The Archaeology of Island Colonization

The Archaeology of Island Colonization PDF

Author: Matthew F. Napolitano

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 0813057787

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume details how new theories and methods have recently advanced the archaeological study of initial human colonization of islands around the world, including in the southwest Pacific, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. This global perspective brings into comparison the wide variety of approaches used to study these early migrations and illuminates current debates in island archaeology. Evidence of island colonization is often difficult to find, especially in areas impacted by sea-level rise, and these essays demonstrate how researchers have tackled this and other issues. Contributors show the potential of computer simulations of voyaging in determining the range of timing and origin points that were possible in the past. They discuss how Bayesian modeling helps address uncertainties and controversies surrounding radiocarbon dating. Additionally, advances in biomolecular techniques such as ancient DNA (aDNA), paleoproteomics, analysis of human microbiota, and improved resolution in isotopic analyses are providing more refined information on the homelands of initial settlers, on individual life courses, and on population-level migrations. Islands offer rich opportunities to examine the exploratory nature of the human species, providing insights into the evolution of watercraft technologies and wayfinding, the impact of humans on their new environments, and the motivations for their journeys. The Archaeology of Island Colonization represents the innovative ways today’s archaeologists are reconstructing these unique paleolandscapes. Contributors: Nasullah Aziz | David Ball | Todd J. Braje | Richard Callaghan | John F. Cherry | Ethan Cochrane | Robert J. DiNapoli | Andrew Dugmore | Jon M. Erlandson | Scott M. Fitzpatrick | Amy E. Gusick | Derek Hamilton | Terry L. Hunt | Thomas P. Leppard | Carl P. Lipo | Jillian Maloney | Matthew F. Napolitano | Anthony Newton | Maria A. Nieves-Colón | Rintaro Ono | Adhi Agus Oktaviana | Timothy Rieth | Curtis Runnels | Magdalena M.E. Schmid | Alexander J. Smith | Harry Octavianus Sofian | Sriwigati | Jessica H. Stone | Orri Vésteinsson A volume in the series Society and Ecology in Island and Coastal Archaeology, edited by Victor D. Thompson

The Archaeology of Island Colonization

The Archaeology of Island Colonization PDF

Author: Matthew F. Napolitano

Publisher:

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 9780813066851

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume details how new theories and methods have recently advanced the archaeological study of initial human colonization of islands around the world, including in the southwest Pacific, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. This global perspective brings into comparison the wide variety of approaches used to study these early migrations and illuminates current debates in island archaeology. Evidence of island colonization is often difficult to find, especially in areas impacted by sea level rise, and these essays demonstrate how researchers have tackled this and other issues. Contributors show the potential of computer simulations of voyaging in determining the range of timing and origin points that were possible in the past. They discuss how Bayesian modeling helps address uncertainties and controversies surrounding radiocarbon dating. Additionally, advances in biomolecular techniques such as ancient DNA (aDNA), paleoproteomics, analysis of human microbiota, and improved resolution in isotopic analyses are providing more refined information on the homelands of initial settlers, on individual life courses, and on population-level migrations. Islands offer rich opportunities to examine the exploratory nature of the human species, providing insights into the evolution of watercraft technologies and wayfinding, the impact of humans on their new environments, and the motivations for their journeys. The Archaeology of Island Colonization represents the innovative ways today's archaeologists are reconstructing these unique paleolandscapes. A volume in the series Society and Ecology in Island and Coastal Archaeology, edited by Victor D. Thompson

Islands of Inquiry

Islands of Inquiry PDF

Author: Geoffrey Richard Clark

Publisher: ANU E Press

Published: 2008-06-01

Total Pages: 522

ISBN-13: 1921313900

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"Many of the papers in this volume present new and innovative research into the processes of maritime colonisation, processes that affect archaeological contexts from islands to continents. Others shift focus from process to the archaeology of maritime places from the Bering to the Torres Straits, providing highly detailed discussions of how living by and with the sea is woven into all elements of human life from subsistence to trade and to ritual. Of equal importance are more abstract discussions of islands as natural places refashioned by human occupation, either through the introduction of new organisms or new systems of production and consumption. These transformation stories gain further texture (and variety) through close examinations of some of the more significant consequences of colonisation and migration, particularly the creation of new cultural identities. A final set of papers explores the ways in which the techniques of archaelogical sciences have provided insights into the fauna of the islands and the human history of such places."--Provided by publisher.

African Islands

African Islands PDF

Author: Peter Mitchell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-04-11

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 1000567346

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

African Islands provides the first geographically and chronologically comprehensive overview of the archaeology of African islands. This book draws archaeologically informed histories of African islands into a single synthesis, focused on multiple issues of common interest, among them human impacts on previously uninhabited ecologies, the role of islands in the growth of long-distance maritime trade networks, and the functioning of plantation economies based on the exploitation of unfree labour. Addressing and repairing the longstanding neglect of Africa in general studies of island colonization, settlement, and connectivity, it makes a distinctively African contribution to studies of island archaeology. The availability of this much-needed synthesis also opens up a better understanding of the significance of African islands in the continent's past as a whole. After contextualizing chapters on island archaeology as a field and an introduction to the variety of Africa’s islands and the archaeological research undertaken on them, the book focuses on four themes: arriving, altering, being, and colonizing and resisting. An interdisciplinary approach is taken to these themes, drawing on a broad range of evidence that goes beyond material remains to include genetics, comparative studies of the languages, textual evidence and oral histories, island ecologies, and more. African Islands provides an up-to-date synthesis and account of all aspects of archaeological research on Africa’s islands for students and academics alike.

