Archaeological research at the Early Pre-Latte Period site of San Roque on Saipan (ca. 1500–1100 BC)

Abstract

The first Austronesian settlers at the site of San Roque in Saipan and the southern Mariana Islands began arriving sometime after 1500 BC in what is called the Early Pre-Latte Period. A comparison of San Roque to contemporaneous island sites reveals differences in cooking and habitation features, ceramic vessels and decorative styles, marine shell tools and ornaments, and settlement patterns that were apparent within and between islands and sites until the middle of the first millennium BC. Changes in sea level and natural resource availability then appear to have accompanied changes in material culture, when some coastal sites were abandoned or moved seaward, while other inhabitants moved inland with a more terrestrial subsistence strategy shared elsewhere in Micronesia.