Archaeology in Oceania最新文献

Australian South Sea Islanders are a distinctive cultural group comprising descendants of over 60000 labourers who came to Australia from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and elsewhere in the Western Pacific between 1863 and 1904. “Blackbirded” labourers were commonly referred to as victims of a slave trade, though many also came voluntarily to work in the sugar plantations of northern New South Wales and Queensland. The advent of racist exclusionary immigration policies introduced from 1901 further forced South Sea Islanders to the margins of colonial society. Yet many Australian South Sea Islanders would argue their untold history speaks to resilience and overcoming adversity. Australian South Sea Islanders have a distinctive cultural heritage, including material culture, oral traditions embedded in the landscape and connections to places – from sugar mills to domestic sites – revealed archaeologically. This heritage must be approached sensitively given its association with sometimes difficult histories but is crucial to understanding the contributions of Australian South Sea Islanders to Australian society, contemporary communities and identities, and historical and social significance across multiple scales. Collaborative research with Australian South Sea Islanders pushes the boundaries of “community archaeology” by taking a slow approach to research, reframing ethnographic objects and cultural landscapes, and producing an archaeology that can include many voices.

This article both introduces our Special Issue on “Zooarchaeology and Human Ecodynamics in East Polynesia” and reviews recent research from East Polynesia at large. The seven articles and discussion essay derive from a symposium at the 14th International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ) conference in Cairns, Australia (2023). To contextualize these contributions, we review recent studies (2016–2024) from the region relating to human–animal relationships, including morphological, ancient DNA, and stable isotope research. Seven areas or themes emerge from our review, representing substantive, analytical and technical domains. These include (1) geographic coverage; (2) methodological issues; (3) assessments of anthropogenic impacts; (4) studies of domestic and commensal taxa; (5) animals in social, ritual and symbolic roles; (6) engagement with historical records and traditional ecological knowledges (TEK); and (7) emerging technologies. We conclude with a brief summary of recent achievements and propose future directions for zooarchaeological studies in East Polynesia and the wider Pacific.

The essay summarizes the key pillars of human ecodynamics (HE) research and then highlights the most trenchant ideas from each of the seven papers in the Special Issue, especially as they intersect with HE.

This paper provides the initial chronological framework for an Australian Aboriginal women's sacred area, based on the first absolute ages obtained through luminescence dating. The Thirteen Mile Creek site of the Avon Downs women's sacred area provides evidence for various aspects of women's lives, including lithic raw material extraction and lithic artefact production from ∼7000 years to recent times. It is the first dated Aboriginal women's sacred area in Australia. The successful use of single grain luminescence on a colluvial mantle suggests the potential to extend cultural histories in tropical hillslopes to the middle Holocene. Our preliminary study of the site raises awareness of the challenges of protecting women's sacred sites from mining and development and highlights the importance of preserving Aboriginal sacred sites for future generations.

One of the central themes of indigenous Polynesian historical narratives involves voyaging, navigation and patterns of inter-island cultural connection. One of the ways archaeologists have long looked at these questions through the lens of material culture studies—distributions of artefact and assemblage traits in time and space. Here we examine patterns of historical interaction inferred from the application of the commensal model with those derived from more traditional archaeological approaches. We suggest that the most reliable and nuanced models of past cultural interaction in Eastern Polynesia will result from a creative synthesis of molecular zooarchaeology and traditional archaeological and zooarchaeological methods.

Birds fulfilled an essential role in ancient Polynesian cultures. They were prized for their bones and colourful feathers, fat, and protein; their cultural importance is further highlighted in Polynesian oral histories. This research investigates the dynamics of human-bird interactions over time in the Marquesas Archipelago as known from archaeology, oral histories, ethnohistorical records, and museum collections. I analyse the range of avian taxa represented across the various datasets and their cultural uses. The results demonstrate that while some species are represented across one or more datasets, understanding the full extent of species’ cultural roles and use requires more than one thread of analysis, particularly for those taxa with limited or no archaeological signature. Two forms of managed resource use emerge from this study. One is tapu (prohibition of use), and the second is the conservative use of birds as a resource such as restricted feather collecting. Red feathers, represented in museum objects and historical accounts, highlight multiple taxa being used for specific adornment types. The combined analyses provide insights into the loss and persistence of species, as well as aspects of Marquesan cultural management.

Shellfish remains are ubiquitous to coastal archaeological sites in the Marquesas but have seldom been the focus of dedicated investigations into their contribution to past diet and daily life. On the island of Ua Huka, in the northern group of the archipelago, people have consumed a variety of shellfish since their arrival on the island around the early 12th century AD. By analysing assemblages from five coastal sites spanning from the early settlement until the 18th century and using an archaeomalacological approach (precise taxonomic identification, coupled quantification methods, observation of taphonomic processes, biometry), we attempt to recount the exploitation processes of this resource, from the initial gathering stage to the final discarding of the shell. We further explore inter-site and temporal variability in prey choice. Coupled with ethnographic accounts from European observers and insightful testimonies from current inhabitants of the island regarding present-day practices, we highlight the persistence of choices regarding species selection, breakage patterns and cooking processes on an island that has seen major subsistence changes since European contact.