Geomorphological Development and Implications for Human Settlement of Southern Yap, Western Caroline Islands

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Human population dispersals across Remote Oceania were some of the most remarkable long-distance voyages in history. Recent collaborative research focused on the timing, drivers, and complexities of these voyages has led to an increased understanding of these movements, but many questions still remain unanswered. This is especially true for Yap, a group of four small islands in the northwest tropical Pacific. Multiple and conflicting lines of evidence provide a broad chronological range for when Yap was first colonized (sometime between ca. 3300-2000 BP), with the earliest dates essentially coeval with the other nearby archipelagoes. To address this issue, we present results from recent archaeological research from Gilman municipality in southern Yap. A suite of new archaeological and non-cultural radiocarbon dates has now extended the earliest date of human settlement by around 400 years and shed important new light on Late Holocene geomorphological develop of southern Yap. Results from this study provide a guide to identifying where pre-2400 cal BP sites on Yap may be located.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26222