Among Polynesia's first pots

X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and petrographic thin section microscopy are applied to a sample of anomalous appearing Lapita pottery sherds from Nukuleka, the earliest archaeological site in Polynesia. Both analyses indicate non-local origins for the ceramic vessels, suggesting they were brought on founding canoes. Mineral inclusions in ceramic tempers eliminate sources to the west of Tonga in eastern Melanesia; rather the temper source is most probably a dacitic high island from a distant island arc of central Melanesia. Polynesian origins and settlement are issues more complex than currently recognized by the orthodox progressive settlement model for Lapita expansion across Oceania.     

Tongan and Samoan volcanic glass: pXRF analysis and implications for constructs of ancestral Polynesian society

A provenance study of volcanic glass specimens from 12 archaeological sites in the Kingdom of Tonga is carried out employing pXRF (portable X-ray fluorescence) analysis. To accomplish this, volcanic glass samples from previously identified sources in northern Tonga and the adjacent islands of Samoa are analyzed. Results indicate inter-island voyaging and interaction over a 600 km linear distance along the Tongan island chain from first Lapita settlement ca 2900 BP throughout later prehistory. Tongan volcanic glass, however, is not found in Samoa and, with the exception of one late prehistoric specimen, Samoan volcanic glass is not present in Tonga. This distribution challenges current concepts of an integrated ancestral society and homeland common to Tonga and Samoa from the Lapita period onward.     

Conflict and State Development in Ancient Tonga: The Lapaha Earth Fort

Warfare is often considered as a key factor in the formation complex societies, but in the Pacific archaeological evidence for inter-group conflict during political centralization is rare. Most earthwork forts in Tonga are assumed to have been built in the nineteenth century when the traditional system of rulership collapsed, yet few forts on Tongatapu have been excavated or 14C dated. A fort in the chiefly center of the ancient Tongan state was mapped with theodolite and LiDAR, and excavated. Radiocarbon and traditional history indicate the fort known as the Lapaha Kolotau was made in the fourteenth century AD at the same time that chiefly architecture was being built at an unprecedented scale at the new elite center. The construction of an earthwork fort provides the first evidence that political centralization in Tonga was likely to have been contested.     

An exhumed palaeo-hydrocarbon migration fairway in a faulted carrier system, Entrada Sandstone of SE Utah, USA

The Moab Anticline, east‐central Utah, is an exhumed hydrocarbon palaeo‐reservoir which was supplied by hydrocarbons that migrated from the Moab Fault up‐dip towards the crest of the structure beneath the regional seal of the Tidwell mudstone. Iron oxide reduction in porous, high permeability aeolian sandstones records the secondary migration of hydrocarbons, filling of traps against small sealing faults and spill pathways through the Middle Jurassic Entrada Sandstone. Hydrocarbons entered the Entrada Sandstone carrier system from bends and other leak points on the Moab Fault producing discrete zones of reduction that extend for up to 400 m from these leak points. They then migrated in focused stringers, 2–5 m in height, to produce accumulations on the crest of the anticline. Normal faults on the anticline were transient permeability barriers to hydrocarbon migration producing a series of small compartmentalized accumulations. Exsolution of CO₂ as local fault seals were breached resulted in calcite cementation on the up‐dip side of faults. Field observations on the distribution of iron oxide reduction and calcite cements within the anticline indicate that the advancing reduction fronts were affected neither by individual slip bands in damage zones around faults nor by small faults with sand: sand juxtapositions. Faults with larger throws produced either sand: mudstone juxtapositions or sand: sand contacts and fault zones with shale smears. Shale‐smeared fault zones provided seals to the reducing fluid which filled the structural traps to spill points.     

Toward the Historical Archaeology of Levuka, a South Pacific Port of Call

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Fijian port of Levuka alternately passed through incarnations as a beachcomber community, boisterous port of call, commercial entrepôt, and colonial capital. Initial investigations in this town in 2000 provide a data set through which archaeology's potential for a meaningful dialogue on Levuka's past can be explored. These data reflect upon an increasingly segregated European community structure, through which social transformations in alcohol use, landscape alterations, and material culture consumption patterns are examined.