Socioeconomic change in Tikopia household under the perspective of ecological change

Summary

My analysis provide a picture how socioeconomic organization change in terms of changing ecology. Differences in aggregated artifact assemblages between households and sites in the KS phase have been taken to indicate participation in mutually exclusive economic activities (eg. Wood working, fishing, and animal processing), the products of which were then exchanged for those of other units. In contrast, a weak difference in the proportional composition of economic artifact assemblages between sites indicates that sites were not emphasizing different economic activities. Instead, the significant difference reflected on the social artifact assemblages (eg. Ceramic, ornaments and religious ornaments). This pattern indicates the economic exchange did not appear across the sites, but a growing social differentiation appeared on the island. The pattern of socioeconomic organization is related to the abundance and diversity of resources in the landscape. A declining aggregated artifacts between households and sites in the Tuakamali phase indicates that individual households were considered the central economic decision making, showing a high degree of autonomy among households and sites. The pattern of economic organization resulted in a decreasing social differentiation. This process was associated with the ecology shift, from diversity of wild resources to concentration of domestic resources.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage