26

Archaeology as a profession in the Pacific (1945 – present)

Matthew Spriggs and Hilary Howes

This chapter introduces the fourth and final section of Uncovering Pacific Pasts: Histories of Archaeology in Oceania, covering the period from the end of World War II to the present day. The chapters in this section deal predominantly with ‘professional’ archaeologists, in the sense of individuals ‘employed primarily as […] archaeologist[s] and trained as such’ (Spriggs 2020:3). No value judgement in favour of ‘professional’ as opposed to ‘amateur’ archaeologists is implied. On the contrary, the points made recently in relation to Australian archaeology by Spriggs (2020) and Urwin and Spriggs (2021) are equally true for archaeology in the Pacific. Attempting to make a sharp distinction between ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ archaeology in the interwar period is unhelpful and misleading. The work of so-called ‘professional’ postwar archaeologists overlapped with and depended on the work of ‘amateur’ scholars, and ‘modern’ phenomena such as systematic archaeological research, multidisciplinary programs, nuanced interpretations and advocacy for the conservation of Indigenous cultural heritage all predated the end of World War II.

One of the most significant advances in postwar archaeology was undoubtedly the development of radiocarbon dating and other absolute dating techniques. As a result of what is often termed the ‘radiocarbon revolution’, archaeologists were able to begin constructing ‘independent chronologies for disparate sites’, rather than relying on ‘the relative ordering of events through stratigraphies at individual sites, and typologies and seriations between sites’, as had previously been standard practice (Wood 2015:61; see also Marra 2019). Radiocarbon dates often suggested quite different interpretations of ancient artefacts and past events to those produced by more traditional archaeological techniques. In some cases this led to a welcome overturning of outdated and inaccurate theories. In others early radiocarbon dates were later found to be erroneous and had the unfortunate effect of casting unjustified doubt on alternative forms of evidence such as oral tradition. Examples of both scenarios, relating to Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and to American archaeologist Robert Suggs, respectively, are discussed in more detail below.

The application of newly developed scientific techniques in Pacific archaeology is a consistent theme in the chapters in this section. In addition to radiocarbon dating, these techniques include portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF), thin-section petrography and the PIXE/PIGME analytical system measuring proton-induced x-rays and gamma rays (Ambrose 1976; Ambrose et al. 1981; Ambrose and Duerden 1982; Bird et al. 1981). All can be used to trace particular kinds of inorganic materials – stone, obsidian (volcanic glass), and mineral tempers used in pottery-making (e.g. beach sand, alluvial sands, crushed rock) – to specific geological settings, and thus to map the probable sources of artefacts made from these materials. Where artefacts have been found in locations significantly different from their probable source, conclusions can be drawn about their past movement through migrations or trade networks. Examples include Melanesian obsidians found in one location and sourced to another 270 km away (Litster et al., Chapter 32, this volume), potsherds unearthed from rock-shelters on Santa Ana, Solomon Islands, in 1966 by W.H. Davenport (Katz and Boileau, Chapter 35, this volume), and stone artefacts acquired from various Pacific Islands in the 1790s by the crew of HMS Pandora (Mann, Chapter 3, this volume).

Another recently developed technique not discussed in the chapters in this section, ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis, is increasingly being used to draw conclusions about the ancestry and past migrations of Pacific Islanders. While promising, it is not without controversy (Bedford et al. 2018; Lipson et al. 2020; Posth et al. 2018, 2019; Skoglund et al. 2016; Spriggs et al. 2019; Spriggs and Reich 2020). Generally speaking, it is important to bear in mind that even the most sophisticated scientific techniques are not infallible, and that archaeology in the Pacific, as elsewhere, is far from being an apolitical pursuit (Sand et al. 2006; Spriggs 1999).

Politically and economically, the postwar era in the Pacific has been profoundly shaped by the transition of many Pacific Island nations from colonial rule to full independence. The period 1962–94 saw 14 successful declarations of independence, including Samoa (1962), Nauru (1968), Fiji and Tonga (both 1970), Papua New Guinea (PNG, 1975), the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu (both 1978), Kiribati (1979), Vanuatu (1980), the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia (both 1986), and Palau (1994) (Banivanua Mar 2016; see also Denoon 2003; Quanchi 2008). Other parts of the Pacific retain some form of dependent status, including Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa (all dependent territories of the USA); French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, and New Caledonia (all overseas collectivities of France); Hawai‘i, still the fiftieth state of the USA; West Papua, an administrative region of Indonesia with an active armed independence movement; and Rapa Nui/Easter Island, a special territory of Chile (Chavel 2015; Crippa 2014; Delsing 2011; Fisher 2019; Kauanui 2018; Maclellan 2015; Rauzon 2016; Webb-Gannon 2021). The former PNG province of North Solomons, after a protracted armed conflict and subsequent peace agreement, is now the Autonomous Region of Bougainville and in a 2019 referendum voted for full independence from PNG. Its future status is currently under negotiation (Boege 2020; Connell 2020).

The move towards political independence in the Pacific has been accompanied by an increasing awareness among archaeological practitioners of the need to decolonise archaeological theory and practice. At a theoretical level, decolonisation involves recognising that archaeology is at heart ‘a colonialist endeavour’, ‘based on […] the values of Western cultures’ and ‘solidly grounded in Western ways of knowing the world’ (Smith and Wobst 2005:4; see also Effros and Lai 2018; McNiven and Russell 2005, 2008). At a practical level, it can take various forms. These can include efforts to secure the return of human remains, funerary objects and sacred objects to their traditional owners/source communities; within the Pacific, such efforts have been particularly evident to date in settler colonial societies including Hawai‘i, New Zealand and Rapa Nui/Easter Island (Aranui 2018; Arthur 2020; Ayau 2020; Ayau and Tengan 2002; David et al. 2020; Ormond-Parker 2005; Zimmerman 1989). They can also include efforts to ensure that Indigenous voices are heard and Indigenous knowledge and priorities integrated with archaeological practice, as in the example of the Waiet Archaeology Project described in Herle and Wright (Chapter 12, this volume), which was initiated by Torres Strait Islander elders and community leaders. Decolonisation can also be facilitated by ‘the emergence of new generations of indigenous archaeologists conducting scientific research on their own past’ (Sand et al. 2006:341; see also Dotte-Sarout et al. 2018; Sand 2008, 2018). Finally, decolonisation can and should involve a critical self-consciousness of disciplinary history, a consideration that has been at the heart of the Collective Biography of Archaeology in the Pacific (CBAP) Project from its inception (Spriggs 2016).

