Bioarchaeological research in the Mariana Islands of the western Pacific: an overview.

Abstract

Mariana Islands; Marianas archipelago;bioarchaeology; skeletal biologyCompared to the other ethno-geographicregions of Oceania, relatively little is knownabout the human biohistory of the islandecosystems occupying the vast expanse ofthe central and western Pacific known asMicronesia. Since 1987 when the First Mi-cronesian Archaeology Conference (Hunter-Anderson, 1990) was held on Guam, theMarianas archipelago has been the focus ofconsiderable archaeological research activ-ity due to significant economic expansion inthe region and the rapid pace of capitalimprovements, particularly on Guam, Rota,Tinian and Saipan.TheFirstMicronesianArchaeologyConfer-ence, which was a component of the 1987Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association meet-ings, brought together scholars from aroundthe world who had been doing archaeologi-cal and ethnoarchaeological research in Mi-cronesia. At this conference, Pietrusewsky(1990) organized a single session devotedexclusivelytothecurrentstatusofbioanthro-pological research in Micronesia. Of the sixpapers presented at that session, only twofocused exclusively on the Marianas andbioarchaeological research.The nine papers in this issue represent asubset of a group of papers presented in atwo-part symposium entitled ‘‘PrehistoricSkeletal Biology in Island Ecosystems: Cur-rent Status of Bioarchaeological Research inthe Marianas Archipelago’’ at the 64th An-nual Meeting of theAmericanAssociation ofPhysical Anthropologists held in Oakland,California in 1995. Scholars from Japan,Guam,Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, En-gland, and the mainland U.S. presentednineteen contributed papers and posters atthis symposium, most of which were basedonarchaeologicaldatarecoveryeffortswhichhad occurred in the Marianas since the 1987conference. These papers represented abroad spectrum of research ranging fromprehistoric mortuary patterns and paleode-mography to work with stable isotopes anddiet reconstruction, enamel hypoplasias,unique morphological variants of occipitalbone, mtDNA analysis, spondylolysis, andan electron microscopic study of betel-staining.For various reasons, many of these paperscould not be published in this issue. Never-theless, because of their importance to ongo-ing research in the region, most of theseworks have been cited in the accompanyingpapers. In general much of the ongoingbioarchaeological research in the Marianasis guided by three research domains: (1)biocultural responses to increasing popula-tion size and density in island ecosystemsprior to European contact; (2) inter-islandvariationintheseresponsesandtheirsignifi-cance with respect to differences in subsis-tence, settlement and social complexity; and(3) individual and population adaptive re-sponses to European contact and coloniza-tion.The first paper by Hanson and Butleroffers a broad overview to the Mariana Is-