A new archaeological field survey of the site of Nan Madol, Pohnpei

Abstract

To archaeologists, ancient capitals are ideal places to learn more about how a region’s societies developed. In Polynesia, we find that administrative centers, such as Lapaha in Tonga (Clark et al. 2008; Hommon 2013) and the royal centers of the Hawaiian Islands (Kirch 2010), reflect the rise of archaic states. In Melanesia, when new colonial centers were built in the 19th century, traditional Fijian notions of chiefly power were explicitly incorporated in the architectural design to adapt to the local political scene (Chatan 2003). In Micronesia, one site stands out among others: Nan Madol on Pohnpei. Nan Madol, sometimes called the ‘Venice of the Pacific,’ is a mortuary and administrative site made up of artificial islets built over 83 hectares of lagoon (Figure 1). These islets were constructed using distinctive columnar basalt, boulders, and an impressive amount of coral rubble fill, and they appear to have inspired the construction of the site of Lelu on Kosrae (Ayres 1993:69). Our primary tool for studying large and complex archaeological sites, the ‘white paper’ field map, is today joined by a host of other spatial technologies – GPS, GIS, laser scanning, remote sensing, and so on (McCoy & Ladefoged 2009). While traditional survey remains at the heart of field archaeology, when it comes to sites like Nan Madol, it is time that digital spatial datasets start to add to the years of traditional survey work that has already been published. The lack of published digital data has consequences. Over the past several years, efforts to place Nan Madol on the Nan Madol, sometimes called the ‘Venice of the Pacific,’ is a mortuary and administrative site built from columnar basalt, boulders, and coral. It is made up of artificial islets that stretch over 83 hectares of lagoon on the volcanic high island of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia and is pivotal to our understanding of ancient Pohnpeian society. Nan Madol was first mapped in its entirety in 1910 by the German explorer Paul Hambruch and in the century since then the site has been re-surveyed and maps of varying levels of detail have been published. Here we report on the first full coverage field survey of the site’s artificial islets employing high precision GPS. The survey dataset has been made available for download as a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) layer at the data clearinghouse website: The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR). We also report a matching annotated list of variant place names used in the literature and some brief information on the function of islets from oral traditions. This report, the digital map, and the annotated list of islets are aimed to provide future researchers with a baseline database. Nan Madol, a veces llamada “La Venecia del Pacifico”, es un sitio mortuorio y administrativo construido a partir de un basalto columnar, rocas y coral. Esta compuesto de islotes artificiales que se extienden a lo largo de 83 hectareas de laguna en la isla volcanica de Pohnpei, en los Estados Federados de Micronesia y es esencial para nuestro entendimiento de la antigua sociedad pohnpeiana. Nan Madol fue cartografiada en su totalidad por primera vez en 1910 por el explorador aleman Paul Hambruch, a partir de aqui y a lo largo del siglo el lugar ha sido estudiado de nuevo y se han publicado mapas con variedad de detalles. Aqui llevamos a cabo un primer y completo estudio de cobertura total de las islas artificiales del sitio, empleando GPS de alta precision. El conjunto de datos esta disponible para descarga a traves del GIS (Sistema de Informacion Geografica) en el sitio web de centro de intercambio de datos: The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR). Tambien informamos una lista comparativa anotada de variantes de nombres de lugares utilizados en la literatura y una breve informacion de la funcion de los islotes en las tradiciones orales. Este informe, el mapa digital y la lista anotada de islotes estan dirigidos a proporcionar una base de datos en linea a los futuros investigadores.