Between 3050 and 2700 years ago, humans first colonized the islands of south-west Remote Oceania, a region stretching from Vanuatu to Sāmoa. These colonists created a dense archaeological record of Lapita pottery and other artefacts on island coastlines across the region. There is one striking exception to this pattern: Sāmoa, with only a single Lapita pottery colonization site dating to approximately 2800 years ago. There are two competing explanations for the unique Sāmoan colonization record. First, there was a dense Lapita colonization record, now displaced through sedimentation and coastal subsidence. Second, there were few coastal plains suitable for settlement 2800 years ago resulting in the lack of colonization sites. This article describes the first archaeological and geological research designed to systematically test these explanations. The research focuses on the south-eastern coastal plain of 'Upolu Island, an area where previous geological research and mid-Holocene sea-level indicators predict the least relative subsidence over the last 3000 years. Auger cores and controlled excavation units sampled the geological sequence and archaeological deposits across 700 m of coast. Sedimentary and dating analyses indicate coastal plain formation beginning 1200 years ago with the earliest archaeological deposits, including plain pottery, lithics, shellfish and vertebrate fauna, dating possibly 700 years later. Microfossil analyses identify burning and forest clearance coincident with the earliest archaeological remains. Compared with other Sāmoan archaeological deposits, the cultural materials and ecofacts represent very low-intensity occupation. These results support the proposal that there were few coastal plains suitable for Lapita pottery-bearing colonists approximately 2800 years ago.

In this communication we report the findings of extensive inland settlement in Palauli District, Savai'i, made possible with the use of LiDAR-guided 1 fieldwork. The surveys were conducted in April and June 2017 by the authors with students and other staff of the Centre for Samoan Studies, National University of Samoa. The findings have relevance to earlier scholarly debates on the location of settlements and the population of Sāmoa before European contacts in the 18th and 19th centuries, for which there was no consensus. Some, such as Watters (1958) and Pirie (1964), asserted that the nucleated coastal settlement patterns in Sāmoa observed and described in the 19th century were likely to be representative of those in the ancient past, a perception held by most Sāmoans today. In this view, villages have always been concentrated along the coast, often nucleated around malae 'central meeting spaces' (Pratt 1893: 201) with one or more large meeting houses (falefono, fale talimālō) of the highest-ranking chiefs located beside or within them. It was assumed that a very few villages extended inland, and those were thought to have been refuges in times of strife and not permanent settlements (e.g., Wright 1963). These assumptions were contradicted by Golson (1969) and Davidson (1969) who refer to the archaeological evidence that existed then to assert that inland settlement was extensive in some areas. Settlement pattern studies of Letolo, Sāpapali'i and Mt Olo (Jennings and Holmer 1980; Jennings et al.1976Jennings et al. , 1982 have also shown settlements ranging from the coast to several kilometres inland throughout Palauli and Sāmoa, and other earlier studies by Buist (1969) and Davidson (1969) have hinted at the same. Recent studies of settlement patterns and land use on the small islands of Manono in independent Samoa (

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The Sāmoa Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Database was begun in 2016 as an ongoing means of encouraging and assisting more archaeological research in Sāmoa. It is also building a stronger engagement between the Archaeology and Cultural Heritage research and teaching programme at the Centre for Sāmoan Studies at the National University with government agencies here, and is contributing to the still incomplete processes of preparing heritage protection legislation. Known as "Utu" (meaning "a container for treasures"). The Sāmoa Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Database maps known archaeological sites and previously undocumented sites identified by surveys and analysis of LiDAR images using a global information system (GIS) program. Mapped sites are linked to information about them, including archaeological analysis, historical sources, and oral traditions and any other available information. The work so far has provided new evidence for Sāmoa's prehistory in relation to population size and distribution, settlement patterns and land use.