remote Oceania: A Bayesian Model-Based Comparison of the Chronologies of the Mariana Islands and Lapita Settlement (2016)
Carson and colleagues have argued that the settlement of the Mariana Islands ~3500 cal BP marks the first major human expansion in the Western Pacific during the late Holocene. If this settlement date is correct, it would be the initial population movement beyond the Near Oceania and Island Southeast Asia region, an area occupied by modern humans for 40,000+ years. The previous consensus gave precedence to the rapid Lapita expansion throughout Near Oceania at generally the same time, followed a...
More than a pretty face? Exploring the allure of obsidian valuables from Papua New Guinea (2015)
Brilliant, shiny, translucent, black. On the surface, everything made from obsidian is inherently attractive. So why are some obsidian artifacts more highly valued than others? Using the example of obsidian use in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea, properties that go beyond physical attributes are explored as potential factors in the creation of valuables: e.g., exoticism; ownership of resources; social links; symbolism; performance; staged production; specialist makers. SAA 2015 abstracts...
The Origins and Distribution of Oceanic Agricultural Techniques Revealed through Comparative Phylogenetic Analysis (2015)
Agricultural innovation fuelled the development of Oceanic societies. Techniques such as pond-fields and lithic mulching increased yields and made marginal landscapes habitable. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the evolution of techniques, including ancestral states, homologies, and independent inventions has been largely speculative. Here I present a phylogenetic analysis of ethnohistorically and archaeologically documented agricultural techniques across Oceanic societies. The analysis combines...
Women weaving individual and collective identities in Kosrae, Micronesia (1824-1924) (2017)
In Oceania, archaeologists have examined perishable ethnographic items to gain fresh insights into past people’s identities. This paper presents a new analysis of 19th and 20th century Micronesian loincloths from European and American museums, explaining how their construction offers insights into islanders’ socio-political identities during a period of rapidly intensifying global interconnectivity. On the island Kosrae, Micronesia, tol (loincloths) were the primary garment of every polity...