As the above paragraphs have already demonstrated, the chapters in this section frequently intersect with those in earlier sections in terms of collections, institutions, personnel and theories. The second half of Emma Brooks’s Chapter 9 (this volume), accompanying the exhibition at Canterbury Museum in New Zealand, concerns Roger Duff (1912–1978). He was first employed by the museum as an ethnologist in 1938, having been a student of Skinner in anthropology prior to that (see White, Chapter 23, this volume), and he succeeded Robert Falla as director in 1948. As most of his career was after World War II, it is appropriate that he starts our consideration of the professionalisation of archaeology in the Pacific. As Brooks (Chapter 9, this volume) notes, he revived the moa-hunter period of his distant predecessor von Haast, but with the difference that he now saw it as Eastern Polynesian in origin. He saw the moa-hunters as the first Polynesian migration to New Zealand and the supposed ‘Great Fleet’ of European-interpreted oral traditions as a later migration. Using the ‘age-area’ method, he considered that the oldest cultural traits would be those most widely distributed and that cultures would change much faster in the centre of their distribution than in the margins. He thus saw the Society Islands as the major cultural ‘hub’ of Central East Polynesia.

In 1940 he had taken up Skinner’s work on stone adze typology and reduced Skinner’s 10 types for the Murihuku region to four (Duff 1940; see also White, Chapter 23, this volume). His 1945 paper was a revision of Skinner’s wider coverage of adze typology from 1940 and 1943 (Duff 1945; Skinner 1940, 1943; see also Shipton et al. 2018). A scholarship from the British Council allowed Duff to visit museums in the UK and also to appraise and arrange the purchase of the important Oldman Collection of Māori and other Polynesian artefacts by the New Zealand Government; Duff made sure that they were distributed among all major New Zealand museums (Davidson 2000). His rather inexpert excavations at one of the earliest New Zealand colonisation sites at Wairau Bar began in 1942 and the spectacular artefacts found there in association with burials helped define his moa-hunter period (Duff 1950), for the publication of which he was awarded a Doctor of Science by the University of New Zealand in 1951. Wairau Bar remains one of the most important archaeological sites in New Zealand (see for instance the recent publication of aDNA studies on the human remains: Knapp et al. 2017). In the 1950 publication, his earlier four adze types became five and were argued to be applicable all over Polynesia. A sixth type was added in his second edition (Duff 1956) and wider East Polynesian (Duff 1959) and then Southeast Asian adzes (Duff 1970) were later included; the intention, of course, was to trace Polynesian migrations using stone adze typology and changes over time. He initiated the modern archaeological study of the Cook Islands with the Canterbury Museum expedition of 1962–64, work later followed up by Peter Bellwood (b. 1943) when he was appointed to Auckland University in 1967 (Bellwood 1978).

Davidson (2000) suggests that Duff was somewhat unlucky as a scholar, as his postwar research was soon challenged by new ideas brought into New Zealand archaeology by the 1950s expansion of universities and appointments in them of overseas-trained archaeologists from 1954, such as Jack Golson and Roger Green (see Furey, Chapter 31, and Sheppard and Furey, Chapter 33, both this volume) at Auckland, and Skinner’s successor at Otago University in 1958, Peter Gathercole. Duff’s rather profligate mixture of archaeological typology and a naïve argumentation from ‘doctored’ oral traditions was convincingly debunked by Golson, criticism that Duff did not take well. But his adze typology research is still constantly referred to by Polynesian archaeologists (see, for instance, Richards 2019), along with his work at Wairau Bar, and he left a further legacy from his energetic time as Canterbury Museum director, making that institution ‘a lively and popular centre of public education’ (Davidson 2000).

Another significant Pacific archaeological figure active both before and after World War II was Edward Winslow Gifford (1887–1959), who spent almost his entire career at the University of California in the San Francisco area working at what is now the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at Berkeley (Spriggs 2019a). His work with the archaeologist McKern in Tonga in 1920–21 has already been mentioned (Spriggs, Chapter 19, this volume, fn. 6). On that project Gifford’s task was collecting oral traditions, but he realised that to answer questions of the settlement of the Pacific one would need both to follow the migratory trail back to the west, beyond the boundaries of geographical Polynesia, and to engage in archaeological excavation; clearly the answers he sought were beyond the time frame of oral histories (Spriggs, Chapter 27, this volume; see also Spriggs, Chapter 28, this volume). His 1947 archaeological expedition to Fiji, accompanied as always by his wife Delila Gifford (1888–1983), was the first major postwar Pacific archaeological survey and excavations (Gifford 1951). He was then drawn after several false starts to New Caledonia in 1952, along with archaeological student Richard Shutler Jr (1921–2007) and Shutler’s first wife Mary Elizabeth or ‘Betty’ Shutler (1929–2018), herself a trained archaeologist (Gifford and Shutler 1956). Gifford’s final expedition was to Yap in Micronesia in 1956. He died before that project could be written up and it was brought to completion by Delila (Gifford and Gifford 1959).

The focus of Spriggs, Chapter 27, this volume, is on the small box of pottery sent to Gifford in 1948, after he had left Fiji, by local doctor Lindsay Verrier and Ratu Rabici Logavatu, who had earlier assisted Gifford during his Fijian sojourn. Among the sherds from the Sigatoka Sand Dunes were at least two sherds of what we now know as Lapita pottery, the first to be found in Fiji. Gifford’s cultural sequence, when radiocarbon dates became available to him from 1952 on (Gifford 1952), went back about 2,000 years, but he at first attributed the Sigatoka pottery, which he described as ‘roulette-incised’, to a very late phase of the Fijian pottery sequence. Gifford further compared it to elaborately decorated pottery recently found on the Île des Pins in New Caledonia (Lenormand 1948) and the pottery McKern had recovered in Tonga during their 1920–21 expedition. At the same time, geologist Jacques Avias and Father O’Reilly – the latter having visited Father Meyer on New Britain and seen the pottery from Watom (see Howes, Chapter 15, this volume) – had both independently made a connection between Meyer’s findings and the Île des Pins pottery. Avias also tentatively suggested a link to pottery from the Foué Peninsula near Koné on the New Caledonian mainland, first reported by Piroutet and Sarasin (see Spriggs, Chapter 8, this volume). All of their discussions would have been much advanced by a reading of Casey (1936), but his work remained unnoticed until the 1960s (see Spriggs, Chapter 24, this volume).

The full geographical distribution of this pottery from the Bismarck Archipelago through to Fiji and Tonga was only recognised by Gifford after the 1952 New Caledonian expedition, when he and Shutler conducted the first formal archaeological excavations at Site 13 on the Foué Peninsula. This was the site whose name Gifford (notoriously hard of hearing by this stage) interpreted as ‘Lapita’ (Gifford and Shutler 1956). As noted in Spriggs, Chapter 27, this volume, how Lapita came to be the label for the entire style of pottery and later the Lapita culture as a whole is a complex story explored elsewhere (Spriggs in press). While the research in Yap in 1956 produced less spectacular results than Gifford’s previous Pacific expeditions, it did form a useful basis for later work conducted there (Gifford and Gifford 1959).

