Voyaging and Interaction in Ancient East Polynesia (original) (raw)
Interisland and interarchipelago transfer of stone tools in prehistoric Polynesia
… of the National Academy of Sciences, 1996
Tracing interisland and interarchipelago movements ofpeople and artifacts in prehistoric Polynesia has posed a challenge to archaeologists due to the lack of pottery and obsidian, two materials most readily used in studies of prehistoric trade or exchange. Here we report the application of nondestructive energy-dispersive x-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) analysis to the sourcing of Polynesian artifacts made from basalt, one of the most ubiquitous materials in Polynesian archaeological sites. We have compared excavated and surface-collected basalt adzes and adze flakes from two sites in Samoa (site AS-13-1) and the Cook Islands (site MAN-44), with source basalts from known prehistoric quarries in these archipelagoes. In both cases, we are able to demonstrate the importing of basalt adzes from Tutuila Island, a distance of 100 km to Ofu Island, and of 1600 km to Mangaia Island. These findings are of considerable significance for Polynesian prehistory, as they demonstrate the movement of objects not only between islands in the same group (where communities were culturally and linguistically related) but also between distant island groups. Further applications of EDXRF analysis should greatly aid archaeologists in their efforts to reconstruct ancient trade and exchange networks, not only in Polynesia but also in other regions where basalt was a major material for artifact production.
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.
Overview of Polynesian Archaeology and Prehistory
The pace of archaeological research in Polynesia has intensified in recent years, resulting in more than 500 new literature citations over the past decade. Fieldwork has continued in such previously well-studied archipelagoes as Tonga and Samoa in Western Polynesia, and Hawai'i and New Zealand in Eastern Polynesia, and has expanded into previously neglected islands including Niue, the Equatorial Islands, the Austral Islands, and Mangareva. The emergence of Ancestral Polynesian culture out of its Eastern Lapita predecessor is increasingly well understood, and the chronology of Polynesian dispersal and expansion into Eastern Polynesia has engaged several researchers. Aside from these fundamental issues of origins and chronology, major research themes over the past decade include (1) defining the nature, extent, and timing of long-distance interaction spheres, particularly in Eastern Polynesia; (2) the impacts of human colonization and settlement on island ecosystems; (3) variation in Polynesian economic systems and their transformations over time; and (4) sociopolitical change, especially as viewed through the lens of household or microscale archaeology. Also noteworthy is the rapidly evolving nature of interactions between archaeologists and native communities, a critical aspect of archaeological practice in the region.
Kirch and Kahn 2007 Review of Polynesian Prehistory
The pace of archaeological research in Polynesia has intensified in recent years, resulting in more than 500 new literature citations over the past decade. Fieldwork has continued in such previously well-studied archipelagoes as Tonga and Samoa in Western Polynesia, and Hawai'i and New Zealand in Eastern Polynesia, and has expanded into previously neglected islands including Niue, the Equatorial Islands, the Austral Islands, and Mangareva. The emergence of Ancestral Polynesian culture out of its Eastern Lapita predecessor is increasingly well understood, and the chronology of Polynesian dispersal and expansion into Eastern Polynesia has engaged several researchers. Aside from these fundamental issues of origins and chronology, major research themes over the past decade include (1) defining the nature, extent, and timing of long-distance interaction spheres, particularly in Eastern Polynesia; (2) the impacts of human colonization and settlement on island ecosystems; (3) variation in Polynesian economic systems and their transformations over time; and (4) sociopolitical change, especially as viewed through the lens of household or microscale archaeology. Also noteworthy is the rapidly evolving nature of interactions between archaeologists and native communities, a critical aspect of archaeological practice in the region.
Artifact geochemistry demonstrates long-distance voyaging in the Polynesian Outliers
Science Advances, 2023
Although the peopling of Remote Oceania is well-documented as a general process of eastward migrations from Island Southeast Asia and Near Oceania toward the archipelagos of Remote Oceania, the origin and the development of Polynesian societies in the Western Pacific (Polynesian Outliers), far away from the Polynesian triangle, remain unclear. Here, we present a large-scale geochemical sourcing study of stone artifacts excavated from archeological sites in central Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and the Caroline Islands and provide unambiguous evidence of multiple long-distance voyages, with exotic stone materials being transported up to 2500 kilometers from their source. Our results emphasize high mobility in the Western Pacific during the last millennium CE and offer insights on the scale and timing of contacts between the Polynesian Outliers, their neighbors in the Western Pacific, and societies of Western Polynesia.
Advances In Polynesian Prehistory: A Review and Assessment of the Past Decade (19932004)
Journal of Archaeological Research, 2007
The pace of archaeological research in Polynesia has intensified in recent years, resulting in more than 500 new literature citations over the past decade. Fieldwork has continued in such previously well-studied archipelagoes as Tonga and Samoa in Western Polynesia, and Hawai‘i and New Zealand in Eastern Polynesia, but has also expanded into previously neglected islands including Niue, the Equatorial Islands, the Austral Islands, and Mangareva. The emergence of Ancestral Polynesian Culture out of its Eastern Lapita predecessor is increasingly well understood, and the chronology of Polynesian dispersal and expansion into Eastern Polynesia has engaged several researchers. Aside from these fundamental issues of origins and chronology, major research themes over the past decade include: (1) defining the nature, extent, and timing of long distance interaction spheres, particularly in Eastern Polynesia; (2) the impacts of human colonization and settlement on island ecosystems; (3) variation in Polynesian economic systems and their transformations over time; and (4) sociopolitical change, especially as viewed through the lens of household or microscale archaeology. Also noteworthy is the rapidly evolving nature of interactions between archaeologists and Native communities, a critical aspect of archaeological practice in the region
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2014
Tonga was unique in the prehistoric Pacific for developing a maritime state that integrated the archipelago under a centralized authority and for undertaking long-distance economic and political exchanges in the second millennium A.D. To establish the extent of Tonga’s maritime polity, we geochemically analyzed stone tools excavated from the central places of the ruling paramounts, particularly lithic artifacts associated with stone-faced chiefly tombs. The lithic networks of the Tongan state focused on Samoa and Fiji, with one adze sourced to the Society Islands 2,500 km from Tongatapu. To test the hypothesis that nonlocal lithics were especially valued by Tongan elites and were an important source of political capital, we analyzed prestate lithics from Tongatapu and stone artifacts from Samoa. In the Tongan state, 66% of worked stone tools were long-distance imports, indicating that interarchipelago connections intensified with the development of the Tongan polity after A.D. 1200. In contrast, stone tools found in Samoa were from local sources, including tools associated with a monumental structure contemporary with the Tongan state. Network analysis of lithics entering the Tongan state and of the distribution of Samoan adzes in the Pacific identified a centralized polity and the products of specialized lithic workshops, respectively. These results indicate that a significant consequence of social complexity was the establishment of new types of specialized sites in distant geographic areas. Specialized sites were loci of long-distance interaction and formed important centers for the transmission of information, people, and materials in prehistoric Oceania.
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...