• PDF / 18,407,296 Bytes
• 521 Pages / 504.567 x 720 pts Page_size
• 69 Downloads / 183 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT

---

Pacific Islands: Finding the Earliest Sites Mike T. Carson1 and Hsiao-chun Hung2 1 Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam, Mangilao, Guam, USA 2 Department of Archaeology and Natural History, The Australian National University, Acton, ACT, Australia

Introduction The character and date of the earliest settlement of the remote Pacific Islands remains an important research objective. Tracing human origins in “Remote Oceania” reveals a series of west-to-east migrations, ultimately from southern coastal China before 6,000 years BP (Bellwood et al. 2011). In the far west of Micronesia, the Mariana Islands have become known as the home of the oldest archaeological sites of Remote Oceania, dated 3,500–3,300 years BP (Fig. 1). We are only now achieving some clarity on where to find sites, in a manner that conforms to CRM constraints. The local governments consider excavations to be destructive to cultural heritage resources and harmful to the natural environment. Archaeological excavations are therefore undertaken only in strict compliance with government regulations, which are not always conducive to archaeological visibility. The normal procedures use shovel tests, holes 10–20 m apart dug the size of a shovel

blade and sieved through a 6 mm mesh, to find sites, and test pits, 1
1 m in plan taken down by trowel, to investigate them. Monitoring of a machine-dug trench has become standard procedure for archaeological resource management in beach settings.

Key Issues/Current Debates/Future Directions/Examples Survey Nearly all sites in the Marianas are found through surface reconnaissance, walking at close intervals (usually 5 m) through the dense jungle, sometimes augmented by transects of shovel testing where the ground visibility is particularly difficult. This approach works well in areas with little or no soil development, where site remnants are easily accessible. In fact, most island terrain fits into this category, bearing perhaps 20–30 cm of rocky silt or clay directly over solid bedrock. Using little or no excavation, this strategy has been successful for mapping and recording sites of the more recent time period, roughly within the last 1,000 years. Megalithic house pillars and capitals (locally called latte) mark most residential sites. Broken pottery is littered almost everywhere, along with lesser amounts of stone and shell adzes and other such durable tools. For the most ancient sites, dating to 3,500–3,300 years BP, the best chance of finding a preserved archaeological deposit is to search in

C. Smith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2, # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

P

5694

Pacific Islands: Finding the Earliest Sites

Pacific Islands: Finding the Earliest Sites, Fig. 1 Island-wide terrain model of Guam showing (a) conditions 3,500–3,000 years BP and (b) modern conditions (Modified from Carson (2011))

the beach sand. These locations fortuitously match expectations of where the earliest islanders lived, near productive crop-growing s