Unearthing The Polynesian Past

Author : Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2015-10-31
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780824853488

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Unearthing the Polynesian Past by Patrick Vinton Kirch Pdf

Perhaps no scholar has done more to reveal the ancient history of Polynesia than noted archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch. For close to fifty years he explored the Pacific, as his work took him to more than two dozen islands spread across the ocean, from Mussau to Hawai'i to Easter Island. In this lively memoir, rich with personal—and often amusing—anecdotes, Kirch relates his many adventures while doing fieldwork on remote islands. At the age of thirteen, Kirch was accepted as a summer intern by the eccentric Bishop Museum zoologist Yoshio Kondo and was soon participating in archaeological digs on the islands of Hawai'i and Maui. He continued to apprentice with Kondo during his high school years at Punahou, and after obtaining his anthropology degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Kirch joined a Bishop Museum expedition to Anuta Island, where a traditional Polynesian culture still flourished. His appetite whetted by these adventures, Kirch went on to obtain his doctorate at Yale University with a study of the traditional irrigation-based chiefdoms of Futuna Island. Further expeditions have taken him to isolated Tikopia, where his excavations exposed stratified sites extending back three thousand years; to Niuatoputapu, a former outpost of the Tongan maritime empire; to Mangaia, with its fortified refuge caves; and to Mo'orea, where chiefs vied to construct impressive temples to the war god 'Oro. In Hawai'i, Kirch traced the islands' history in the Anahulu valley and across the ancient district of Kahikinui, Maui. His joint research with ecologists, soil scientists, and paleontologists elucidated how Polynesians adapted to their island ecosystems. Looking back over the past half-century of Polynesian archaeology, Kirch reflects on how the questions we ask about the past have changed over the decades, how archaeological methods have advanced, and how our knowledge of the Polynesian past has greatly expanded.

Author : Michael Malthus Trotter,Beverley McCulloch,John Wilson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 136 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 1989
Category : Archaeological surveying
ISBN : UVA:X001730427

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Unearthing New Zealand by Michael Malthus Trotter,Beverley McCulloch,John Wilson Pdf

"In the last 25 years archaeological research in New Zealand has undergone something of a revolution. Using new techniques and drawing on a wide range of disciplines, archaeologists are now piecing together a new and far more complex picture of the human occupation of this country over the last 1000 years. Until then it was popularly beieved that New Zealand had in the past been settled by two waves of non-European colonisers. It was commonly thought that the "Maoris", the Polynesians who inhabited the country at the time of Cook, had been preceded by a darker, possibly Melanesian and more primitive race called "Morioris". They had been supplanted by the Maoris who had arrived in a "Great Fleet" from their ancestral homeland of Hawaiki some time in the fourteenth century. Today we know this version of events to be wrong -- a myth promulgated by Pakeha researchers at the beginning of the century. Instead, we now realise that this courntyr was probably first settled by Polynesians about 1000 years ago. From this founding population of possibly only a handful of settlers emerged the Maoris -- first as moa hunters, essentially itinerant hunters and gatherers whose impact on the new land was to have far reaching effects. By 500 years ago the changed environment had forced changes upon their economy and lifestyle in favour of more permanent settlements base around a largely agricultural economy. Gradually the classic and familiar Maori culture emerged to be altered and submerged in its turn by the arrival of Europeans 200 years ago. "Unearthing New Zealand" tells the fascinating story of this country's prehistory, reconstructing from archaeological evidence a sometimes extraordinarily complete picture of how these people lived and died. Its emphasis on social aspects -- food and clothing, work practices, burial customs, disease and death -- represents a new dimension in archaeological thinking ..."--Inside front cover.

Author : Stuart Bedford,Matthew Spriggs
Publisher : ANU Press
Page : 529 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2019-12-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781760463311

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Debating Lapita by Stuart Bedford,Matthew Spriggs Pdf

‘This volume is the most comprehensive review of Lapita research to date, tackling many of the lingering questions regarding origin and dispersal. Multidisciplinary in nature with a focus on summarising new findings, but also identifying important gaps that can help direct future research.’ — Professor Scott Fitzpatrick, Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon ‘This substantial volume offers a welcome update on the definition of the Lapita culture. It significantly refreshes the knowledge on this foundational archaeological culture of the Pacific Islands in providing new data on sites and assemblages, and new discussions of hypotheses previously proposed.’ — Dr Frédérique Valentin, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris This volume comprises 23 chapters that focus on the archaeology of Lapita, a cultural horizon associated with the founding populations who first colonised much of the south west Pacific some 3000 years ago. The Lapita culture has been most clearly defined by its distinctive dentate-stamped decorated pottery and the design system represented on it and on further incised pots. Modern research now encompasses a whole range of aspects associated with Lapita and this is reflected in this volume. The broad overlapping themes of the volume—Lapita distribution and chronology, society and subsistence—relate to research questions that have long been debated in relation to Lapita.