Delila Gifford played an important role in much of his research and was herself a malacologist of some renown, but the fieldnotes from Edward Gifford’s expeditions show little trace of her contribution; more can be found from stories passed down to their grandchildren and from personal letters.¹ It is notable that only after he had died was her name recognised beyond the acknowledgements page in his publications, and that was in the Yap volume (above) that she had seen through to publication.

Another key figure on the 1947 Fiji expedition whose contribution has also not been given its due was Ratu Rabici Logavatu (1924–2005), the young Fijian chosen by the Fijian (Native) Administration to accompany Gifford on his surveys and excavations (Spriggs, Chapter 28, this volume). As shown by his involvement in the Sigatoka finds sent to Gifford in 1948 (Spriggs, Chapter 27, this volume), he was much more than a simple Indigenous assistant, and was a key part of the success of the project, even to the extent of writing an appendix to the report that was, in the end, left off presumably because of limitations on the monograph’s length. Rabici directed his own excavations, prepared site plans, recorded burials and did independent surveys of areas that Gifford was unable to reach, such as the summit of Uluinavatu (Spriggs 2019a). Rabici is an example, like Juan Tepano on Rapa Nui (see Van Tilburg, Chapter 18, this volume), of the many Indigenous interlocutors of archaeologists working in the Pacific, who have rarely received the recognition they deserve for their contributions to projects. Only much more recently have the names of Indigenous interlocutors/colleagues appeared on archaeological reports from the region as a matter of course.

As well as Gifford’s foundational 1947 research, another significant expedition took place that year, one that was to receive much more attention worldwide. This was Thor Heyerdahl’s (1914–2002) Kon-Tiki raft experimental voyage from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands in Eastern Polynesia (see Solsvik, Chapter 29, this volume). It would fall today within the ambit of ‘experimental archaeology’, building a raft using traditional materials and design as recorded from the South American coast to see whether it was possible for a balsa raft to travel from the Americas to Polynesia. But Heyerdahl’s theory was much wider than establishing the possibility of contact with Polynesia from the Americas. His grand ideas started with his conversations with the Marquesan elder Tei Tetua (c. 1865–?) during his and his first wife Liv Torp-Heyerdahl’s (1916–69) Polynesian adventure in 1937. Ostensibly an academic zoological expedition to collect insects, that aim clashed with and ultimately was defeated by their fantasy of a ‘back to nature’ idyllic interlude in the South Seas. Encountering the impressive Marquesan stone remains of temple and house platforms, irrigation systems and hidden burial caves (some of the latter looted by the Heyerdahls in defiance of French law and local sensitivities: Melander 2017), they found it hard to square this impressiveness with the colonially controlled and downtrodden lifestyle of the Marquesans of the time. Indeed – as we have seen, this was a common trope of the time and earlier (see Spriggs, Chapter 8, this volume) – they concluded that the megalithic constructions must have been made by an earlier superior civilisation (Melander 2019a).

Heyerdahl’s serious reading into Polynesian studies did not begin until he stayed in the USA and Canada during the war years. While there he developed his ‘Kon-Tiki theory’ of a two-stage settlement of Polynesia, not from the west, as in most theories of the time, but from the Americas. He saw the Kon-Tiki raft expedition of 1947 as demonstrating, at least to his satisfaction, that his theory was correct (Heyerdahl 1950). In summary, the first settlement of Polynesia had been by a group of Caucasian ‘white bearded men’ who had created the high civilisations of Central and South America. They were ‘step-pyramid builders, sun-worshippers, transoceanic voyagers and stone tool users’ (Melander 2019a:380), who then moved west into the Pacific having ‘set sail from the Tiahuanaco area of modern Bolivia, led by the Inca sun-god Con-Tici Viracocha’ (Melander 2019a:381) and following the winds and currents to reach Polynesia about 500 CE. It was as if Perry’s ‘Children of the Sun’ (1923) had reached the Pacific by going the other way around the world. The theory was a bricolage of older and already discredited ideas, as revealed by CBAP scholar Victor Melander’s recently completed PhD thesis (Melander 2020). The second wave of settlement was supposedly by Austronesian-speaking ‘Maori-Polynesians’ ultimately from Southeast Asia who had travelled up through Asia and into North America. They sailed from the Northwest Coast to Hawai‘i and then on to the rest of Polynesia at about 1000 CE and upon encountering the Caucasian first settlers they ‘assimilated or eliminated’ them (Melander 2019a:381).

Heyerdahl finally published his grand theory in detail in American Indians in the Pacific: The Theory Behind the Kon-Tiki Expedition (1952). Although Heyerdahl often argued that his was a lone voice of reason against the prejudices of Pacific scholars of the time and ignored by them, the truth was actually quite different (Melander 2019b). In fact he was given a remarkably even-handed hearing by Pacific anthropologists and archaeologists and his ideas were generally welcomed and encouraged – this explains the 1961 invitation mentioned by Solsvik (Chapter 29, this volume) to join the Board of the Pacific Area Archaeology Program (PAAP). But, like Roger Duff during the same period in the 1950s, Heyerdahl’s ideas were very quickly contradicted by excavations and associated radiocarbon dates from across the Pacific, being obtained by archaeologists holding some of the first professional academic positions in that field: ‘the likelihood of the theory became more and more distant each time a shovel broke new ground’ (Melander 2019b:7). As historian Greg Dening noted, his value was perhaps greatest in inspiring generations of Pacific archaeologists to ‘prove Heyerdahl wrong’ (2004:47, quoted by Melander 2019a:7). Again, as Solsvik notes, his leadership and ability to attract funds following the fame of the Kon-Tiki Expedition led to the 1955–56 Easter Island Expedition, where he had the good sense to invite professional archaeologists to participate. It was the first postwar investigation of Rapa Nui and of several other island groups and produced the initial radiocarbon dates for that island. The decision to ‘self-publish’ with his own funds, however, was seen by some of the archaeological participants and by other scholars as a mistake, and his own interpretations of their generally cautious conclusions, published in his popular work Aku-Aku: The Mystery of Easter Island (1958), were generally dismissed (see Solsvik, Chapter 29, this volume).

