"Micronesian archaeology." In: The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Archaeology of Western Micronesia
The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania, 2018
Western Micronesia encompasses several major archipelagos and islands, including the Marianas, Yap, and Palau. Language and human biology suggest Western Micronesia was most likely colonized from Island Southeast Asia in a complex process, possibly involving multiple population movements from different areas during prehistory. A key archaeological question concerns the variable timing of this colonization, which could be as early as 4,500 years ago according to paleoenvironmental data or up to 1,000 years later when considering artifact-associated dates. Although sometimes perceived as similar, Micronesia’s western archipelagos comprise varying cultural sequences with, for example, the region’s earliest pottery, Achugao Incised and San Roque Incised, and megalithic stone structures, or Latte, in the Marianas, complexly constructed earthworks covering much of the main islands of Palau, and extensive prehistoric and historic exchange systems, such as the sawei, centered on Yap.
Austronesian Migrations and Developments in Micronesia
2013
When considering prehistoric Austronesian settlement of Remote Oceania, the region of Micronesia has posed some difficult problems. According to historical and ethnographic knowledge, the people of Micronesia sustained multiple long-distance contacts. In these perspectives, ancient cultural origins are complicated and unclear, and the separate cultural groups appear tightly inter-connected. According to archaeological evidence and historical linguistic studies, however, the different groups of Micronesia have distinctive cultural histories. Across these hundreds of very small islands, at least five different colonizing migration episodes can be discerned, beginning 3500 years ago and continuing into the last 1000 years. These earliest migration routes later were over-written by newer traditions of longdistance inter-island contacts and networks. This summary of Micronesian archaeology clarifies the chronology of Austronesian migrations and developments. The results resolve some of the complications and frustrations of Micronesian culture history within a larger Asia-Pacific perspective.
2008
P olynesian archaeology is undergoing a renaissance with spirited debates on a number of fundamental issues such as dating human colonization of islands and archipelagoes, determining the causes of landscape change (whether human-induced, climate affected, or some manner of both), defining the temporal and geographical limits oflong-distance interaction spheres, the causes and consequences of sociopolitical change, and the nature of Ancestral Polynesian Culture. None of these topics engender a discipline-wide consensus, least of which is the date for the colonization of any Polynesian archipelago. A recent review of Polynesian archaeology (Kirch & Kahn 2007) cataloged more than 500 citations since a similar inventory a decade earlier (Kirch & Weisler 1994) with opinions weighing up on both sides of each of these and other issues. In a 2007 article entitled "Credit Where Credit is Due: The History of the Chumash Oceangoing Plank Canoe" in American Antiquity (72: 196209), Je...
Cultural Chronology of Earthworks in Palau, Western Micronesia
Archaeology in Oceania, 2009
ABSTRACT Earth architecture is ubiquitous on Palau's volcanic islands, yet by European contact the often massive interior structures lay unoccupied and were conspicuously absent from the archipelago's rich body of oral traditions. To place these structural remains into Palau's cultural sequence, a suite of 131 radiocarbon dates representing 31 interior earthwork sites is combined with paleoenvironmental and material culture data. The resulting chronological model indicates that substantial interior use was underway by ca. 3100 BP with the initiation of earthwork construction by ca. 2400 BP or a little earlier. This marks the beginning of the Earthwork Era, which is divided into Early, Middle, and Late Phases corresponding to the growth, zenith, and decline of interior earthwork occupation. Between ca. 2050 and 1750 BP extensive clusters of modified terrain, each defining a sociopolitical district, contained earth structures reaching monumental proportions. This is centuries before monumental architecture appeared in most other Pacific island societies. By ca. 1200 BP, earthwork districts were no longer the cultural focal point, although minor construction of inland earthworks continued into the historic period.
Archaeology in the Pacific Islands: an appraisal of recent research
Journal of Archaeological Research, 1994
The Pacific Islands or Oceania, typically subdivided into Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, have witnessed a virtual explosion of archaeological research, as indicated by this review of the past 5 years' literature. Most recent work centers on one or more of six major themes. Two themes are concerned with the movement of people into the Pacific region: the discovery of Pleistocene-age sites in island Melanesia and the search for early assemblages evidencing Austronesian dispersals. Substantial efforts have also focused on reconstructing prehistoric economic behavior and on assessing the impacts that colonizing human populations had on isolated and fragile island ecosystems. In the realm of social archaeology, Oceanic studies have contributed to understanding the long-term dimensions of interisland exchange and to the rise of complex, hierarchical sociopolitical systems, especially chiefdoms.