Manuscript XXXIIThe Final Fate of the La Pérouse Expedition?The 1818 Account of Shaik Jumaul,A Lascar Castaway in Torres Strait

The final fate of the La Pérouse expedition is a mystery. In 1788 the frigates L’Astrolabe and La Boussole were wrecked on Vanikoro in the Solomon Islands. According to Vanikoro oral history, the survivors then left, approximately six months later, in a boat which they had built. They were never seen again. This paper reports the rediscovery of an 1818 Indian newspaper article, detailing the rescue in Torres Strait of a lascar named Shaik Jumaul, a castaway for four years on Murray Island (Mer). While on Mer he saw weapons and instruments that seemed not of English manufacture. The Murray Islanders informed him that these came from the crew of a vessel wrecked nearby some three decades earlier. No European ship is known to have been lost in Torres Strait in that period. Shaik Jumaul’s account points to the possibility that the La Pérouse expedition ended finally in northern Australia.     

湄洲岛妈祖文化旅游场域的三维构造——一个人类学的视角

在布迪厄“场域理论”研究架构下,本文以福建湄洲岛妈祖文化旅游场域为对象,透过对该场域时间、空间和阶层三维构造特征的分析,展现其文化资本和旅游情境的形成过程,在场域逻辑的探寻中呈现旅游场域的成型历程。     

上海崇明岛农业旅游客源市场特征及未来入岛游客量预测研究

本文以崇明岛农业旅游主要服务市场——上海都市客源市场为研究对象,通过广泛的社会问卷调查,对目前该市场的入岛游客构成和游客对岛内旅游环境的评价,游客旅游动机、旅游行为和旅游偏好,游客对岛内旅游信息的掌握和对岛内旅游障碍因素的认识等进行了统计分析。在此基础上,根据各主要旅游障碍因素的影响权重,对未来的入岛游客量进行了“障碍因素消除后”的预测。     

Environmental Relations and Biophysical Transition: The Case of Trinket Island

ABSTRACT To what extent is an island economy cut off from the rest of the world? Defined as a mass of land bounded by water, island societies connect and exchange with their surroundings rather intensely. Based on empirical research, this paper explores the role of a ‘remote’ island society on Trinket in generating or sheltering itself from the process of globalisation in which con‐textually given borders are transgressed and displaced. To this end, we apply the concepts of societal metabolism and colonising natural processes operationalised by Material and Energy Flow Analysis (MEFA), and Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP) respectively. Using these biophysical indicators, we describe the transition from a metabolism based upon the natural environment to metabolism based on exchange with other societies. Data presented in this paper further reveal a process of industrialisation and integration into the global market of a so‐called ‘closed’ and ‘inaccessible’ island society.     

Humans,climate or introduced rats – which is to blame for the woodland destruction on prehistoric Rapa Nui (Easter Island)?

When the first Polynesian settlers arrived on Rapa Nui, about 70% of the island was covered with dense woodland in which Jubaea palms dominated. Our investigations of extended soil profiles provide evidence that more than 16 million palm trees grew on the island. Nearly all palms were removed by the 16th century. Teeth marks on nutshells of the Jubaea palms from the 13th or 14th centuries attest to the activity of Pacific rats (Rattus exulans) on Rapa Nui, which were probably imported there by the first Polynesians settlers. Did the rats perhaps prevent the germination of palm seeds and thus the regeneration of the dense palm woodland of Rapa Nui?     

Ancient DNA typing of archaeological pig remains corroborates historical records

The recent increase in both the abundance and taxonomic range of DNA sequence data in public repositories makes it possible to determine the maternal origin of lineages of faunal archaeological material by characterizing its mitochondrial DNA. Among the most commonly represented taxa are domesticated animals, for which extensive genetic characterization has revealed high levels of genetic diversity and (in at least some cases) strong phylogeographic clustering. Such information has significant implications not only for characterizing important aspects of the occupation history of archaeological sites, but also in providing novel insights into colonisation history and the scale and scope of trade and exchange networks. This can be done through studying the origins and dispersal of proxy organisms such as commensal and domesticated animals, as well as economically important wild fauna. To illustrate this approach, we compare historical records of maritime movement of people and pigs from two sites on Lord Howe Island, Australia, to phylogeographic results of DNA extracted from pig bones.     

The Search for A,otonatendïe

Abstract

Equivocal clues in the Jesuit Relations and the few other historical documents relating to A,otonatendie, an important, but short-lived, mid-17th-century, inter-tribal, anti-Iroquois coalition beyond “the Great Lake of the Hurons,” are now supplemented by archaeological evidence at Rock Island at the mouth of Green Bay in Door County, Wisconsin, suggesting a positive resolution to uncertainty about its location.     

Intangible Heritage in Conservation Management Planning: The Case of Robben Island1

Robben Island Museum officially commemorates ‘the triumph of the human spirit over adversity’, relating especially to the period of political imprisonment between 1961 and 1991 when Robben Island was most notorious as a political prison for the leaders of the anti‐apartheid struggle. Robben Island became a World Heritage Site in December 1999 because of its universal symbolic significance—its intangible heritage. This paper explores the implications for conservation management planning of interpreting and managing the intangible heritage associated with such sites. Examples will be drawn from the conservation planning exercise undertaken by the Robben Island Museum between 2000 and 2002. The paper will look specifically at how Robben Island's symbolic significance has been defined and how competing interpretations should be included in the management plan. It then discusses the challenges around managing historic fabric whose significance is defined as primarily symbolic, and ways of safeguarding the intangible heritage associated with it.     

An island-wide assessment of the chronology of settlement and land use on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) based on radiocarbon data

The archaeological landscape on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) contains a palimpsest of surface archaeological features reflecting a long history of settlement and land use. The popular narrative of societal collapse prior to European contact relies on chronometric data from the late pre-European contact period and also cites major settlement shifts as evidence for societal collapse and socio-political reorganization. This paper explores the archaeological evidence for proposed changes in settlement by assessing the spatial and temporal distribution of radiocarbon determinations collected from archaeological and landscape contexts. A corpus of over 300 determinations is placed into an island-wide GIS database and analysed. The results of this study suggest that Rapa Nui settlement and land use exhibit continuity rather than punctuated, detrimental change during the late pre-European contact period.     

Forty‐Five Years of Pacific Island Studies: some reflections

Looking back on our own times, we have seen a rise and fall of interest in Pacific Island studies. Our careers, which have led us currently to the Centre for Samoa Studies at the National University of Samoa, retrospectively illustrate transformations in Pacific Studies over the past half century.