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11 • the Pacific Basin: an Introduction 11 • The Pacific Basin: An Introduction BEN FINNEY Oceania, the Pacific Island world, is conventionally di­ culture that could be transplanted to the oceanic islands. vided into three regions. Melanesia, originally named for The immediate sources of this movement were almost cer­ the dark skin color of many of its people, comprises mas­ tainly the Southeast Asian islands of what are now the sive New Guinea and the islands extending eastward as Philippine and Indonesian nations. By at least 1500 B.C. far as Fiji. Micronesia is composed of comparatively tiny seafarers, who can be traced from their distinctive pottery islands east of the Philippines and north of Melanesia. called Lapita, had reached the islands of the Bismarck Polynesia, a multitude of islands large and small, is con­ Archipelago off the northeast coast of New Guinea. tained in a vast triangle bounded by Hawai'i on the north, Within a few centuries they had moved eastward through Easter Island (now called Rapa Nui by its Polynesian Melanesian waters beyond the previous frontier of settle­ inhabitants) to the southeast, and New Zealand (now ment, all the way to the islands of Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa called Aotearoa by its Polynesian inhabitants) to the at the western edge of Polynesia. Although some archae­ southwest (fig. 11.1). This tripartite division was first sug­ ologists believe these seafarers kept moving eastward at gested in the early 1830s by the French explorer the same rapid pace, or even faster, the archaeological Dumont d'Urville. 1 and linguistic evidence suggests they may have lingered in A way to conceptualize the Pacific Island world that this triarchipelago region long enough (five hundred to makes more sense in terms of migration history and the one thousand years?) for ancestral Polynesian culture and distribution of seafaring skills is to divide it between Near language to emerge from its roots in Lapita culture.4 Oceania and Remote Oceania, a distinction developed by From this region, which is now known as West Poly- the archaeologist Roger Green. 2 Near Oceania comprises the islands most accessible from Southeast Asia: New 1. In an address before the Geographic Society of Paris and published Guinea and its immediate outliers. The settlement of this in Jules Sebastien Cesar Dumont d'Urville, Voyage de la corvette cCI'As_ region began perhaps as early as fifty thousand to sixty trolabe" ... pendant les annees 1826-1827-1828-1829, 5 vols. (Paris: thousand years ago. At that time the great amount of wa­ J. Tastu, 1830-33),2:614-16. For a generally useful summary of the ter locked in the world's glaciers so lowered sea levels that peopling of the Pacific, see O. H. K. Spate, Paradise Found and Lost the Southeast Asian mainland extended as far east as Bali, (London: Routledge, 1988), 1-30. 2. Roger C. Green, "Near and Remote Oceania-Disestablishing and Tasmania, Australia, New Guinea, and adjacent con­ 'Melanesia' in Culture History," in Man and a Half: Essays in Pacific tinental shelves were joined to form a Greater Australia. Anthropology and Ethnobiology in Honour of Ralph Bulmer, ed. An­ The consequent narrowed gap between this continental drew Pawley (Auckland: Polynesian Society, 1991),491-502. extension of Southeast Asia and Greater Australia, along 3. Jim Allen, Jack Golson, and Rhys Jones, eds., Sunda and Sahul: with the existence of intervisible or nearly intervisible is­ Prehistoric Studies in Southeast Asia, Melanesia and Australia (London: Academic Press, 1977); Jim Allen, Chris Gosden, and J. Peter White, land stepping-stones strewn across this gap, made it fea­ "Human Pleistocene Adaptations in the Tropical Island Pacific: Recent sible for precocious seafarers with perhaps nothing more Evidence from New Ireland, a Greater Australian Outlier," Antiquity than rudimentary rafts or dugout canoes to reach the un­ 63 (1989): 548-61; and Jim Allen, "The Pre-Austronesian Settlement inhabited landmass to the east. Over the millennia that of Island Melanesia: Implications for Lapita Archaeology," in Prehis­ followed, however, their descendants do not seem to have toric Settlement of the Pacific, ed. Ward Hunt Goodenough (Philadel­ phia: American Philosophical Society, 1996), 11-27. pushed much farther into the Pacific than the Bismarck 4. Peter S. Bellwood, "The Colonization of the Pacific: Some Current Archipelago and Solomon Islands, situated, respectively, Hypotheses," in The Colonization of the Pacific: A Genetic Trail, ed. immediately to the northeast and east of New Guinea. 3 Adrian V. S. Hill and Susan W. Serjeantson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, The settlement of the far-flung islands of Remote Ocea­ 1989), 1-59; Patrick V. Kirch, "Lapita and Its Aftermath: The Aus­ nia did not really get under way until the second millen­ tronesian Settlement of Oceania," in Prehistoric Settlement of the Pacific, ed. Ward Hunt Goodenough (Philadelphia: American Philo­ nium B.C. when people started moving eastward into the sophical Society, 1996), 57-70; and Geoffrey Irwin, "How Lapita Lost Pacific using deep-sea voyaging canoes, ways of navigat­ Its Pots: The Question of Continuity in the Colonisation of Polynesia," ing far out of sight of land, and a portable system of agri- Journal ofthe Polynesian Society 90 (1981): 481-94. 