Ancestral Polynesian Society Research Articles

The stone adze and obsidian assemblage from the Talasiu site, Kingdom of Tonga

ABSTRACTTypological and geochemical analyses of stone adzes and other stone tools have played a significant role in identifying directionality of colonisation movements in early migratory events in the Western Pacific. In later phases of Polynesian prehistory, stone adzes are important status goods which show substantial spatial and temporal variation. However, there is a debate when standardisation of form and manufacture appeared, whether it can be seen in earliest populations colonising the Pacific or whether it is a later development. We present in this paper a stone adze and obsidian tool assemblage from an early Ancestral Polynesian Society Talasiu site on Tongatapu, Kingdom of Tonga. The site shows a wide variety of adze types; however, if raw material origin is taken into account, emerging standardisation in adze form might be detected. We also show that Tongatapu was strongly connected in a network of interaction to islands to the North, particularly Samoa, suggesting that these islands had permanent populations.

Mortuary practices of the first Polynesians: formative ethnogenesis in the Kingdom of Tonga

Ancestral Polynesian Society has been argued to represent a formative stage in Polynesian ethnogenesis. Recently discovered human burials at the Talasiu midden site in Tonga, dating to c. 2650 cal BP, now provide the earliest known evidence for Ancestral Polynesian mortuary behaviour. This article presents and evaluates the burials, comparing archaeological evidence for Talasiu mortuary practices with those of older Lapita and more recent Tongan burials, as well as with Ancestral Polynesian Society funerary activities inferred through linguistic reconstruction. These comparisons emphasise that several socio-cultural behaviours that are important to contemporary Polynesian societies were expressed very differently in the past.

New Evidence for a Mid- to Late-Holocene Change in the Marine Reservoir Effect Across the South Pacific Gyre

AbstractHolocene climate change in the South Pacific is of major interest to archaeologists and Quaternary researchers. Regional surface ocean radiocarbon (14C) values are an established proxy for studying changing oceanographic and climatic conditions. Unfortunately, radiocarbon variability in the marine environment over the period of specific importance to human colonization of the remote Pacific islands—the last 3500 years—has been poorly studied. In order to build robust and accurate archaeological chronologies using shell, it is important to rectify this. In this paper, radiocarbon marine reservoir offsets (ΔR) are presented from eight archaeological sites, ranging in age from 350 cal BP to 3000 cal BP, and compared to coral datasets from the east Australian coastline. The results indicate that a significant decrease in the South Pacific Gyre ΔR occurred between 2600 and 2250 cal BP, most likely caused by changes in ocean circulation and climate. Accurately recording the timing of variability in reservoir offset is critical to untangling changes in society that took place in the Pacific, in particular, the development of Ancestral Polynesian Society.

Early cessation of ceramic production for ancestral Polynesian society in Tonga.

Ancestral Polynesian society is the formative base for development of the Polynesian cultural template and proto-Polynesian linguistic stage. Emerging in western Polynesia ca 2700 cal BP, it is correlated in the archaeological record of Tonga with the Polynesian Plainware ceramic phase presently thought to be of approximately 800 years duration or longer. Here we re-establish the upper boundary for this phase to no more than 2350 cal BP employing a suite of 44 new and existing radiocarbon dates from 13 Polynesian Plainware site occupations across the extent of Tonga. The implications of this boundary, the abruptness of ceramic loss, and the shortening of duration to 350 years have substantive implications for archaeological interpretations in the ancestral Polynesian homeland.

Bayesian Modeling and Chronological Precision for Polynesian Settlement of Tonga

First settlement of Polynesia, and population expansion throughout the ancestral Polynesian homeland are foundation events for global history. A precise chronology is paramount to informed archaeological interpretation of these events and their consequences. Recently applied chronometric hygiene protocols excluding radiocarbon dates on wood charcoal without species identification all but eliminates this chronology as it has been built for the Kingdom of Tonga, the initial islands to be settled in Polynesia. In this paper we re-examine and redevelop this chronology through application of Bayesian models to the questioned suite of radiocarbon dates, but also incorporating short-lived wood charcoal dates from archived samples and high precision U/Th dates on coral artifacts. These models provide generation level precision allowing us to track population migration from first Lapita occupation on the island of Tongatapu through Tonga’s central and northern island groups. They further illustrate an exceptionally short duration for the initial colonizing Lapita phase and a somewhat abrupt transition to ancestral Polynesian society as it is currently defined.