Author : Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 408 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2017-11-14
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780520292819

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On the Road of the Winds by Patrick Vinton Kirch Pdf

Introduction : defining Oceania -- Discovering the Oceanic past -- The Pacific islands as a human environment -- Sahul and the prehistory of "old" Melanesia -- Lapita and the Austronesian expansion -- The prehistory of "new" Melanesia -- Micronesia : in the "sea of little islands"--Polynesia : origins and dispersals -- Polynesian chiefdoms and archaic states -- Big structures and large processes in Oceanic prehistory

Author : Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 1989-07-13
Category : History
ISBN : 0521273161

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The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms by Patrick Vinton Kirch Pdf

A first study from an archaeological perspective of the elaborate systems of Polynesian chiefdoms presents an original account of the processes of cultural change and evolution over three millennia.

Author : Daniel Contreras
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2016-08-25
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317450627

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The Archaeology of Human-Environment Interactions by Daniel Contreras Pdf

The impacts of climate change on human societies, and the roles those societies themselves play in altering their environments, appear in headlines more and more as concern over modern global climate change intensifies. Increasingly, archaeologists and paleoenvironmental scientists are looking to evidence from the human past to shed light on the processes which link environmental and cultural change. Establishing clear contemporaneity and correlation, and then moving beyond correlation to causation, remains as much a theoretical task as a methodological one. This book addresses this challenge by exploring new approaches to human-environment dynamics and confronting the key task of constructing arguments that can link the two in concrete and detailed ways. The contributors include researchers working in a wide variety of regions and time periods, including Mesoamerica, Mongolia, East Africa, the Amazon Basin, and the Island Pacific, among others. Using methodological vignettes from their own research, the contributors explore diverse approaches to human-environment dynamics, illustrating the manifold nature of the subject and suggesting a wide variety of strategies for approaching it. This book will be of interest to researchers and scholars in Archaeology, Paleoenvironmental Science, Ecology, and Geology.

Author : Tillman W. Nechtman
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 365 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2018-09-13
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108424684

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The Pretender of Pitcairn Island by Tillman W. Nechtman Pdf

A study of one imposter and his influential vision for British control over the nineteenth-century Pacific Ocean.

Author : Albert J. Schütz
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2020-05-31
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9780824869823

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Hawaiian Language by Albert J. Schütz Pdf

With color and black-and-white illustrations throughout, Hawaiian Language: Past, Present, Future presents aspects of Hawaiian and its history that are rarely treated in language classes. The major characters in this book make up a diverse cast: Dutch merchants, Captain Cook’s naturalist and philologist William Anderson, ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia (the inspiration for the Hawaiian Mission), the American lexicographer Noah Webster, philologists in New England, missionary-linguists and their Hawaiian consultants, and many minor players. The account begins in prehistory, placing the probable origins of the ancestor of Polynesian languages in mainland Asia. An evolving family tree reflects the linguistic changes that took place as these people moved east. The current versions are examined from a Hawaiian-centered point of view, comparing the sound system of the language with those of its major relatives in the Polynesian triangle. More recent historical topics begin with the first written samples of a Polynesian language in 1616, which led to the birth of the idea of a widespread language family. The next topic is how the Hawaiian alphabet was developed. The first efforts suffered from having too many letters, a problem that was solved in 1826 through brilliant reasoning by its framers and their Hawaiian consultants. The opposite problem was that the alphabet didn’t have enough letters: analysts either couldn’t hear or misinterpreted the glottal stop and long vowels. The end product of the development of the alphabet—literacy—is more complicated than some statistics would have us believe. As for its success or failure, both points of view, from contemporary observers, are presented. Still, it cannot be denied that literacy had a tremendous and lasting effect on Hawaiian culture. The last part of the book concentrates on the most-used Hawaiian reference works—dictionaries. It describes current projects that combine print and manuscript collections on a searchable website. These projects can include the growing body of manuscript and print material that is being made available through recent and ongoing research. As for the future, a proposed monolingual dictionary would allow users to avoid an English bridge to understanding, and move directly to a definition that includes Hawaiian cultural features and a Hawaiian worldview.