Although Heyerdahl maintained cordial relations with some Pacific archaeologists such as Kenneth Emory of the Bishop Museum, he considered that in general he had many enemies and he became increasingly sensitive to criticism. Thomas Barthel (1923–1997), who had conducted his own archaeological research on Rapa Nui in 1957–58 soon after Heyerdahl’s expedition there (see Fischer 2010), was chosen to review the first academic publication on the Heyerdahl group’s work for American Anthropologist. Heyerdahl considered Barthel very much a rival and saw this choice of reviewer as part of an academic conspiracy against him. This led him to withdraw from the PAAP in 1963, most certainly limiting its scope and publication of results (Solsvik, Chapter 29, this volume). Heyerdahl did not return to the Pacific until 1986,² happily again accompanied by academic archaeologists employed by the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo. The involvement of the museum in Polynesian archaeology has continued ever since, including in repatriating artefacts collected by the 1955–56 expedition.

Until his death in 2002 Heyerdahl maintained his Kon-Tiki theory, becoming ever more isolated from the academic recognition he craved. His ideas became ever more encompassing, with a naïve consideration of local oral traditions whether in Scandinavia or the Pacific, reminiscent in many ways of the approach of S. Percy Smith and the other early members of the Polynesian Society. As the first radiocarbon dates from the Pacific tended to contradict dating derived from ‘generation-counts’ from oral traditions, such traditions came to be generally discounted in the Pacific by most archaeologists, and Heyerdahl must certainly share some of the blame for this general scepticism of their value in reconstructing the Polynesian past. In criticising his and other researchers’ reliance on oral traditions, Robert Suggs (1932–2021) stated that the dates they suggested for the settlement of the Marquesas at 950 CE and 900–1200 CE for Hawai‘i were ‘with errors of as much as 1,000 years in a 2000 year period’ (1960:772). But radiocarbon dating was itself still very much experimental, and some of the early dates cited by Suggs turned out to be quite inaccurate. The oral tradition dates he cast scorn on for these two archipelagos in fact fit much better with the current understanding of chronology than those he was claiming! In New Zealand a date for settlement of 800 CE was accepted for several decades, seeming to dispute Māori genealogical reckonings of settlement in the thirteenth century. But more recently the time frame of initial Māori settlement has been established as most likely within the 1250–1300 CE window (Higham et al. 1999; Hogg et al. 2003). In this last case, perhaps it is surely now time for archaeologists to reassess the value of particular Māori traditions of settlement, shorn of their early Polynesian Society attempts at synthesis and ‘tidying up’.

In Chapter 30, this volume, Dotte-Sarout et al. take up the CBAP theme of giving due recognition to early Indigenous interlocutors, in this case also a member of that other underrepresented group: a woman. They consider the long involvement and key role of Aurora Germaine Tetunui Natua (1909–1992) in the development of Tahitian archaeology. Her mother’s family had been involved in the establishment of the Société des Études Océaniennes (SEO) in Tahiti in 1917 and Aurora was educated both academically and in the traditions of her family from Tahiti and Maupiti. Raised in Tahiti, she is recorded as assisting the anthropologist Alfred Métraux during his 1935 visit to Tahiti, fresh from the Franco–Belgian Expedition to Easter Island. She spent the years of World War II in occupied France, becoming one of the members of the Société des Océanistes in Paris during the first year of its existence. As Dotte-Sarout et al. (Chapter 30, this volume) note, she would have been one of the very first Indigenous Pacific Islanders to be admitted to the group. Pastor Maurice Leenhardt, a key ethnologist of New Caledonia, and Father Patrick O’Reilly were the president and general secretary, respectively, of the Océanistes at the time, and she also had contact with Paul Rivet, director of the Musée de l’Homme.

Her impressive Paris connections may well have been why, upon her return to Tahiti in 1946, she was appointed as librarian of the SEO and curator of their museum, later reorganised as the Musée de Tahiti et des Îles. She held both of these positions until the late 1970s. It is not that her archaeological role has been ignored – she appears very frequently in the published acknowledgements of anthropologists and archaeologists throughout her life – but these do not provide the detail needed to assess her importance to the entire enterprise of archaeology in French Polynesia over several decades. To fill in the gaps, a reading ‘against the grain’ of other people’s accounts is needed, skilfully provided by Dotte-Sarout and her colleagues using the example of Emory and Sinoto’s 1960–65 Bishop Museum expeditions to Maupiti and other parts of French Polynesia. These were part of the 1961 Pacific Science Congress Pacific Area Archaeological Program or PAAP, already mentioned in relation to Heyerdahl’s initial participation in and then withdrawal from it. Aurora Natua is revealed as clearly being a key factor in the success of this work, negotiating both official and local landowner and community permissions and assisting in the excavations and surveys. She fulfilled similar roles in relation to much of the archaeological research carried out in French Polynesia over the years. Dotte-Sarout et al. mention that a tape in Tahitian by Natua was played to interested persons in the Marquesas during work there in the early 1960s to inform them about the Bishop Museum and the purposes of the team’s research.

The late 1940s into the 1950s were a period of tremendous expansion in Pacific archaeological survey and excavations, albeit in large measure in Polynesia only. There was some significant Micronesian work as well, such as the Giffords’ 1956 work in Yap (Gifford and Gifford 1959), Douglas and Carolyn Osborne’s 1954–55 work in Palau (Osborne 1966)³ and Alex Spoehr’s 1949–50 work on Tinian, Saipan and Rota in the Marianas that produced what was at that time the earliest radiocarbon date from the Pacific, in those pre-calibration days listed as 1527 BCE (Spoehr 1957). Spoehr’s efforts built on the foundational work in the Marianas of a further pioneering female archaeologist, Laura Thompson (e.g. Thompson 1932, 1940). We have already seen the important work in Fiji and New Caledonia by Gifford and colleagues. Additional survey work in Fiji was carried out from 1951 on by Oxford University–trained Aubrey Parke (1925–2007), a government officer until Fiji’s independence in 1970 (Spriggs 2014b).⁴ The rest of Melanesia was still very much a blank archaeological canvas until the very end of the 1950s. Eastern Polynesia was the early focus of research in the 1950s, with Western Polynesia only coming into the picture with Jack Golson’s work in Tonga and Samoa in 1957 (see Furey, Chapter 31, this volume). Golson (b. 1926) also undertook the first systematic excavations on the Île des Pins in New Caledonia in 1959–60, accompanied by his Auckland colleague Wal Ambrose.

