Polynesia (Other Keyword)
1-13 (13 Records)
The native forests of the central and eastern Pacific Islands were extensively modified by Polynesian settlers, but our understanding of these processes are generalised. In the first large study of anthropogenic forest change in the Marquesas Islands, the identification of two members of the Sapotaceae family in archaeological charcoal assemblages was notable. Plants from this taxonomic group are poorly represented in Eastern Polynesia today, and the findings of Planchonella and another species...
Archaeology of Luatele Crater: Ritual and Prestige of the Tuimanu'a, Ta'u Island, American Samoa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An archaeological survey covering 50 acres was conducted in and around Luatele or Judds Crater, an extinct volcano, on Taʻu Island, Manuʻa District, American Samoa. The project identified 24 precontact sites comprising 101 archaeological features and a 142 m cave associated with the Samoan legend of Vaatausili. These features include star mounds, oval boulder...
Artifact Networks, Cultural Transmission, and Polynesian Settlement (2015)
The colonization of Polynesia was a motivated dispersal of culturally related human populations on a massive geographic scale. The settlement of distant oceanic islands involved the development and sharing of technological information specific to local environments, including exclusively stylistic aspects of artifact design. A reassessment of artifact comparisons from a neo-Darwinian evolutionary perspective continues to provide information regarding social interaction among island communities....
Defining Territories: Exploratory Analysis in Polynesia (2017)
Territory boundaries can often be difficult to identify archaeologically despite their importance in understanding the larger population process of competition between groups in the past. This analysis tests our ability to define archaeological territories on islands based on geospatial relationships between resources and fortifications. Territories are the result of historical processes of competition between groups. Testing of this method is conducted for the island of Rapa, Austral Islands,...
Determining Geochemical Variability of Fine-Grained Basalt Sources/Quarries for Facilitating Prehistoric Interaction Studies in Polynesia (2015)
William "Bill" Dickinson has long been interested in tracking interaction between Pacific Island societies by comparing temper sands of prehistoric ceramics and, more recently, thin section descriptions of basalt adzes. Fine grained basalt sources or quarries anchor ancient interaction spheres, yet few of the dozens of adze quarries found throughout Polynesia are known in sufficient detail to understand intra-source variability. This fundamental data is essential for confidently assigning...
Examining The Temporal Scale of Human-Environmental Relationships on Ofu Island, Manu‘a Group, American Samoa (2015)
Pacific Islands have long been considered natural laboratories or model systems for the examination of human-environmental relationships. The impact of temporally variable environments on human populations is now well-documented throughout the Pacific, though questions remain on how the variable temporal scale of environmental change can modify the human response to these changes. An opportunity to address this question is presented by the cultural sequence of Ofu Island, a small island in the...
Marquesan voyaging during the East Polynesian Archaic era (2015)
Early East Polynesian chiefdoms are remarkable for their voyaging spheres, as evidenced by archaeologically-documented interisland contact. One of the most prominent examples of interisland contact derives from a 1974 study by Bill Dickinson in which it was found that a handful of pottery sherds discovered in the Marquesas can be sourced to Fiji, an archipelago lying more than 4000 km to the west. Various interpretations of this discovery continue to fuel debate surrounding the context and...
Preliminary Investigations at Raiatea, Society Islands, French Polynesia (2017)
The Society Islands are of primary importance for understanding human impacts on island ecologies and the dispersal of pre-contact voyaging populations in East Polynesia. Raiatea, the largest island of the Leeward Group, is recognized through Polynesian oral traditions as a locus of regional interaction and a departure point for migrations that colonized the distant islands of Hawaii and Aotearoa (New Zealand) in the second millennium AD. Here we present results from our first season of...
The Rat’s-Eye View: Tracing the Impacts of the Human-Introduced Pacific Rat (Rattus exulans) on Mangareva through Stable Isotope Analysis and Zooarchaeology (2015)
Early Polynesian voyagers transported a suite of plant and animal species to each new island they colonized, forming the foundation of the Polynesian subsistence economy and leading to long-lasting transformations of island landscapes. The Pacific rat (Rattus exulans) was nearly ubiquitous on these journeys, perhaps as a potential food source or simply an inadvertent stowaway. With few natural predators, rat populations multiplied quickly after arrival and spread across island landscapes. Their...
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...
Towards a Further Understanding of Samoan Star Mounds: Considering the Intersection of Ecology, Politics, and Ritual in Ancient Samoa (2017)
Star mounds, named for their star-like shape, have been an enigmatic feature class in the Samoan Archipelago. Researchers have posited several potential functions for these monumental architectural features, including grave and territorial markers, but their primary function appears to have been as surfaces for pigeon catching. But, excavations of these features have been few and data limited. Here, we review old as well as recent data on star mounds relating to their physical attributes (size,...
Towards a historical archaeology of heiau: Hawaiian traditions, colonialism, and religious transformation in the recent past (2015)
Hawai‘i occupies a somewhat unique position as one of two Polynesian archipelagos thought to have been the location of "primary" or "archaic" states in the time before European contact (the other possible example being Tonga). Hawaiian people created an elaborate ritual hierarchy that accompanied the emergence of state religion, which was associated with the construction of monumental stone temple complexes known as heiau. Heiau have long been a staple of archaeological investigation in the...
Trails of ‘A‘ā: Mobility and Social Networks within the Manukā Lavascape, Hawai‘i Island (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Roads, Rivers, Rails and Trails (and more): The Archaeology of Linear Historic Properties" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The environmentally-marginal Polynesian hinterland of Manukā, Hawai‘i is composed of interwoven, young, and often barren lava flows. Both historical and traditional accounts depict Manukā as an inhospitable, desolate landscape. Yet, the extant archaeology indicates an expansive use of...