The Hakaea Beach site, Marquesan colonisation, and models of East Polynesian settlement

Abstract

ABSTRACT Field explorations at the newly recorded Hakaea Beach site, Nuku Hiva, Marquesas Islands were spread across a 12,500 m2 area on the western coastal flat. The site's geomorphic and cultural history is reconstructed based on nine strata and ten radiocarbon determinations. The Hakaea record illustrates the range of powerful environmental processes, including sea level fall, climate change, tsunamis, and tropical storm surges, which have operated on Marquesan shorelines for the last 800 years, and the ease with which past human activity can be obscured or erased. The results highlight the need to systematically search for protected coastal contexts and geomorphic settings where older surfaces might be preserved. Radiocarbon assemblages from the 13th century Hakaea Beach site and seven other early Marquesan sites are considered in light of three models of East Polynesian dispersal: 1) Leap‐frog; 2) Stepping‐stone; and 3) Advancing Wave. Along with chronometrics, the processes and mechanisms which might account for regional patterns of mobility and settlement are emphasized. The Marquesan record is unique amongst central East Polynesian archipelagos in the number of pre‐14th century sites, a pattern that might relate to the antiquity of human settlement, and one which should be considered alongside the late Holocene sea level record.