The 1950s saw projects in Hawai‘i at classic sites such as Kuli‘ou‘ou rock-shelter on O‘ahu, from where the first published Pacific radiocarbon date was obtained (again pre-calibration) of 1004 CE (Libby 1951), and at Nu‘alolo Kai on Kaua‘i (Kirch 1985:15–16). These excavations were led by Emory, after July 1954 accompanied by his recent recruit from Japan, Yosihiko Sinoto, previously a specialist in Japanese Jomon period archaeology (Sinoto 2016). PhD student Robert Suggs was to institute modern archaeology in the Marquesas Islands in 1956–58, obtaining precociously early, and later shown to be erroneous, dates from the centuries around the BCE/CE transition as the settlement date for that archipelago in association with occasional potsherds, otherwise unknown in Eastern Polynesia (Suggs 1961). Heyerdahl’s major 1955–56 expedition to Rapa Nui has already been mentioned, as has Barthel’s even longer period of research on the island in 1957–58. Douglas Oliver’s Harvard student Roger Green (1932–2009) commenced work on Mangareva and on Mo‘orea in the Society Islands in 1959–60, accompanied by his then wife Kaye Green (Green et al. 1967). He is the subject of Chapter 33 in this volume, by Peter Sheppard and Louise Furey.

New Zealand was another centre of research, with the less controlled excavation methods of Skinner, Duff and Teviotdale being quickly replaced by the ‘Willey–Wheeler way’⁵ introduced by Jack Golson (see Furey, Chapter 31, this volume), and further stimulated during 1958–59 by the presence of Roger Green on a visiting Fulbright Fellowship in Auckland. Golson had pushed for the founding of the New Zealand Archaeological Association (NZAA) within six months of his arrival from the UK in 1954 to take up the first academic post in regional archaeology in Australasia at what became Auckland University. The NZAA was to form a major vehicle of recruitment of students to Auckland and dissemination of new archaeological techniques through its annual conference and training excavations. Furey covers Golson’s eight years in New Zealand and assesses his lasting legacy.

Golson’s career is then carried forward in the following Chapter 32, this volume, by CBAP members Mirani Litster, Tristen Jones and Hilary Howes, charting his post-1961 time at The Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, where he was to establish a Department of Prehistory within the Research School of Pacific Studies. Until 1969 it was a unit within the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, with Golson appointed as its foundation professor in that year. The department had an archaeological science focus from its establishment, with early appointments of Wal Ambrose from Auckland in 1963 who, with Green, was one of the Pacific pioneers of obsidian analysis (Ambrose and Green 1962), Con Key in 1965, a Dutch geologist who developed chemical characterisation methods and, in the same year, Henry Polach to set up a radiocarbon laboratory at ANU and who contributed to basic research on refining the radiocarbon technique (for more detail of the research of all three of them see Spriggs 2019b:fn. 1, 14–16). There was also collaboration with the Department of Biogeography and Geomorphology in the Research School, which later merged with Prehistory to form what is now known as Archaeology and Natural History within the College of Asia and the Pacific, bringing major expertise in Pacific palaeoenvironmental analysis with it.

Golson’s unit was to focus on Australia’s then territories of Papua and New Guinea (to become independent as Papua New Guinea in 1975), Melanesia more generally and Western Polynesia. It was felt at the time that Eastern Polynesia was well covered out of Hawai‘i and New Zealand. Golson was very aware of significant work already undertaken across the region of interest and much of the unit and then department’s early projects were explicitly developed as PhD projects to follow up on earlier work, bringing the latest archaeological science techniques to bear on some of the classic sites in the region: PhD student J. Peter White was sent to the New Guinea Highlands to follow up on Susan Bulmer’s pioneering research (see Summerhayes, Chapter 34, this volume for Bulmer), Brian Egloff was sent to Wanigela to follow up on early twentieth-century work there (see Bonshek, Chapter 13, and Howes, Chapter 14, both this volume), and their fellow student Jim Specht was sent to Watom to reinvestigate Father Meyer’s mission station sites (see Howes, Chapter 15, and Spriggs, Chapter 24, both this volume). Further students and staff were sent to reconnoitre various New Guinea sites previously investigated by colonial government officers (see Edmundson, Chapter 21, this volume for some detail of these). Colin Smart was sent to New Caledonia to follow up on Gifford and Shutler’s 1952 excavations and Jens Poulsen to Tonga to follow up on Golson’s 1957 study when he was based at Auckland, which itself had built on McKern’s 1920–21 study on Tongatapu of the first pottery found in Polynesia (McKern 1929).

Roger Green was Jack Golson’s successor at Auckland in 1961 and a broad outline of his later career is given by Sheppard and Furey (Chapter 33, this volume). Over his 50-plus-year career working in the Pacific he contributed to many areas of research in East and West Polynesia and Island Melanesia, in particular bringing a distinctive American approach to settlement pattern analysis, having been taught at Harvard by Gordon Willey who was one of the pioneers of this approach. Its Pacific application was said to be the first time this approach was used outside the Americas (Spriggs 2019b:12). With Janet Davidson he undertook a major settlement pattern study in (Western) Samoa in 1963–64, following up Golson’s earlier work there (Green and Davidson 1969, 1974), and while based in Hawai‘i from 1966 to 1970 at Bishop Museum, he helped to initiate major settlement patterns studies of the dryland Lapakahi field system on Hawai‘i, and of dryland and irrigated systems on O‘ahu and Moloka‘i (Kirch 1985:18–19).

The expertise gained in these projects led him upon his return to Auckland to launch the ambitious Southeast Solomons Culture History Project, co-directed by New Zealand ethnobotanist Doug Yen, an earlier collaborator of Golson’s and at the time based at Bishop Museum. The project looked at islands either side of the major divide between Near and Remote Oceania (Green 1991), separating the main Solomon Chain from the eastern outer islands of the Solomons, now Temotu Province. Phase 1 of the project ran from 1970 to 1972 (Green and Cresswell 1976) and Phase II from 1977 to 1979. Phase I included the extensive area excavation of the Lapita site of Nenumbo in the Reef Islands, the largest such excavation to that time. The follow-up Phase II led, as Sheppard and Furey note, to major monographs on Tikopia (Kirch and Yen 1982) and Taumako in the Duff Group (Leach and Davidson 2008), as well as many other academic papers. This project, the first major archaeological survey work in the Solomon Islands, was foundational for the archaeology conducted in later years in the archipelago (Walter and Sheppard 2017). Associated projects included the location and excavation of sites associated with the 1595 Spanish expedition of discovery to Santa Cruz, including one seemingly associated with the fate of one of the lost vessels of that expedition on Makira (Allen and Green 1972).

