Colonisation and culture change in the early prehistory of Fiji (original) (raw)
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Voyaging and Interaction in Ancient East Polynesia
Asian Perspectives, 2002
East Polynesian chiefdoms were largely isolated and inwardly focused at the time of European contact, but archaeological findings show that this classic insularity was a relatively late development. Earlier periods, beginning by a.d. 1000, are characterized by widespread interaction both within island groups and among distant archipelagoes, even spanning the cultural boundary between East and West Polynesia. Inter-island communication is represented by imported artifacts, especially stone tools and pearl shell (Pinctada margaritifera), but the archaeologically documented frequencies of these imports decline abruptly after a.d. 1450. Why? Evidence suggests that declining frequencies of imports reflect a pattern of decreasing access to distant resources (e.g., Rolett 1998; Weisler 1997). This interpretation is consistent with the notion of contracting interaction spheres. The idea of contracting interaction spheres is not a new one in Polynesian archaeology (e.g., Irwin 1992; Rolett 1998; Walter 1998) but it has proven di‰cult to identify factors that could have influenced such a change. One of the main unresolved issues is why and how a fall-o¤ in open-sea voyaging spheres occurred nearly simultaneously in multiple archipelagoes as varied and as isolated as the Marquesas, the Southern Cooks, and the Pitcairn group. At the heart of the problem lies the question whether these changes in voyaging are somehow related. This paper builds upon the recently proposed hypothesis (Rolett 1998 : 257-262) that internal developments in the Societies, an archipelago distinguished by its accessibility and the size of its resource base, may have had a regional influence on East Polynesian voyaging networks.
World Archaeology, 1977
Polynesia has long been regarded as a cultural laboratory by anthropologists (Goodenough 1957; Sahlins 1957), who recognized a unique opportunity to study the adaptive variations of a single culture on its far-flung islands and island groups. Not only are human populations neatly confined on islands separated in many cases by considerable expanses of ocean, but the islands themselves vary greatly in size, resources and degree of isolation. Linguists, also, have found in the numerous discrete but closely related speech communities of Polynesia a fruitful field for the application of the comparative method (Elbert 1953 ; Pawley 1966). Despite many attempts to identify multiple waves of settlement in Polynesia (reviewed in Howard 1967), the orthodox view, to which archaeology has increasingly contributed, is that Polynesian language and culture developed their distinctive features inisolation, probably withinPolynesiaitself (Green 1967 ; Groube 1971). An older generation of ethnologists, concerned particularly with material culture, discussed cultural differences within Polynesia in terms of a variety of processes such as diffusion, local development and inter-island spread (Burrows 1938: 92; Buck 1944: 477-500). However, archaeologists working in Polynesia have been more concerned with establishing chronologies and sequences for individual island groups than with studying inter-island contact and influence. This is largely due to the fact that archaeology is a recent phenomenon in most of Polynesia-in many island groups the introduction of stratigraphie excavation and the application of radiocarbon dating were simultaneous. Moreover, Polynesian archaeology has always been fundamentally influenced by both romantic and scholarly interest in Polynesian origins and migrations. There has consequently been a great emphasis on identifying the date and origin of the first settlement of any island or island group. Although some archaeologists have acknowledged the existence and importance of borrowing in general terms (Green 1967: 216; Bellwood 1974), there has been little serious discussion of the question. Rather, there has been tacit acceptance that something akin to the founder principle of biology may have operated (Vayda and Rappaport 1963) and that later arrivals would have had little effect on established cultures (Sharp 1956: 71). Nor have the advantages and disadvantages of studying island cultures been much discussed by Polynesian archaeologists. Polynesia presents, for example, all the features listed by Evans (1973) in his discussion of islands as laboratories; such features form part of the overall concept of Polynesia as a cultural laboratory but have not been fully exploited in recent analyses of the area's prehistory.