Tongan and Samoan volcanic glass: pXRF analysis and implications for constructs of ancestral Polynesian society

A provenance study of volcanic glass specimens from 12 archaeological sites in the Kingdom of Tonga is carried out employing pXRF (portable X-ray fluorescence) analysis. To accomplish this, volcanic glass samples from previously identified sources in northern Tonga and the adjacent islands of Samoa are analyzed. Results indicate inter-island voyaging and interaction over a 600 km linear distance along the Tongan island chain from first Lapita settlement ca 2900 BP throughout later prehistory. Tongan volcanic glass, however, is not found in Samoa and, with the exception of one late prehistoric specimen, Samoan volcanic glass is not present in Tonga. This distribution challenges current concepts of an integrated ancestral society and homeland common to Tonga and Samoa from the Lapita period onward.

Forbidden sea turtles: Traditional laws pertaining to sea turtle consumption in Polynesia (Including the Polynesian Outliers)

Throughout the Pacific regions of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia, sea turtles are recognised as culturally significant species. The specifics of human-sea turtle interactions in these regions, however, are not well known, in part because ethnographic and historic reports documenting these interactions are scattered, requiring extensive archival research. Ethnographic and environmental data collected over a ten-year period are analysed to assess patterns of human-sea turtle interactions prior to (and sometimes beyond) Western contact. From the ethnographic data for Polynesia, a region-wide pattern emerges where sea turtle consumption was restricted to special ceremonies when the elites such as chiefs and priests but no one else ate turtle. Only in two countries did this pattern differ. Environmental data does little to elucidate explanations for this region-wide treatment of sea turtles as restricted food sources, as there is no correlation between environmental variability and the presence or absence of these restrictions. Instead the results of this research suggest such practices may have been part of an ancestral Polynesian society, developing well before human settlement into this region of the Pacific.

Monumental architecture in West Polynesia: origins, chiefs and archaeological approaches

Abstract In West Polynesia, monumental structures with a volume [greater than or equal to] 2500 [m.sup.2] include mounds of earth or stone that in traditional history were used to house or bury chiefs, as well as being the focus of ceremonial and religious activity. We review archaeological theory about the initiation of monumental architecture and examines how chiefly and high-status activity might be identified. Large structures with monumental dimensions often have a complicated construction history that spanned several centuries indicating change to the social structure, particularly the power of elites. As a result archaeologists need to develop ideas that relate episodes of architectonic change to alterations in the prehistoric socio-political system. ********** Complex societies are associated worldwide with monumental architecture, making the examination of massive structures integral to the study of the origins and development of socio-political complexity (Childe 1949; Peebles and Kus 1977; Trigger 1990). In Polynesia the hierarchically organized chiefdoms encountered by early European visitors displayed substantial variation in their size, organization and degree of stratification, as well as sharing fundamental features denoting a common origin (Sahlins 1957; Kirch and Green 1987). Such socio-political similarities and differences were manifested in the settlement landscapes of island groups, which often contained examples of monumental architecture made in earth, stone or a combination of the two (Kirch 1990; Graves and Green 1993). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] This paper examines the origins of monumental structures in West Polynesia (Figure 1), and reviews archaeological approaches to the study of massive structures. These include methods for assessing chiefly power from the evidence offered by large constructions, and how the study of monumental architecture might inform us about the development of late-prehistoric societies in the Central Pacific. Our approach draws on literature from Polynesia and other parts of the world, and illustrates conceptual perspectives on the study of monumental architecture, using examples from Samoa, particularly the Pulemelei mound, and Tonga, with which we are familiar. The review demonstrates the way in which different readings of monumental architecture, each containing a range of inbuilt assumptions, can be created for complex structures like the Pulemelei mound, and the importance of archaeological data to examine their validity. Several factors have been used to explore variability in Polynesian socio-political institutions and they provide a context for understanding the development of monumental architecture. They include the productivity of island environments (Anderson and Walter 2002; Ladefoged 1992), the population growth cycle (Kirch 1984), and the nature of the ancestral political system (Kirch and Green 2001). The nature of island environments clearly sets limits on the level of social complexity able to be supported by a Neolithic technology. Sahlins (1958) and Goldman (1970), for example, noted in their synchronic analyses of Polynesian chiefdoms that the least stratified societies came from resource-poor coral atolls that were unable to support large populations and where large-scale architecture was absent (see also Adler and Wilshusen 1990). The attainment of large, high-density populations in much of Polynesia has been argued by Kirch (2000:307-11) to follow some form of logistic pattern, in which high rates of initial growth eventually slowed as human numbers began to exert various kinds of pressure. In island ecosystems with plentiful productive resources, particularly arable land, population size and density could reach levels where intensification of the political, economic and social systems comprising a chiefdom were expressed in monumental construction. In addition to the demographic trajectory, political development was shaped by the social divisions and architectonic features of an Ancestral Polynesian Society (APS), hypothesized to be located in West Polynesia about 2200-1900 BP, and transported by colonists to East Polynesia (Kirch and Green 2001:79). …