Glenn Summerhayes (Chapter 34, this volume) considers the role of Sue Bulmer (1933–2016) in the development of New Guinea archaeology. Accompanying her husband, anthropologist Ralph Bulmer, to New Guinea in 1959–60, Sue Bulmer pioneered modern archaeology in the Highlands region with rock-shelter excavations that revealed sequences going back into the Pleistocene (Bulmer and Bulmer 1964). Her research formed the basis for a master’s thesis under Roger Green at Auckland University in 1966, although her Auckland studies had originally commenced under Jack Golson in 1957 (Golson 2016). She moved to Port Moresby between 1968 and 1972 and conducted research on the Papuan south coast exchange systems and pottery sequences, complementary to some of the work being done by ANU students in the region at the same time. This led to her PhD, completed in 1978 at University of Papua New Guinea. An opportunity for fieldwork with her husband in the Kaironk Valley in 1971–72 and a return trip from Auckland in 1973–74 allowed extensive excavations at the important open hilltop site of Wanelek, which produced a long, if intermittent, sequence. She later pursued a career with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust in Auckland as a field archaeologist and made further significant contributions to heritage management in New Zealand (Golson 2016). As with Green’s work in the Solomon Islands, Bulmer’s New Guinea work, especially that in the Highlands and the Kaironk, was truly foundational, particularly for the establishment of prehistoric sequences bridging the hunter-gatherer to agriculture transition.⁶

The penultimate chapter in the volume, illustrative of one of the Uncovering Pacific Pasts exhibitions, held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, is by Adria H. Katz and Marie-Claude Boileau (Chapter 35, this volume). It examines anthropologist William Davenport’s (1922–2004) test excavations in the Solomon Islands while he was engaged in ethnographic fieldwork in 1964–66. In 1964 he had excavated at Vatuluma Posovi on Guadalcanal with Tom Russell and J.L.O. Tedder, with Roger Green later obtaining radiocarbon dates from some of their samples. Although they excavated out most of the rock-shelter deposit, a small remnant remained for ANU PhD student David Roe to excavate in the late 1980s. Roe was also able to examine what remained of their finds and fieldnotes to provide a detailed overview of the shelter’s occupation and the associated petroglyphs on the cave wall. Some of these had extended below the 1964 ground level and Roe was able to provide estimates of the dates they were carved into the soft-rock walls (Roe 1992a, 1992b). In 1966, as Katz and Boileau note, Davenport excavated several sites on Santa Ana, finding the only pottery-bearing sites known to this day in the central Solomons – sites that continue to excite archaeological interest.

Davenport’s work inspired Roger Green to return as part of the Southeast Solomons Project to re-excavate one of the cave sites. Roe’s reanalysis of Vatuluma Posovi and Katz and Boileau’s petrographic analysis of some of the sherds from Davenport’s Santa Ana excavations are good examples of one theme of the CBAP Project: the value of reanalysing the materials from old excavations and collections using modern analytical techniques, in order to bring insights from them to bear on modern-day archaeological questions; in this case the former distribution of pottery in the Solomons. One of the sherds must have been made from clay and temper from Makira (formerly San Cristobal) or Ulawa, while another might have been locally manufactured. We can thus extend the search for early pottery to Makira and Ulawa as well as the current ‘outlier’ of Santa Ana. Both Green on Santa Ana and Roe on Guadalcanal were following the long-established Golson strategy of re-excavating old excavation sites using more advanced recovery techniques. The early pottery of Santa Ana continues to interest archaeologists, with Peter Sheppard leading a recent third archaeological project (after Davenport and then Green) on the island.

Returning to Litster et al. (Chapter 32, this volume), which details the history of ANU involvement in Pacific archaeology up to the end of the 1970s, a few highlights need to be mentioned. Golson’s major fieldwork from 1972 onward focused on the early agricultural site at Kuk Swamp, near Mount Hagen in the Western Highlands of New Guinea. His research there, assisted by many specialists and students, led to the inscription of Kuk onto the World Heritage Register in 2008. The substantive report on the research at Kuk finally came out in 2017, when Golson was over 90 years old: perseverance had paid off (Golson et al. 2017).⁷ There are of course far too many other archaeological projects of the 1960s and 1970s to take notice of here, the decades when the careers began of many of the senior generation of archaeologists still active in the region today. There are also sensitivities in examining the careers of those still alive; these have been very largely omitted here and from the exhibitions. Other major figures of that era include the French archaeologist José Garanger and Gifford’s student of the 1950s, Richard Shutler Jr and Mary Elizabeth Shutler (Shutler and Shutler 1965) with their foundational research in Vanuatu beginning in 1963. Garanger’s brilliant use of oral traditions to discover the spectacular burial site of Chief Roi Mata was particularly notable (Garanger 1972). The consonance between the oral traditions and the archaeology led to the inscription of Chief Roi Mata’s Domain into the World Heritage Register in 2008, Vanuatu’s first World Heritage site.

This distinctive francophone tradition of combining oral traditions and archaeology has since been used with good effect by Garanger’s students and, along with Kirch’s similar approach on Tikopia (Kirch and Yen 1982) and in Hawai‘i (Kirch 2018), has done much to restore interest in and respect for Indigenous oral traditions in the Pacific after their near total rejection by archaeologists working in the Pacific during the 1960s and 1970s. It may be that we are coming full circle, with oral traditions destined again to play a major role in the interpretation of the region’s past, a move likely to gain more interest from, and the necessary involvement in interpretation of archaeological findings by, Indigenous scholars and communities across the Pacific.

References

Allen, J. and R.C. Green 1972 Mendana 1595 and the fate of the lost ‘Almiranta’: An archaeological investigation. Journal of Pacific History 7:73–91. doi.org/10.1080/00223347208572201.

Ambrose, W.R. 1976 Obsidian and its prehistoric distribution in Melanesia. In N. Barnard (ed.), The proceedings of a symposium on scientific methods of research in the study of ancient Chinese bronzes and Southeast Asian metal and other archaeological artifacts, pp. 351–378. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria.

Ambrose, W.R. and P. Duerden 1982 PIXE analysis in the distribution and chronology of obsidian use in the Admiralty Islands. In W. Ambrose and P. Duerden (eds), Archaeometry: An Australasian perspective, pp. 83–89. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University.

Ambrose, W.R. and R.C. Green 1962 Obsidian dating: Preliminary results. New Zealand Archaeological Association Newsletter 5:247–248.

Ambrose, W.R., P. Duerden and J.R. Bird 1981 An archaeological application of PIXE-PIGME analysis to Admirality Islands obsidians. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research 191(1–3):397–402. doi.org/10.1016/0029-554X(81)91035-1.

Anderson, A. and D.J. Kennett (eds) 2012 Taking the high ground: The archaeology of Rapa, a fortified island in remote East Polynesia. Terra Australis 37. Canberra: ANU Press. doi.org/10.22459/TA37.11.2012.

