Building Resilience with Traditional Knowledge in Samoa

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Analyses of lidar datasets have allowed archaeologists to expand the study of archaeological landscapes to study extensively human-modified environments at regional scales with more advanced geospatial methods. In Sāmoa, lidar reveals networks of ditches, terraces, and other earthen- and stone-monumental architectural features which extend from the coast to the remote interior. These precolonial constructed landscapes reflect the traditional ecological knowledge of Pacific Island ancestors. This intimate understanding of adapting to variable island environments and how to engineer those settled landscapes for long-term resilience still serves Pacific communities today. In Sāmoa, these socio-ecological systems control flooding and consequent soil saturation, support agricultural production, and provide examples of communities building resilience through collective action. Ancestral Sāmoans not only knew how to target specific soils for agricultural production, but also recognized the importance of monumental water control features to maximize agricultural production. Revitalizing such traditional ecological knowledge and land management practices may simultaneously draw further connections to related communities, promote an adaptation strategy for other indigenous island and coastal communities preparing for increasingly powerful and more frequent rainfall events due to a rapidly changing climate, and indicate how these precolonial features could be integrated into modern efforts to enhance climate-resilient food production.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38688.0