Islands of Inquiry

Colonisation, seafaring and the archaeology of maritime landscapes

Geoffrey Clark, Foss Leach, Sue O'Connor, Geoffrey Clark, Foss Leach, Sue O'Connor

• Publisher: ANU Press
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781921313905
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

This collection makes a substantial contribution to several highly topical areas of archaeological inquiry. Many of the papers present new and innovative research into the processes of maritime colonisation, processes that affect archaeological contexts from islands to continents. Others shift focus from process to the archaeology of maritime places from the Bering to the Torres Straits, providing highly detailed discussions of how living by and with the sea is woven into all elements of human life from subsistence to trade and to ritual. Of equal importance are more abstract discussions of islands as natural places refashioned by human occupation, either through the introduction of new organisms or new systems of production and consumption. These transformation stories gain further texture (and variety) through close examinations of some of the more significant consequences of colonisation and migration, particularly the creation of new cultural identities. A final set of papers explores the ways in which the techniques of archaeological science have provided insights into the fauna of islands and the human history of such places. Islands of Inquiry highlights the importance of an archaeologically informed history of landmasses in the oceans and seas of the world.

Table of contents

• terra australis 29
• Papers in honour of Atholl Anderson
• Preface
• Contents
• 1. Atholl John Anderson: No ordinary archaeologist
• 2. Getting from Sunda to Sahul
• 3. Seafaring simulations and the origin of prehistoric settlers to Madagascar
• 4. Friction zones in Lapita colonisation
• 5. Flights of fancy: Fractal geometry, the Lapita dispersal and punctuated colonisation in the Pacific
• 6. Demographic expansion, despotism and the colonisation of East and South Polynesia
• 7. The long pause and the last pulse: Mapping East Polynesian colonisation
• 8. Be careful what you ask for: Archaeozoological evidence of mid-Holocene climate change in the Bering Sea and implications for the origins of Arctic Thule
• 9. Ritualised marine midden formation in western Zenadh Kes (Torres Strait)
• 10. Sailing between worlds: The symbolism of death in northwest Borneo
• 11. Land and sea animal remains from Middle Neolithic Pitted Ware sites on Gotland Island in the Baltic Sea, Sweden
• 12. A cache of one-piece fishhooks from Pohara, Takaka, New Zealand
• 13. Trans-oceanic transfer of bark-cloth technology from South China–Southeast Asia to Mesoamerica?
• 14. Are islands islands? Some thoughts on the history of chalk and cheese
• 15. No fruit on that beautiful shore: What plants were introduced to the subtropical Polynesian islands prior to European contact?
• 16. One thousand years of human environmental transformation in the Gambier Islands (French Polynesia)
• 17. Stora Karlsö – a tiny Baltic island with a puzzling past
• 18. East of Easter: Traces of human impact in the far-eastern Pacific
• 19. Subsistence and island landscape transformations: Investigating monumental earthworks in Ngaraard State, Republic of Palau, Micronesia
• 20. Historical significance of the Southwest Islands of Palau
• 21. The historical archaeology of New Zealand’s prehistory
• 22. Trans-Tasman stories: Australian Aborigines in New Zealand sealing and shore whaling
• 23. Maori, Pakeha and Kiwi: Peoples, cultures and sequence in New Zealand archaeology
• 24. Translating the 18th century pudding
• 25. Boat images in the rock art of northern Australia with particular reference to the Kimberley, Western Australia
• 26. The shifting place of Ngai Tahu rock art
• 27. Phosphates and bones: An analysis of the courtyard of marae Manunu, Huahine, Society Islands, French Polynesia
• 28. The physical and mineralogical characteristics of pottery from Mochong, Rota, Mariana Islands
• 29. The dry and the wet: The variable effect of taphonomy on the dog remains from the Kohika Lake Village, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand
• 30. Taphonomic analysis of the Twilight Beach seals
• 31. A new genus and species of pigeon (Aves: Columbidae) from Henderson Island, Pitcairn Group