Author : Patrick Vinton Kirch,Mark D. McCoy
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 542 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2023-07-31
Category : History
ISBN : 9780824894467

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Feathered Gods and Fishhooks by Patrick Vinton Kirch,Mark D. McCoy Pdf

The first edition of Feathered Gods and Fishhooks was the pioneering synthesis of ancient Hawaiian civilization from an archaeological perspective. This long-awaited revised edition now brings the field up to date, incorporating the results from hundreds of archaeological projects undertaken throughout the Hawaiian Islands over the past thirty-five years that have benefited from tremendous technological advancements, and presents an authoritative account of the origins and progression of Hawaiian culture prior to the arrival of Europeans. Generously illustrated, this revision includes dozens of new photographs and maps, along with a selection of color plates. This volume, like its predecessor, provides a synthesis of Hawaiian archaeology that avoids unnecessary jargon and is comprehensible to the interested layperson, yet is sufficiently detailed to be useful to the professional archaeologist. Feathered Gods and Fishhooks: The Archaeology of Ancient Hawai‘i begins with an explanation of archaeological practice in Hawai‘i, from antiquarian pursuits in the late nineteenth century through the development of modern research techniques, taking into account the recent tensions surrounding the significant shift of archaeology from a largely academic endeavor to a professional consulting enterprise. Following a review of environmental constraints and opportunities, and of the main kinds of archaeological evidence, the book explores the latest information on the first Polynesian settlement of Hawai‘i. To achieve a holistic view, the wide range of topics discussed in this work include material culture, agricultural systems, population size, ritual architecture variations, diversity in landscapes, and archaeological evidence for historical transformations following European contact. The final chapters survey, island-by-island, major sites and patterns of ancient settlement. In total, this book tells a story of Hawaiian history, culture, and wisdom in an attempt to preserve ancestral archaeological records. As with the first edition, the revised Feathered Gods and Fishhooks is an indispensable resource on the history of ancient Hawai‘i. Of particular note is the extensive bibliography, a key guide to hundreds of often difficult-to-locate reports and publications on Hawaiian archaeology.

Author : Paolo Fortis,Susanne Küchler
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 215 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2021-03-30
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781000366945

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Time and Its Object by Paolo Fortis,Susanne Küchler Pdf

This volume examines the way objects and images relate to and shape notions of temporality and history. Bringing together ethnographic studies from the Lowlands of Central and South America and Melanesia, it explores the temporality inhering in images and artefacts from a comparative perspective. The chapters focus on how peoples in both regions ‘live in’ and ‘navigate’ time each through their distinctive systems of images and the processes and actions by which these come to be manifest in objects. With original theoretical and ethnographic contributions, the book is valuable reading for scholars interested in visual and material culture and in anthropological approaches to time.

Author : Patrick Vinton Kirch,Clive Ruggles
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2019-05-31
Category : History
ISBN : 9780824879426

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Heiau, ‘Āina, Lani by Patrick Vinton Kirch,Clive Ruggles Pdf

Heiau, ‘Āina, Lani is a collaborative study of 78 temple sites in the ancient moku of Kahikinui and Kaupō in southeastern Maui, undertaken using a novel approach that combines archaeology and archaeoastronomy. Although temple sites (heiau) were the primary focus of Hawaiian archaeologists in the earlier part of the twentieth century, they were later neglected as attention turned to the excavation of artifact-rich habitation sites and theoretical and methodological approaches focused more upon entire cultural landscapes. This book restores heiau to center stage. Its title, meaning “Temples, Land, and Sky,” reflects the integrated approach taken by Patrick Vinton Kirch and Clive Ruggles, based upon detailed mapping of the structures, precise determination of their orientations, and accurate dating. Heiau, ‘Āina, Lani is the outcome of a joint fieldwork project by the two authors, spanning more than fifteen years, in a remarkably well-preserved archaeological landscape containing precontact house sites, walls, and terraces for dryland cultivation, and including scores of heiau ranging from simple upright stones dedicated to Kāne, to massive platforms where the priests performed rites of human sacrifice to the war god Kū. Many of these heiau are newly discovered and reported for the first time in the book. The authors offer a fresh narrative based upon some provocative interpretations of the complex relationships between the Hawaiian temple system, the landscape, and the heavens (the “skyscape”). They demonstrate that renewed attention to heiau in the context of contemporary methodological and theoretical perspectives offers important new insights into ancient Hawaiian cosmology, ritual practices, ethnogeography, political organization, and the habitus of everyday life. Clearly, Heiau, ‘Āina, Lani repositions the study of heiau at the forefront of Hawaiian archaeology.

