When the Wild Winds Blow: Micronesia Colonization in Pacific Context
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "When the Wild Winds Blow: Micronesia Colonization in Pacific Context" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Micronesia is a vast region composed of thousands of smaller islands scattered across nearly three million miles of ocean in the northwestern tropical Pacific. With few exceptions, however, Micronesia has received relatively little archaeological attention compared to other parts of Remote Oceania, despite islands having been settled in a complex series of dispersals spanning millennia, some of which are contemporaneous with Lapita and others that derive from descendant Lapita populations. While recent advances in different analytical techniques and theoretical perspectives provide a more nuanced picture of how peoples first colonized these smaller islands and subsequent events that occurred thereafter, this session provides new insights into how and when Micronesia was colonized and addresses lingering unanswered gaps with which to focus future research. The session also highlights issues in preserving and protecting the region’s cultural heritage in the face of development, climate change, and other natural and social processes.
Other Keywords
Coastal and Island Archaeology •
Neolithic •
ancient DNA •
Geoarchaeology •
Migration •
Chronology •
Paleoethnobotany •
island and coastal archaeology •
Micronesia •
comics
Geographic Keywords
United Mexican States (Country) •
Republic of El Salvador (Country) •
Cayman Islands (Country) •
Belize (Country) •
Republic of Guatemala (Country) •
Republic of Honduras (Country) •
Republic of Cuba (Country) •
Jamaica (Country) •
Republic of Nicaragua (Country) •
Republic of Panama (Country)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)
- Documents (8)
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Chronological Modeling of Early Settlement on Yap, Western Micronesia (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. The initial human settlement of Yap, a group of four small islands in western Micronesia, is one of the least understood colonization events in Remote Oceania. Unlike Polynesia, where multiple lines of evidence such as linguistics, genetics, and material culture analyses coalesce around a coherent narrative of initial...
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Determining the Chronology of Reef Island Development for Constraining Initial Human Colonization of Pacific Atolls (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...
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A Different Way to View the World: Comics, Outreach, and Cultural Heritage in the Islands of Yap and Palau, Micronesia (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...
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Eating Pingelap: Archaeobotanical and Zooarchaeological Perspectives on the Settlement of a Micronesian Atoll (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...
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Placing the Early Pre-Latte Period Site of San Roque on Saipan in Its Broader Context (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. This comparative assessment of the San Roque site in northern Saipan to other early Pre-Latte period sites in the Mariana Islands, circa 1500–1100 BC, presents far from uniform data that suggest that maritime settlers of the archipelago may have targeted a range of natural settings for survival upon arrival. These...
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Tracking Human Dispersals to Palau Using Ancient DNA: Results from the Chelechol ra Orrak Site (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...
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Utilizing Ancient Oral Microbes to Track Human Migrations across the Pacific Islands: Insights from Palau and Beyond (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...
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When Did Early Migrants Reach Pohnpei? Human Migration, Interisland Networks, and Resource Use in Eastern Micronesia (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Previous archaeological research on islands in eastern Micronesia hint at possible early human migration from Melanesia by the descendants of Lapita groups. However, hard archaeological evidence has remained largely ephemeral. In this paper, we discuss recent findings from new archaeological excavations on Lenger, a...