Iron knees in wooden vessels—an attempt at a typology

Knees were brackets in the structure of a wooden ship. They were introduced in the second half of the 18th century and were in common use for naval and merchant ships in the 19th century. They were fashioned in various designs. A typology of these is proposed based on archaeological and documentary evidence. Iron knees could used to assist the dating of unidentified shipwrecks.     

海洋旅游开发研究--兼论舟山海洋文化旅游和谐发展的策略

本文以海洋文化与海洋旅游的关系为切入点,提出进行海洋旅游资源客观科学评估的两个重要认识,即对中国海洋文化先进性的认识和对海洋文化的旅游市场价值的认识.在此基础上阐述了舟山海洋旅游和谐发展的六大策略.     

Covert Control? Indigenous Agency in Edward Winslow Gifford’s Fijian Archaeological Expedition of 1947

ABSTRACT

The story of University of California archaeologist Edward Winslow Gifford’s 1947 Fijian fieldwork has been told up to now as a classic piece of colonial fieldwork with aims and direction dictated by the foreign specialist. But examination of the extensive Gifford archive held in the University of California Berkeley’s Bancroft Library and its Hearst Museum and a bit of ‘reading against the grain’ reveal a quite different story. Indigenous agency played a major, probably even decisive, role in how the expedition unfolded. The value of archival research into the history of archaeology, and particularly its contribution to the teaching of archaeological practice today, is significant in revealing ‘hidden histories’ that make a difference.     

Framing social rebalancing,national identity,and victimhood in Kanaky/New Caledonia

New Caledonia is an island territory located in the French South Pacific. In 2018, the first of three referenda on the island’s sovereignty will occur. Over the next decade, inhabitants of this territory will decide whether to become fully sovereign, maintain their dependence on France, or enter into an independent-association relationship with another state. Through a series of interviews with prominent New Caledonian politicians and secondary sources, this article explores how definitions of victimhood and national identity construction shape the notion of rebalancing. Both loyalist and nationalist politicians argue that the current social inequalities between New Caledonian communities require targeted policies intended to re-balance the populations. Politicians use these victim narratives and national identities to construct imagined communities that advocate for the inclusive or exclusive application of the right to self-determination.     

Animal Exploitation in the Early Prehistory of the Balearic Islands

The Balearic Islands were the last large islands in the Mediterranean to be settled, with colonization not occurring until the third millennium cal BC. The richest assemblages of zooarchaeological data for reconstructing patterns of animal exploitation and management come from Mallorca, Menorca, and Formentera and date to the late third and second millennia cal BC. In this article, I consider these exploitation and management strategies from the perspective of human ecodynamics. In general, the early settlers of the Balearic Islands adopted economic strategies which remained very conservative throughout the Early and Mid Bronze Age (i.e., 2500/2300–1200 cal BC). On Mallorca and Menorca, animal resources were derived mainly from domesticated fauna, with the evidence supporting a mixed-farming model wherein cultivation is complemented by small-scale and relatively unspecialized animal husbandry. In contrast, on Formentera there is a diversification of the faunal economy, with fish and wild birds providing an important contribution to the diet; this probably relates to the extreme marginality of the Formenteran environment. This case of initial human settlement and flexible adaptation to the Balearics highlights one of the core aspects of human ecodynamics: the ability for colonizing populations to both uniquely respond to and affect ecological conditions in island environments.     

Ecological Contingency Accounts for Earliest Seagoing in the Western Pacific Ocean

Seagoing at 1 mya to Flores, and sea gaps of >50 km crossed by 47 kya to Sahul, are evidence of earlier maritime migration in the western Pacific than anywhere else. Current opinion attributes the latter to the influence of anatomically modern human cultural complexity on seagoing technology and practice, together with the impetus of serial resource depression. It is argued here that seagoing was unusually advantaged in the western Pacific by a fortuitous conjunction of the warmest seas with a ready availability of large-diameter bamboo that occurred as natural rafts, and which could also be constructed into rafts large enough to transport viable colonizing groups from island to island across Wallacea to Sahul. The geography of Wallacea allowed migration solely by drifting, and exploratory landscape learning might have produced landfalls on Sahul sooner than is implied by subsistence forcing of mobility. Seagoing by drifting raft was much harder from Sahul to the east because of the virtual absence of large-diameter bamboo and longer distance to fewer or small islands; colonization occurred much later.     