Author : Kristina M. Gill,Mikael Fauvelle,Jon M. Earlandson
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 327 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2019-01-23
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780813057002

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An Archaeology of Abundance by Kristina M. Gill,Mikael Fauvelle,Jon M. Earlandson Pdf

The islands of Alta and Baja California changed dramatically in the centuries after Spanish colonists arrived. Native populations were decimated by disease, and their lives were altered through forced assimilation and the cessation of traditional foraging practices. Overgrazing, overfishing, and the introduction of nonnative species depleted natural resources severely. Most scientists have assumed the islands were also relatively marginal for human habitation before European contact, but An Archaeology of Abundance reassesses this long-held belief, analyzing new lines of evidence suggesting that the California islands were rich in resources important to human populations. Contributors examine data from Paleocoastal to historic times that suggest the islands were optimal habitats that provided a variety of foods, fresh water, minerals, and fuels for the people living there. Botanical remains from these sites, together with the modern resurgence of plant communities after the removal of livestock, challenge theories that plant foods had to be imported for survival. Geoarchaeological surveys show that the islands had a variety of materials for making stone tools, and zooarchaeological data show that marine resources were abundant and that the translocation of plants and animals from the mainland further enhanced an already rich resource base. Studies of extensive exchange, underwater forests of edible seaweeds, and high island population densities also support the case for abundance on the islands. Concluding that the California islands were not marginal environments for early humans, the discoveries presented in this volume hold significant implications for reassessing the ancient history of islands around the world that have undergone similar ecological transformations. A volume in the series Society and Ecology in Island and Coastal Archaeology, edited by Victor D. Thompson

Author : Frank Joseph
Publisher : Red Wheel/Weiser
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2008-10-15
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9781601639325

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Unearthing Ancient America by Frank Joseph Pdf

Does Colorado’s Grand Canyon hide an ancient city found by a Smithsonian Institution photographer? Did the Vikings beat Columbus to the New World using a fiber-optic navigational instrument? Who built a colossal water reservoir in Iowa long before the first European settlers arrived? What secret have the “Giants of the California Desert” preserved for more than a thousand years? These are just some of the intriguing questions posed and answered by expert researchers in Unearthing Ancient America. They go on to tackle a broad variety of archaeological enigmas shunned as too heretical for consideration by conventional scholars—a Roman figurine found off the New Jersey coast, North African gold in Illinois from a long-vanished kingdom, an Egyptian knife removed from a centuries-old tree in California, a fifth century Christian church in Connecticut, a prehistoric harbor underwater in the Bahamas, Easter Island’s cultural connections with pre-modern Japan, and voyagers to Maine from Stone Age Scotland. Unearthing Ancient America contains a wealth of fresh, occasionally suppressed evidence documenting the tremendous impact made on our continent by overseas visitors hundreds and even thousands of years before Columbus. The disclosures presented here re-write the prehistory of our country and provide a dramatic panorama of the past you never imagined before. The distinguished list of contributing writers to Unearthing Ancient America includes: Wayne May, founder and publisher of Ancient American magazine Gunnar Thompson, PhD, author of American Discovery Nobuhiro Yoshida, language professor from the University of Kyushu William Donato, the world’s leading authority on the “Bimini Road” David Hatcher Childress, founder of The World Explorers Club and head of Adventures Unlimited Press.

Author : Jesse David Jennings
Publisher : Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 1979
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015013399129

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The Prehistory of Polynesia by Jesse David Jennings Pdf

Author : Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher : University of California Press
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2019-03-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780520303416

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A Shark Going Inland Is My Chief by Patrick Vinton Kirch Pdf

Tracing the origins of the Hawaiians and other Polynesians back to the shores of the South China Sea, archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch follows their voyages of discovery across the Pacific in this fascinating history of Hawaiian culture from about one thousand years ago. Combining more than four decades of his own research with Native Hawaiian oral traditions and the evidence of archaeology, Kirch puts a human face on the gradual rise to power of the Hawaiian god-kings, who by the late eighteenth century were locked in a series of wars for ultimate control of the entire archipelago. This lively, accessible chronicle works back from Captain James Cook’s encounter with the pristine kingdom in 1778, when the British explorers encountered an island civilization governed by rulers who could not be gazed upon by common people. Interweaving anecdotes from his own widespread travel and extensive archaeological investigations into the broader historical narrative, Kirch shows how the early Polynesian settlers of Hawai'i adapted to this new island landscape and created highly productive agricultural systems.