The Early Prehistory of Fiji

Abstract

terra australis 31Terra Australis reports the results of archaeological and related research within the south and east of Asia, though mainly Australia, New Guinea and island Melanesia -lands that remained terra australis incognita to generations of prehistorians. Its subject is the settlement of the diverse environments in this isolated quarter of the globe by peoples who have maintained their discrete and traditional ways of life into the recent recorded or remembered past and at times into the observable present.Since the beginning of the series, the basic colour on the spine and cover has distinguished the regional distribution of topics as follows: ochre for Australia, green for New Guinea, red for South-East Asia and blue for the Pacific Islands. From 2001, issues with a gold spine will include conference proceedings, edited papers and monographs which in topic or desired format do not fit easily within the original arrangements. All volumes are numbered within the same series. Mailu. G. Irwin (1985) Volume 11: Archaeology in Eastern Timor, 1966-67. I. Glover (1986 Volume 12 List of volumes in Terra Australis THE EARLY PREHISTORY OF FIJI Edited by Geoffrey Clark and Atholl Anderson © 2009 ANU E PressPublished by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Email: anuepress@anu.edu. IntroductionThis volume describes results of a research program on the early phases of prehistory in Fiji.The research began in 1995 as a collaborative project of the ANU and the Fiji Museum entitled 'Prehistoric colonisation and palaeoenvironment of Fiji ' (Anderson et al. 1996). The initial emphasis was on the period beginning about 5000 BP and extending up to about 2000 BP, with the objective of studying the pre-human landscape and then the arrival, spread and environmental impact of human colonisation. At the time, human colonisation was thought to begin somewhere between 3000 and 4500 BP, depending on whether archaeological (3200-3700 BP) or paleoenvironmental (4000-4500 BP) data were preferred, and the colonising Lapita phase was regarded as persisting up to about 2000 BP (Frost 1979:64; Gibbons and Clunie 1986;Southern 1986; Davidson et al. 1990:131; Davidson and Leach 1993:102-103). Our initial fieldwork involved sediment coring for pollen, July-August 1995 in Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, including at sites where previous data had suggested unusually early dates of possible human impact (Hope and Anderson 1995). During the first season of archaeological fieldwork, in 1996, Clark began doctoral research on the early and middle phases of Fijian prehistory with the objective of studying transformations that led from Lapita towards a more distinctly Fijian cultural facies . Thus, the Fiji project was broadened, and renamed 'The Early Prehistory of Fiji Project' (abbreviated to the EPF). Its objectives were to consider initial colonisation and its effects, and later transformations before the last millennium of Fijian prehistory: approximately equating to the Sigatoka and Navatu phases in the ...

Lapita maritime adaptations and the development of fishing technology: A view from Vanuatu

“…The past three decades of zooarchaeological investigation of Lapita sites have revealed that Lapita fishing was mainly practised in inshore coral-reef environments, especially during the first era of migration about 3300 to 2800 BP (cf. Butler 1988Butler , 1994Clark and Szabó 2009;Green 1979Green , 1986Kirch 1988Kirch , 1997Kirch , 2000Kirch and Dye 1979;Kirch and Yen 1982;Summerhayes et al 2010). Yet direct and indirect evidence suggests that Lapita people exploited both near-shore and off-shore marine environments, using a variety of fishing methods including angling, trolling, netting, poison, spears and traps (Butler 1994;Green 1986;Kirch 1997Kirch , 2000Ono 2003;Walter 1989).…”

From test pits to big-scale archaeology in New Caledonia, southern Melanesia

“…In every archipelago, a number of ambitious research programs were initiated in the 1990s (e.g. Bedford et al 1999;Clark and Anderson 2009;Sand 1996;Sheppard et al 2000;Summerhayes 2000) and carried on in the following decades, allowing us to broaden, sometimes exponentially, our knowledge of the long past of this part of Oceania. Sadly, in a period characterised by important economic development in the region with the construction of numerous international hotels and tourism-related facilities, new roads and airstrips, extensions of townships, factories and housing, and logging and mining, very few large-scale archaeological rescue excavations in the form of cultural resource management (CRM) programs have been carried out.…”