Pagan: the archaeology of a WWII battle never fought in the Northern Mariana Islands

Archaeological and historical investigation of WWII battles fought in the Micronesian archipelago of the Mariana Islands has generally concentrated on the fierce struggles for Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. Smaller islands that were neutralised during the U.S. thrust to establish air bases for the bombing campaign over Japan beginning in 1944 have received less attention, but were a strategic link in the Absolute National Defence Sphere. This paper examines the archaeological evidence of Japanese military planning for the defence of the island of Pagan situated north of Saipan, a battle that was never fought. The strategy based on an analysis of fixed weaponry emplacement appears to have been conceived in terms of engagement evolving from a ‘defence-at-the-waters-edge’ tactic in the southern Mariana Islands towards a ‘defence-in-depth’ posture faced in Iwo Jima and Okinawa.     

Pacific Coconut: Comestible,Comfort and Commodity

ABSTRACT

As the title implies this special issue concentrates on the coconut in its older usages and its transformation into commodities. The coconut has many histories, with specific intersections with each Pacific island society, indeed each community and family. This brief introduction seeks to give an overview of its penetration into the lives and societies at several levels, from small clans to major companies, from growers to governments, all implicated along the commodity chain. In spite of the coconut’s ubiquity, the historiography has never addressed it fully but taken it rather as a given, one player in capitalism in the region, yet in fact, for over a hundred years, it was the star product upon which many governments and people across the tropical Pacific depended for income. We hope that some aspects of the coconut’s complexity and meaning are brought to light in the following new contributions to its history.     

To‘uluwa and the Magistrates: Coconuts and Yams,Governance and Indigenous Agency in the Trobriand Islands,Papua New Guinea, 1912–41

ABSTRACT

In the Trobriand Islands of today’s Papua New Guinea, the coconut has long been mainly an accompaniment to yams – the primary staple food, central cultural icon and source of much of the chiefs’ economic and political power. From the early 19th century, surplus yams were traded to Europeans operating in a regional economy, but the Assistant Resident Magistrates (ARMs) of the Australian government of colonial Papua in charge of the islands overlooked this industry in favour of copra, a global commodity. Beginning with a wholesale planting campaign in the 1910s and continuing with a ‘native plantation scheme’ in the 1920s, the ARMS exhorted Trobrianders to take time away from their beloved gardens to plant and tend coconut trees. Traces of resistance to this overzealous project come mainly through the voice and actions of Paramount Chief To‘uluwa of Omarakana, as recorded by the ARMs in patrol reports and station journals. The colonial vision of a copra-based link to the global economy was dimmed by a fall in commodity prices in the mid 1920s, whilst the regional yam trade persisted for decades more. Hence the indigenous yam prevailed over the colonial coconut in a symbolic struggle for primacy in the islands, and the yam remains a symbol of a vibrant traditional Trobriand culture to this day.     

A Better Savage than the Savages: Thor Heyerdahl's Early Ethnographical Attempts and their Importance for the Development of the ‘Kon-Tiki Theory’

ABSTRACT

In this paper Thor Heyerdahl's early attempts at ethnography and his first contact with Polynesian archaeology are discussed. It is argued that Heyerdahl, prior to his first Pacific expedition to the Marquesas Islands in 1937, carried with him a romanticized perception of the Polynesian people, imagining them to be the last living ‘natural men’. This perception was shattered during his expedition, and the disappointing contrast between the imagined reality and the lived reality led Heyerdahl to separate the contemporary Polynesian population from the Polynesian archaeological record. It is further argued that this separation between contemporary Polynesians and the Polynesian archaeological record would form the foundation for the dual migration wave hypothesis Heyerdahl later launched with his ‘Kon-Tiki theory’.