Anderson, A. and Y. Sinoto 2002 New radiocarbon ages of colonization sites in East Polynesia. Asian Perspectives 41:242–257. doi.org/10.1353/asi.2003.0002.

Aranui, A.K. 2018 Te hokinga mai o ngā tūpuna: Māori perspectives of repatriation and the scientific research of ancestral remains. Unpublished PhD thesis, Victoria University of Wellington.

Arthur, J. 2020 Repatriation in Rapa Nui, Ka Haka Hoki Mai Te Mana Tupuna. In C. Fforde, C.T. McKeown and H. Keeler (eds), The Routledge companion to Indigenous repatriation: Return, reconcile, renew, pp. 220–237. London and New York: Routledge. doi.org/10.4324/9780203730966-13.

Ayau, E.H. 2020 I Mana I Ka ‘Ōiwi: Dignity empowered by repatriation. In C. Fforde, C.T. McKeown and H. Keeler (eds), The Routledge companion to Indigenous repatriation: Return, reconcile, renew, pp. 63–82. London and New York: Routledge. doi.org/10.4324/9780203730966-5.

Ayau, E.H. and T.K. Tengan 2002 Ka Huaka‘i O Nā ‘Ōiwi: The journey home. In C. Fforde, J. Hubert and P. Turnbull (eds), The dead and their possessions: Repatriation in principle, policy and practice, pp. 171–189. New York and London: Routledge.

Banivanua Mar, T. 2016 Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous globalisation and the ends of empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139794688.

Bedford, S., R. Blust, D. Burley, M. Cox, P. Kirch, E. Matisoo-Smith, A. Naess, A. Pawley, C. Sand and P. Sheppard 2018 Ancient DNA and its contribution to understanding the human history of the Pacific Islands. Archaeology in Oceania 53:205–219. doi.org/10.1002/arco.5165.

Bellwood, P.S. 1978 Archaeological Research in the Cook Islands. Pacific Anthropological Records, 27. Honolulu: Dept of Anthropology, Bishop Museum.

Bird, J.R., W.R. Ambrose, L.H. Russell and M.D. Scott 1981 The characterisation of Melanesian obsidian sources and artefacts using the proton induced gamma-ray emission (PIGME) technique. Lucas Heights: Australian Atomic Energy Commission Research Establishment.

Boege, V. 2020 Bougainville. The Contemporary Pacific 32(2):545–554. doi.org/10.1353/cp.2020.0046.

Bulmer, S. and R. Bulmer 1964 The prehistory of the Australian New Guinea Highlands. American Anthropologist 66(4):39–76.

Casey, D. 1936 Ethnological notes. Memoirs of the National Museum Melbourne 9:90–97. doi.org/10.24199/j.mmv.1936.9.04.

Chauvel, R. 2015 Merdeka and the Morning Star: Civil resistance in West Papua. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.

Connell, J. 2020 Bougainville: A new Pacific nation? Small States & Territories 3(2):375–396.

Crippa, L.A. 2014 Te pito te henua: The inspiring Rapa Nui nation’s efforts to rebuild its government and regain control of its territory. Griffith Journal of Law & Human Dignity 2(2):247–264.

David, N., C. Fforde, M. Pickering and N. Carter 2020 Repatriation in the Torres Strait. In C. Fforde, C.T. McKeown and H. Keeler (eds), The Routledge companion to Indigenous repatriation: Return, reconcile, renew, pp. 128–146. Routledge: London and New York. doi.org/10.4324/9780203730966-8.

Davidson, J. 2000 Duff, Roger Shepherd. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 16 June 2020 from teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/5d27/duff-roger-shepherd. (First published in Dictionary of New Zealand biography, 2000).

Delsing, R. 2011 Issues of land and sovereignty: The uneasy relationship between Chile and Rapa Nui. In F.E. Mallon (ed.), Decolonizing native histories: Collaboration, knowledge, and language in the Americas, trans. G. McCormick, pp. 54–78. New York: Duke University Press. doi.org/10.1215/9780822394853-004.

Denham, T. and J.P. White (eds) 2016 Renewing the past: Sue Bulmer’s contribution to the archaeology of Papua New Guinea. Special issue, Archaeology in Oceania 51 (special issue 1). doi.org/10.1002/arco.5115.

Dening, G. 2004 Beach crossings: Voyaging across times, cultures and self. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Denoon, D. 2003 The state or independence in the Pacific Islands. New Pacific Review 2(1):14–23.

Dotte-Sarout, E., H. Cauchois, M. Charleux, S. Domergue, A. Hermann, L. Lagarde, M. Leclerc, T. Maric, G. Molle, E. Nolet, A. Noury, V. Ahuura Rurua and J.-M. Wadrawane 2018 Putting new francophone archaeology on the Pacific map: Current work of early-career researchers in ‘archéologie océaniste’. Archaeology in Oceania 53:103–115.

Duff, R. 1940 A cache of adzes from Motukarara. Journal of the Polynesian Society 49:285–302.

Duff, R. 1945 A revised typology of (Southern) New Zealand adzes. Journal of the Polynesian Society 54(3):147–159.

Duff, R. 1950 The moa-hunter period of Māori culture. Wellington: Government Printer.

Duff, R. 1956 The moa-hunter period of Māori culture. Second edition. Wellington: Government Printer.

Duff, R. 1959 Neolithic adzes of Eastern Polynesia. In J.D. Freeman and W.R. Geddes (eds), Anthropology in the South Seas: Essays presented to H.D. Skinner, pp. 121–147. New Plymouth: Thomas Avery and Sons.

Duff, R. 1970 Stone adzes of South East Asia: An illustrated typology. Canterbury Museum Bulletin 3. Christchurch: Canterbury Museum.

Effros, B. and G. Lai (eds) 2018 Unmasking ideology in imperial and colonial archaeology: Vocabulary, symbols, and legacy. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, University of California. doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvdjrrt0.

Fischer, S.R. 2010 The German–Chilean Expedition to Easter Island (1957–8), Parts 1 and 2. Rapa Nui Journal 24(1):11–19 and 24(2):47–57.

Fisher, D. 2019 New Caledonia’s independence referendum: Re-defining the future. Journal of Pacific History 54(2):202–223. doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2019.1600647.

Garanger, J. 1972 Archéologie des Nouvelles Hébrides. Publications de la Société des Océanistes 30. Paris: Musée de L’Homme. doi.org/10.4000/books.sdo.859.

Gifford, E.W. 1951 Archaeological excavations in Fiji. University of California Anthropological Records 13(3):189–288. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Gifford, E.W. 1952 A carbon-14 date from Fiji. Journal of the Polynesian Society 61:327.