Journal of Pacific …, 2010
Fiji was colonised approximately 3000 BP by populations with intricately decorated Lapita pottery. At nearly the same time, culturally related populations also colonised nearby Tonga and Samoa and the archaeology of each archipelago indicates continued contact, but also cultural divergence over time. Previous research in the far western islands of Fiji has also identified late Lapita colonisation deposits and subsequent cultural changes that have raised further questions about regional variation in the Fijian archaeological record. Here we present results of the first survey, excavation, and archaeological analyses from the islands of southwestern Fiji and interpret these findings relative to current research on the colonisation of Fiji-West Polynesia, changes in the spatial scale of cultural transmission in the region, and changes in foraging practices and environments. Survey and test excavations identified eleven sites and pushes back the colonisation of the far western islands to 2900 BP. Preliminary analyses of cultural materials from these sites indicate a complexly structured colonising population in Fiji-West Polynesia, variation over time in the frequency of contact between populations in Fiji, and subsistence practices likely influenced by environmental change and human competition.
Early Lapita colonisation of Remote Oceania: An update on the leapfrog hypothesis
Debating Lapita: Distribution, Chronology, Society and Subsistence, 2019
It is now more than 10 years since the original Lapita leapfrog hypothesis was proposed by Sheppard and Walter (2006) for the movement of Lapita out of Near Oceania into the southeast Solomon Islands. Data have continued to accumulate over the last decade and can be used to evaluate the original argument. This chapter will review new linguistic, genetic and archaeological data from the Solomon Islands and how they relate to the early colonisation of Remote Oceania.
The pattern of Lapita settlement in Fiji
At continental and oceanic geographic scales radiocarbon chronologies are important for calibrating the expansion of prehistoric populations, and understanding the type of dispersal process. In Fiji where the colonisation phasewas relatively brief -within two standard deviations of most Cl4 dates-there are significant differences between Lapita sites and material culture suites. To investigate this variability three models of intra-archipelagic dispersal are reviewed against four categories of archaeological data to examine the pattern of settlement in the scattered Fiji Islands. Initial colonisation was probably restricted to west Fiji and may represent an inter-archipelago hiatus in Lapitaexpansion eastward. East Fiji was settled later during a second phase of systematic colonisation that centered on Lakeba and took in the small noncontinental islands of the Lau Group.
ANU Press eBooks, 2009
Terra Australis reports the results of archaeological and related research within the south and east of Asia, though mainly Australia, New Guinea and island Melanesia-lands that remained terra australis incognita to generations of prehistorians. Its subject is the settlement of the diverse environments in this isolated quarter of the globe by peoples who have maintained their discrete and traditional ways of life into the recent recorded or remembered past and at times into the observable present. Since the beginning of the series, the basic colour on the spine and cover has distinguished the regional distribution of topics as follows: ochre for Australia, green for New Guinea, red for SouthEast Asia and blue for the Pacific Islands. From 2001, issues with a gold spine will include conference proceedings, edited papers and monographs which in topic or desired format do not fit easily within the original arrangements. All volumes are numbered within the same series.
Radiocarbon Dates from the Mussau Islands and the Lapita Colonization of the Southwestern Pacific
Radiocarbon
Three decades of archaeological excavations in Melanesia and Western Polynesia have led to a consensus among Oceanic prehistorians that the initial human colonization of the southwestern Pacific (east of the Solomons) was effected by populations of the Lapita Cultural Complex (Green, 1979; Kirch, 1982, 1984; Allen, 1984; Spriggs, 1984). Although the western Melanesian islands of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and possibly the Solomon Islands were settled in the late Pleistocene by small hunter-gatherer populations (Downie & White, 1979; Specht, Lilley & Normu, 1981; Groubeet al, 1986), discovery and occupation by humans of the more remote island chains to the east required sophisticated voyaging and colonization strategies. That the Austronesian-speaking Lapita people possessed long-distance voyaging craft is suggested both by lexical reconstructions, and by the archaeological evidence of long-distance transport of obsidian and other exotic materials over distances of up to 3...