Samoan Archaeology—A Review of research history

Abstract:Some aspects of prehistoric material culture of Samoa were described by Buck, Thompson and Freeman in 1920s‐60s, but archaeological work did not begin until 1957, initially by Jack Golson and Wal Ambrose. Work in American Samoa was conducted by Kikuchi in 1963 and continued by Emory and Sinoto in the mid 60's. Subsequent to the independence of Western Samoa, two archaeological programs under the leadership of Roger Green in the 1960s and Jesse Jennings in the 1970s respectively have laid a firm foundation for the understanding of Samoan prehistory from an archaeological point of view. Subsequent research in American Samoa has also added to this knowledge. This review describes some of the major findings and contributions of archaeological research in Samoa and discusses important theoretical and methodical issues for future research.

Melanesian and Asian Origins of Polynesians: mtDNA and Y Chromosome Gradients Across the Pacific

The human settlement of the Pacific Islands represents one of the most recent major migration events of mankind. Polynesians originated in Asia according to linguistic evidence or in Melanesia according to archaeological evidence. To shed light on the genetic origins of Polynesians, we investigated over 400 Polynesians from 8 island groups, in comparison with over 900 individuals from potential parental populations of Melanesia, Southeast and East Asia, and Australia, by means of Y chromosome (NRY) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) markers. Overall, we classified 94.1% of Polynesian Y chromosomes and 99.8% of Polynesian mtDNAs as of either Melanesian (NRY-DNA: 65.8%, mtDNA: 6%) or Asian (NRY-DNA: 28.3%, mtDNA: 93.8%) origin, suggesting a dual genetic origin of Polynesians in agreement with the "Slow Boat" hypothesis. Our data suggest a pronounced admixture bias in Polynesians toward more Melanesian men than women, perhaps as a result of matrilocal residence in the ancestral Polynesian society. Although dating methods are consistent with somewhat similar entries of NRY/mtDNA haplogroups into Polynesia, haplotype sharing suggests an earlier appearance of Melanesian haplogroups than those from Asia. Surprisingly, we identified gradients in the frequency distribution of some NRY/mtDNA haplogroups across Polynesia and a gradual west-to-east decrease of overall NRY/mtDNA diversity, not only providing evidence for a west-to-east direction of Polynesian settlements but also suggesting that Pacific voyaging was regular rather than haphazard. We also demonstrate that Fiji played a pivotal role in the history of Polynesia: humans probably first migrated to Fiji, and subsequent settlement of Polynesia probably came from Fiji.

The evolution of sociopolitical complexity in prehistoric Hawaii: An assessment of the archaeological evidence

The sociopolitical system of late prehistoric Hawaii was among the most complex of any Oceanic chiefdom, as indexed by such characteristics as scale, rate of energy extraction, degree of functional specialization, and political hierarchy. Various anthropologists and archaeologists have advanced models of how this complex sociopolitical system developed out of an earlier Ancestral Polynesian society. Recent advances in Hawaiian archaeology have now begun to provide a wealth of data on the course of prehistoric change in the archipelago over some 1500 years and, thus, provide evidence which can be used to test alternative models of the evolution of sociopolitical complexity. This paper reviews the major alternative models that have been put forward and provides a synopsis of the archaeological evidence relevant to their testing.