Prehistoric introduction and extinction of animals in Mangareva, Southeast Polynesia

Abstract

We dedicatethis paper to our longstanding friend and colleague Dr Alan C. Ziegler, who passed away in 2003.We will sorely miss his characteristic wit, unfailing attention to detail and amazing expertisethat has so often assistedarchaeologists conducting Pacificfaunal studies. AbstractDespite images of paradise, eastern Polynesian islands were devoid of most economically-useful animals and cultigens when colonised by humans about 1500 years ago; other views on chronology are more conservative. We analyse the faunal material from the 1959 excavations by Green in Mangareva, southeast Polynesia where 13,598 bones (NISP) were identified to nearest taxon. We discuss the significance of the purposely introduced chicken or Pacific Jungle Fowl (Gallus gallus), dog (Canis familiaris) and pig (Sus scrofa) not known from the historic records of that island group as well as the Pacific rat (Rattus exulans) and humandental and skeletal material. The dog remains now represent the most eastern limit of this species known prehistorically for Oceania. Many of the pig remains were associated with a marae (religious edifice) confirming the importance of this animal in its ceremonies. The majority of fractured human bones and teeth were recovered from midden contexts, thus alluding to the possibility of cannibalism as reported in late prehistoric oral traditions. We suggest that rats, and not human predation, were responsible for the early local extinction of the chickenin the prehistoric sequence for Mangareva.Chicken, pigs, dogs, rats and, of course, people constitute the five main terrestrial animals transported in prehistory across Remote Oceania. On many islands, all five were present from the earliest times but, in some cases, one or more of these taxa went extinct during late prehistory. Andrew Sharp (1964:94-97) used the presence or absence of the pig, dog and chicken to bolster some of his arguments for accidental voyaging, but he drew mostly on the European contact ethnographic evidence with only limited data from the archaeological record. More recently, archaeology has considerably altered the record of humanlyintroduced animals for most of the island groups which he discussed. Moreover, it can now be shown that the transport of various animals to numerous islands of Near Oceania RCG:

No Pig Atoll: Island Biogeography and the Extirpation of a Polynesian Domesticate

“…Free-ranging pigs could have destroyed gardens, disrupted agro-forest, and harmed populations of native plants and animals upon which the Polynesians also depended (Green and Weisler 2004). 3.…”

A New Eastern Limit of the Pacific Flying Fox, Pteropus tonganus (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae), in Prehistoric Polynesia: A Case of Possible Human Transport and Extirpation

“…It is now relatively commonplace to document human-caused avian extinctions on high volcanic islands such as Hawai'i James 1982, Burney et al 2001), the large continental islands of New Zealand (Anderson 1989, Worthy 1998, makatea landforms in the southern Cooks (Steadman and Kirch 1990) and Henderson, Pitcairn Islands (Wragg and Weisler 1994), and possibly low coral atolls (Weisler 2001). In essence, no insular landscape was immune from the effects of colonizing humans who cleared land for horticulture (Kirch 1983, Athens andWard 1993) and introduced commensal animals such as pigs, dogs, chickens, and rats (Green andWeisler 2004, Matisoo-Smith andRobins 2004) as well as vital cultigens, including medicinal and ornamental plants (Barrau 1963, Yen 1973, Kirch 1982.…”

Islands of Inquiry: Colonisation, seafaring and the archaeology of maritime landscapes (TA29) : Colonisation, seafaring and the archaeology of maritime landscapes

“…Work by Atholl Anderson and others on some of the 'mystery islands' of Polynesia, those that show evidence of Polynesian settlement but that were abandoned by European contact, is documenting this precisely: see, for instance, Anderson's early work on the Kermadec Islands, and his subsequent work on Norfolk Island (Anderson and White 2001), the Subantarctic Islands south of New Zealand and Christmas Island in Kiribati , as well as the work of Weisler (1994Weisler ( , 2004 on Pitcairn, Henderson and Ducie.…”

“…Pigs, however, were known only from oral traditions, and were not present on the islands at the time of initial European contact (Hiroa 1938:194-195). Green and Weisler (2004), who analysed the vertebrate remains from Green's 1959 excavations, reported abundant rat bones at all sites, but only 11 bones of pig and five bones of dog; clearly, however, pigs and dogs had both been introduced to the islands by Polynesians. Our excavated vertebrate assemblages reinforce this picture of limited quantities of pig and/or dog, with only a single identified premolar of Sus scrofa from the Nenega-Iti site, and a few other fragmentary post-cranial remains of medium mammal which represent either pigs or dogs.…”