The Colonisation of the Pacific Plate: Chronological Navigational and Social Issues

Abstract

This chapter suggests that the western edge of the Pacific Plate was no barrier for navigation at that time, but presented new problems for social adaptation and archaeological visibility. A longstanding issue in Pacific prehistory has been to explain a significant pause between the colonisation of the continental islands of the western Pacific and the volcanic and coral islands of the Pacific Plate. The direct evidence is archaeological and includes sites, artefacts and their chronology. While much of Andrew Pawley's argument concerns the chronology implied by linguistic evidence, there are additional issues of geography and demography worth considering as well. It is recognised that the distinction between first discovery, initial settlement and the establishment of substantial settlement can be expected to produce different kinds and scales of evidence. Pawley has reviewed the linguistic evidence for a West Polynesian pause in a paper which makes a valuable contribution to the subject.

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