419 120 150' 180 120 ."(7 o 500 1000 miles 1000 2000km . MARIANA ,'ISLANDS ~.)\\ ::- "Y. ",., .' ~' ~ '., " M o T", ~ .... '.. ~<" -m '' ~1< :::,,' ~IRIBATI OMON <:>Il' '., S SANTA : • TUVALU MARQUESAS o ., CRUZ .. ., l,'pKELAU ISLANDS ~': ISLANDS WESTERN AMERICAN E S I A SAMOA .... SAMOA • ~: VANUATU 6" COOK TAHITI ~TANNA - FIJI { ISLANDS,~ .. ". ISLAND ,TONGA , y , . AUSTRAL AUSTRALIA ISLANDS C "E A N I A o 30' 30 120 150 • 180 150 120 90 FIG. 11.1. OCEANIA, SHOWING GEOGRAPHIC DIVI­ first settled some fifty thousand years ago during the Late SIONS OF MELANESIA, MICRONESIA, AND POLYNESIA Pleistocene, when New Guinea was part of a Greater Aus­ AND OF NEAR OCEANIA AND REMOTE OCEANIA. tralia; and Remote Oceania for all the islands farther out to Since the 1830s the Pacific islands have been conventionally di­ sea, which did not begin to be settled until about 2000 to 1500 vided into the three regions of Melanesia, Micronesia, and B.C. Polynesia. Largely because this classification ignores cultural After Ben R. Finney, "Colonizing an Island World," in Prehis­ boundaries and complexities stemming from the Pacific's long toric Settlement of the Pacific, ed. Ward Hunt Goodenough settlement history, prehistorians have recently proposed that (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1996), 71­ the islands be grouped into just two regions: Near Oceania, 116, esp, 72. composed of New Guinea and adjacent islands, which was 420 Traditional Cartography in the Pacific Basin 150' 180' 150' ~"'" HAWAI'! ~ • o· CAROLINE ISLANDS 6 O' MARQUESAS ISLANDS , .. RAPANUI (EASTER ISLA OJ 30' 30' o 500 1000 miles ! I I o 1000 2000km 120' 150' 180' 150' 120 90 FIG. 11.2. MAIN MIGRATION SEQUENCE OF THE Austronesians move north from eastern Melanesia to colonize SETTLEMENT OF REMOTE OCEANIA. Estimated dates the Kiribati (Gilbert Islands), Marshalls, and eastern and cen­ for each move are: (1) 2000 to 1500 B.C., Austronesians first tral Carolines of Micronesia; (5) 500 B.C.-O, Polynesians be­ venture into the Pacific, moving along the north coast and off­ gin the colonization of central East Polynesia; (6) A.D. 200 to shore islands of New Guinea, and to Belau (Palau), Yap (Uap), 750, Polynesians reach Hawai'i; (7) A.D. 400 to 800, Polyne­ and the Marianas at the western edge of Micronesia; (2) 1500 sians reach Easter Island; (8) A.D. 800 to 1200, Polynesians to 1000 B.C., Austronesians move from the Bismarck reach New Zealand. Archipelago off the northeast coast of New Guinea to the After Ben R. Finney, "Colonizing an Island World," in Prehis­ archipelagoes of Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa at the western edge of toric Settlement of the Pacific, ed. Ward Hunt Goodenough Polynesia; (3) 1000 B.C., ancestral Polynesian culture begins to (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1996), 71­ take form in eastern Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa; (4) 1000 B.C., 116, esp. 76. nesia, the main archipelagoes to the east-the Cook, ment in the form of habitation sites and shaped artifacts. Society, and Marquesas groups-were settled beginning Accordingly, the estimates for settlement of Hawai'i range perhaps as early as 500 B.C.-o. From these central East from about A.D. 200 to 750; for Rapa Nui, A.D. 400 to Polynesian outposts, canoes reached the more peripheral 800; and for Aotearoa, A.D. 800 to 1200 (fig. 11.2).5 islands, including those that define the Polynesian trian­ Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests that gle: Hawai'i, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and Aotearoa Micronesia was colonized in two broad movements. (New Zealand). As in the previous stages of this move­ About 1500 to 1000 B.C., seafarers apparently sailed di- ment eastward across the Pacific, estimates for the settle­ ment dates of these islands are disputed. Some writers fo­ 5. Matthew Spriggs and Atholl Anderson, "Late Colonization of East cus on the earliest possible signs indicating human Polynesia," Antiquity 67 (1993): 200-217; Patrick V. Kirch and Joanna Ellison, "Palaeoenvironmental Evidence for Human Colonization of disturbance of pristine island ecosystems, and others Remote Oceanic Islands," Antiquity 68 (1994): 310-21; and Atholl An­ judge that colonization has occurred only when there is derson, "Current Approaches in East Polynesian Colonisation Re­ more widespread and certain evidence of human settle- search," Journal ofthe Polynesian Society 104 (1995): 110-32. The Pacific Basin: An Introduction 421 150° 180° 150° .......... --- ....... ....-- 0 \ 30° 30° Distribution of oceangoing canoes Distribution of Austronesian languages o 500 1000 1500 miles o Distribution of double canoes I II I I I ... o 1000 2000km 60° 90° 120° 150° 180° 150° 120° FIG.
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