Natural-Cultural Contexts of the First Inhabited Seashores of Remote Pacific Oceania: 1500–1100 BC in the Mariana Islands

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

People first migrated to the remote-distance Pacific Islands around 1500 BC, and their ancient sites have provided insights into the physical and cultural world that these people had inhabited. Geoarchaeological investigations have clarified the composition of the coastal landforms and ecosystems, availability of freshwater sources, access to varied habitat zones, relations among residential areas and ritual caves, and other aspects of the places where people first lived at several sites of Guam and the Mariana Islands. Three sites in particular have been most productive at Ritidian (Litekyan) of Guam, at Sanhalom (House of Taga) of Tinian, and at Unai Bapot (Laulau Bay) of Saipan. The results support new discussions and testable hypotheses about what happened during and after the world’s longest ocean-crossing migration of this time, exceeding 2,000 km.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35891.0