Table of contents

Archaeology of Pacific Oceania, now in its second edition, offers a state-of-the-art and fully detailed chronological narrative of how Pacific Oceania came to be inhabited over a long time scale, posing fundamental questions both for Pacific Oceania and for global archaeology. The Pacific Ocean covers 165 million sq. km, nearly one-third of the world’s total surface area, yet its thousands of islands and their diverse cultural histories are scarcely known to the other two-thirds of the world. This book asks how and why did this vast sea of islands come to be inhabited over the last several millennia, transcending significant change in ecology, demography, and society? What were the roles of overseas contacts in the development of social networks, economic trade, and population dynamics? What can any or all of the thousands of islands offer as ideal model systems for comprehending globally significant issues of human-environment relations and coping with changing circumstances of natural and cultural history? What do the island archaeology records reveal about coastal setting as part of the larger human experience? How does Pacific Oceanic archaeology relate with a larger Asia-Pacific context or with the scope of world archaeology? The new second edition of Archaeology of Pacific Oceania addresses these questions and more, providing an updated synthesis of this important region. Archaeology of Pacific Oceania is for scholars of Asia-Pacific archaeology and anthropology and will support students investigating the archaeology of Pacific Oceania.

"Oceanian ceramic cultures making earthenware pottery spread during the past 3500 years through a dozen major island groups spanning 6000 km of the tropical Pacific Ocean from western Micronesia to western Polynesia. Island potters mixed sand as temper into clay bodies during ceramic manufacture. The nature of island sands is governed by the geotectonics of hotspot chains, island arcs, subduction zones, backarc basins, and remnant arcs as well as by sedimentology. Because small islands with bedrock exposures of restricted character are virtual point sources of sand, many tempers are diagnostic of specific islands. Petrographic study of temper sands in thin section allows distinction between indigenous pottery and exotic pottery transported from elsewhere. Study of 2223 prehistoric Oceanian potsherds from 130 islands and island clusters indicates the nature of Oceanian temper types and documents 105 cases of interisland transport of ceramics over distances typically

Countering the dominant paradigms of recent Pacific Islands' historiography, which tend to limit understanding of the sea's importance, this volume emphasizes the flux in the maritime environment and how it instilled an expectation and openness toward outside influences and the rapidity with which cultural change could occur in relations between various Islander groups." "Students and scholars of Pacific history and environmental and cultural studies will welcome this re-evaluation of the sea's influence in Oceanic history."--BOOK JACKET.