We present evidence for a significant shift in human landscape use in post 1000 AD East Timor towards fortified and defensively-oriented settlement sites. We propose a model of agents selecting to invest in fortification building that is based on the spatial and temporal variation in the availability of rainfall-dependent resources. These resources may have been significantly impacted by climatic events associated with ENSO variation, and we discuss spatial and temporal correlation with ENSO warm phase frequency and dates of initial fortification building.

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Recently completed archaeological survey and excavation, in conjunction with a re-analysis of historical documents and oral histories, brings to light new evidence about the pre-colonial (tenth to seventeenth centuries) society of the Banda Islands, once the world's sole source of nutmeg. The new data challenge historical assumptions about settlement, Islamization and the nature of trade networks in pre-colonial Banda. They also have implications for the history of con ict between Bandanese and European colonizers, which resulted in genocide, enslavement or forced migration of the Bandanese population in the 1620s, and the beginning of the colonial era in what is today Indonesia.

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