New Radiocarbon Ages of Colonization Sites in East Polynesia

Atholl Anderson · Yosihiko H. Sinoto

99 citations0/0 files storedAsian perspectives

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies Archaeology and ancient environmental studies Maritime and Coastal Archaeology

Abstract

The archaeological chronology of initial human colonization in East Polynesia has relied substantially upon radiocarbon dating results from a small number of sites in the central region, notably Motu Paeao cemetery (Maupiti) and Vaito'otia-Fa'ahia (Huahine) in the Society Islands, and Hane (Ua Huka) and Ha'atuatua (Nuku Hiva) in the Marquesas Islands. Recent field research and new radiocarbon dates showed that Ha'atuatua and Motu Paeao were occupied significantly later than had been suggested by earlier results. We now report the results of new radiocarbon dating on the remaining two sites. Leaving aside questionable results on bone and wood samples, six shell samples from Vaito'otia-Fa'ahia indicate occupation in the period a.d. 1050–1450. Five shell and five charcoal samples from Hane indicate that occupation did not begin earlier than about a.d. 1000. Taken together with other recent research on the chronology of initial colonization in East Polynesia we suggest that habitation did not begin until a.d. 900 or later.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 99 citations exist upstream.

References

1991The chronology of colonization in New Zealand 1993Late colonization of East Polynesia 2000Rapid Extinction of the Moas (Aves: Dinornithiformes): Model, Test, and Implications 1979The Prehistory of Polynesia 1998Historical Ecology in the Pacific Islands: Prehistoric Environmental and Landscape Change 1994Palaeoenvironmental evidence for human colonization of remote Oceanic islands 1977The Moa-Hunter period of Maori culture 2002Faunal collapse, landscape change and settlement history in Remote Oceania

Cited by

2008The rat and the octopus: initial human colonization and the prehistoric introduction of domestic animals to Remote Oceania 2006Prehistoric human impacts on Rapa, French Polynesia 2007New Evidence from the East Polynesian Gateway: Substantive and Methodological Results from Aitutaki, Southern Cook Islands 2014A Paleoenvironmental and Archaeological Model-Based Age Estimate for the Colonization of Hawai’l 2009Inferring population histories using cultural data

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.