This is a print on demand publication. Thse papers are from two symposia at the APS, and the Univ. of PA Museum. Contents: "Intro.," by Ward Goodenough; "The Pre-Austronesian Settlement of Island Melanesia: Implications for Lapita Archaeology," by Jim Allen; "Austronesian Culture History: The Windows of Language," by Robert Blust; "Archaeology of SE China and Its Bearing on the Austronesian Homeland," by Kwang-chih Chang and Ward Goodenough; "Lapita and Its Aftermath: The Austronesian Settlement of Oceania," by Patrick Kirch; "Colonizing an Island World," by Ben Finney; and "Beyond the Austronesian Homeland: The Austric Hypothesis and Its Implications for Archaeology," by Robert Blust. Illustrations. Second Printing, 1998

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.

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.

"The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania presents the archaeology, linguistics, environment and human biology of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. First colonized 50,000 years ago, Oceania witnessed the independent invention of agriculture, the construction of Easter Island's statues, and the development of the word's last archaic states."--Provided by publisher.

Providing a synthesis of archaeological and historical anthropological knowledge of the indigenous cultures of the Pacific islands, this text focuses on human ecology and island adaptations.

The Pacific Ocean islands have long been considered a natural laboratory where the evolution of human cultures can be studied in the context of thousands of island ecosystems. This text presents research in the ecological history of the Pacific Islands. Focusing on the environmental impact wrought by the Oceanic populations before the advent of Western contact, it challenges earlier views that the islands underwent dramatic environmental change only after European colonization. They demonstrate instead that in some cases the indigenous peoples had an often irreversible effect on the landscapes and biotas of the Pacific Islands and assert that these effects often had important consequences for island societies, economies, and political systems.