The Sāmoa Archaeological Geospatial Database: Initial description and application to settlement pattern studies in the Sāmoan Islands

UTU: Sāmoa archaeology and cultural heritage database

“…The territory of American Sāmoa and the Independent State of Sāmoa have been under separate jurisdictions for the past 120 years although they share a single culture, language and prehistory. Morrison et al (2017) and the Centre for Sāmoan Studies (CSS) and UNESCO are key implementing partners for several activities in co-ordination with the Heritage Committee; and to develop capacity building initiatives for the implementation and safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tangible Cultural Heritage. A National Heritage Bill 2020 was expected to be tabled in parliament before the end of that year but has now been deferred due to a recent change in government.…”

“…This initial input has located only a small portion of the visible features and they have been entered into the CSS QGIS Database (Utu) along with known data from previous archaeological surveys. However, compare the maps in Figure 3 showing distribution of mapped sites from 2017 (Morrison et al., 2017) with the 2020 Utu database shown in Figure 4, identifying 30 times more known archaeological sites or features. This is not meant to compare one database to another but rather to show that with the addition of LiDAR data and additional ground surveys the amount of archaeological information (especially for the Independent State of Samoa) is much more extensive that previously reported.…”

“…Distribution of archaeological sites on ‘Upolu, Savai‘i and Manono Islands in the “[American] Sāmoa Archaeological Geospatial Database." Source: Morrison et al (2017). …”

“…Morrison et al. (2017) describe a project in American Sāmoa referred to as the Sāmoa Archaeological Geospatial Database which has similar but more limited objectives than Utu, because the territory already has heritage protection legislation. There, archaeological heritage and historic places are protected under the National Historic Preservation Act 1966 (NHPA), which applies to all states and territories of the United States.…”