Comparative Island Archaeologies

Comparative Island Archaeologies PDF

Author: James Conolly

Publisher: British Archaeological Reports Limited

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 9781407303130

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"The four themes of seafaring and voyaging, colonization and abandonment, human ecology, and social interaction are explored in detail in the papers in this volume using data from the Pacific, the Caribbean, the North Sea and the Mediterranean. These papers, both individually and collectively, demonstrate why island archaeology remains a vibrant and relevant part of archaeological discourse. Clearly, islands are neither peripheral nor isolates in the context of their diverse histories, nor are they peripheral in the context of their contribution to archaeological thought."--Publisher's web site.

Mediterranean Voyages

Mediterranean Voyages PDF

Author: Helen Dawson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-07

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1315424762

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Islands are ideal case studies for exploring social connectivity, episodes of colonisation, abandonment, and alternating phases of cultural interaction and isolation. Their societies display different attitudes toward the land and the sea, which in turn cast light on group identities. This volume advances theoretical discussions of island archaeology by offering a comparative study of the archaeology of colonisation, abandonment, and resettlement of the Mediterranean islands in prehistory. This comparative and thematic study encourages anthropological reflections on the archaeology of the islands, ultimately focusing on people rather than geographical units, and specifically on the relations between islanders, mainlanders, and the creation of islander identities. This volume has significance for scholars interested in Mediterranean archaeology, as well as those interested more broadly in colonisation and abandonment.

The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific

The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific PDF

Author: Geoffrey Irwin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780521476515

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The exploration and colonisation of the Pacific is a remarkable episode of human prehistory. Early sea-going explorers had no prior knowledge of Pacific geography, no documents to record their route, no metal, no instruments for measuring time and none for exploration. Forty years of modern archaeology, experimental voyages in rafts, and computer simulations of voyages have produced an enormous range of literature on this controversial and mysterious subject. This book represents a major advance in knowledge of the settlement of the Pacific by suggesting that exploration was rapid and purposeful, undertaken systematically, and that navigation methods progressively improved. Using an innovative model to establish a detailed theory of navigation, Geoffrey Irwin claims that rather than sailing randomly downwind in search of the unknown, Pacific Islanders expanded settlement by the cautious strategy of exploring upwind, so as to ease their safe return. The author has tested this hypothesis against the chronological data from archaeological investigation, with a computer simulation of demographic and exploration patterns and by sailing throughout the region himself.

The Archaeology of Islands

The Archaeology of Islands PDF

Author: Paul Rainbird

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-07-09

Total Pages: 19

ISBN-13: 1139463942

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Archaeologists have traditionally considered islands as distinct physical and social entities. In this book, Paul Rainbird discusses the historical construction of this characterization and questions the basis for such an understanding of island archaeology. Through a series of case studies of prehistoric archaeology in the Mediterranean, Pacific, Baltic, and Atlantic seas and oceans, he argues for a decentering of the land in favor of an emphasis on the archaeology of the sea and, ultimately, a new perspective on the making of maritime communities. The archaeology of islands is thus unshackled from approaches that highlight boundedness and isolation, and replaced with a new set of principles - that boundaries are fuzzy, islanders are distinctive in their expectation of contacts with people from over the seas, and that island life can tell us much about maritime communities. Debating islands, thus, brings to the fore issues of identity and community and a concern with Western construction of other peoples.

Voyages of Discovery

Voyages of Discovery PDF

Author: Scott M. Fitzpatrick

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 2004-04-30

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Voyages of Discovery is the first major synthesis of island archaeological research worldwide. The work brings together experts in the field who are concerned with analyzing islands and island societies from a variety of different archaeological and anthropological perspectives. Major topics include interaction spheres, exchange, human impacts, and theoretical models. Over the past few decades there has been an increased interest in the archaeology of islands. Archaeological approaches to studying islands and island societies have often mirrored those of biologists because islands are relatively isolated, contain unique species or remnant populations, have an impoverished terrestrial ecology, provide opportunities to investigate the effects of animals (e.g., humans) on ecosystems, lend themselves to manipulative experiments, and have implications for helping us understand environmental and social changes on a global level from a microcosmic view. Although islands can be considered somewhat unique compared to mainland environments, environmental and cultural factors played important roles in how islands and islanders developed over time. The field of island archaeology contributes to understanding the fluid boundaries (both physical and mental) that existed for islanders prehistorically and how they adapted to their island world. This book explores a wide range of issues including the impacts humans have had on island ecosystems, the intentional movement of goods, resources, and animals across vast distances, and ways in which archaeologists analyze islands and island societies methodologically and theoretically.

Prehistory in the Pacific Islands

Prehistory in the Pacific Islands PDF

Author: John Terrell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9780521369565

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

How, asks John Terrell in this richly illustrated and original book, can we best account for the remarkable diversity of the Pacific Islanders in biology, language, and custom? Traditionally scholars have recognized a simple racial division between Polynesians, Micronesians, Melanesians, Australians, and South-east Asians: peoples allegedly differing in physical appearance, temperament, achievements, and perhaps even intelligence. Terrell shows that such simple divisions do not fit the known facts and provide little more than a crude, static picture of human diversity.