Gifford, E.W. and D.S. Gifford 1959 Archaeological excavations in Yap. University of California Anthropological Records 18(2):149–206. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Gifford, E.W. and R. Shutler Jr 1956 Archaeological excavations in New Caledonia. University of California Anthropological Records 18(1):1–148. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Golson, J. 2016 Susan Bulmer, an archaeological pioneer. In T. Denham and J.P. White (eds), Renewing the past: Sue Bulmer’s contribution to the archaeology of Papua New Guinea, pp. 11–18. Special issue, Archaeology in Oceania 51(special issue 1). doi.org/10.1002/arco.5117.

Golson, J., T. Denham, P. Hughes, P. Swadling and J. Muke (eds) 2017 Ten thousand years of cultivation at Kuk Swamp in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Terra Australis 46. Canberra: ANU Press. doi.org/10.22459/TA46.07.2017.

Green, R.C. 1991 Near and Remote Oceania: Disestablishing ‘Melanesia’ in culture history. In A. Pawley (ed.), Man and a half: Essays in Pacific anthropology and ethnobiology in honour of Ralph Bulmer, pp. 491–502. Polynesian Society Memoir. Auckland: The Polynesian Society.

Green, R.C. and M.M. Cresswell 1976 Southeast Solomon Islands cultural history: A preliminary survey. Royal Society of New Zealand Bulletin 11. Wellington: RSNZ.

Green, R.C. and J.M. Davidson (eds) 1969 Archaeology in Western Samoa, Vol. 1. Auckland Institute and Museum Bulletin 6. Auckland: Auckland Institute and Museum.

Green, R.C. and J.M. Davidson (eds) 1974 Archaeology in Western Samoa, Vol. 2. Auckland Institute and Museum Bulletin 7. Auckland: Auckland Institute and Museum.

Green, R.C., K. Green, R.A. Rappaport and J.M. Davidson 1967 Archaeology on the Island of Mo‘orea, French Polynesia. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 51(2). New York: American Museum of Natural History.

Groube, L.M. 1993 ‘Dig up those moa bones, dig’: Golson in New Zealand, 1954–1961. In M. Spriggs, D.E. Yen, W. Ambrose, R. Jones, A. Thorne and A. Andrews (eds), A community of culture: The people and prehistory of the Pacific, pp. 218–238. Occasional Papers in Prehistory 21. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University.

Heyerdahl, T. 1950 The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By raft across the South Seas. London: Allen and Unwin (originally published in Norwegian in 1948).

Heyerdahl, T. 1952 American Indians in the Pacific: The theory behind the Kon-Tiki Expedition. London: Allen and Unwin.

Heyerdahl, T. 1958 Aku-Aku: The mystery of Easter Island. Chicago: Rand McNally.

Higham, T.F.G., A.J. Anderson and C. Jacomb 1999 Dating the first New Zealanders: The chronology of Wairau Bar. Antiquity 73:420–427. doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00088360.

Hogg, A.G., T. Higham, D.J. Lowe, J.G. Palmer, P.J. Reimer and R.M. Newnham 2003 A wiggle-match date for Polynesian settlement of New Zealand. Antiquity 77(295):116–125. doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00061408.

Kauanui, J.K. 2018 Paradoxes of Hawaiian sovereignty: Land, sex, and the colonial politics of state nationalism. Durham and London: Duke University Press. doi.org/10.1215/9780822371960.

Kirch, P.V. 1985 Feathered gods and fishhooks: An introduction to Hawaiian archaeology and prehistory. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

Kirch, P.V. 2018 Voices on the wind, traces in the earth: Integrating oral narrative and archaeology in Polynesian history. Journal of the Polynesian Society 127(3):275–306. doi.org/10.15286/jps.127.3.275-306.

Kirch, P.V. and D.E. Yen 1982 Tikopia: The prehistory and ecology of a Polynesian outlier. Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 238. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press.

Knapp, M., K.A. Horsburgh, S. Prost, J.-A. Stanton, H.R. Buckley, R.K. Walter and E.A. Matisoo-Smith 2012 Complete mitochondrial DNA genome sequences from the first New Zealanders. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109:18350–18354. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1209896109.

Leach, B.F. and J.M. Davidson 2008 The archaeology of Taumako: A Polynesian outlier in the Eastern Solomon Islands. New Zealand Journal of Archaeology Special Publication. Dunedin: New Zealand Journal of Archaeology.

Lenormand, M.H. 1948 Découverte d’une gisement de poteries indigènes à l’Ile des Pins. Etudes Mélanésiennes 3:54–58.

Libby, W. 1951 Radiocarbon dates II. Science 114(2960):291–296. doi.org/10.1126/science.114.2960.291.

Lipson, M., M. Spriggs, F. Valentin, S. Bedford, R. Shing, W. Zinger, H. Buckley, F. Petchey, R. Matanik, O. Cheronet, N. Rohland, R. Pinhasi and D. Reich 2020 Three phases of ancient migration shaped the ancestry of human populations in Vanuatu. Current Biology 30:4846–4856 and Supplementary Information. doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.09.05.

Maclellan, N. 2015 Pacific diplomacy and decolonisation in the 21st century. In G. Fry and S. Tarte (eds), The new Pacific diplomacy, pp. 263–281. Acton: ANU Press. doi.org/10.22459/NPD.12.2015.21.

Marra, J.F. 2019 Hot carbon: Carbon-14 and a revolution in science. New York: Columbia University Press. doi.org/10.7312/marr18670.

McKern, W.C. 1929 Archaeology of Tonga. Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 60. Honolulu: Bishop Museum.

McNiven, I.J. and L. Russell 2005 Appropriated pasts: Indigenous peoples and the colonial culture of archaeology. Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press.

McNiven, I.J. and L. Russell 2008 Toward a postcolonial archaeology of Indigenous Australia. In R.A. Bentley, H.D.G. Maschner and C. Chippindale (eds), Handbook of archaeological theories, pp. 423–443. Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press.

Melander, V. 2017 The head-hunters of the north and the Polynesian shadow: Thor Heyerdahl’s skull-collecting act on Fatu Hiva, Marquesas Islands, 1937. Journal of Pacific Archaeology 8(1):77–87.

Melander, V. 2019a A better savage than the savages: Thor Heyerdahl’s early ethnographical attempts and their importance for the development of the ‘Kon-Tiki Theory’. Journal of Pacific History 54(3):379–396. doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2018.1561253.

Melander, V. 2019b David’s weapon of mass destruction: The reception of Thor Heyerdahl’s ‘Kon-Tiki Theory’. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 29(1):6, pp.1–11. doi.org/10.5334/bha-612.

Melander, V. 2020 The coming of the white bearded men: The origin and development of Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki Theory. Unpublished PhD thesis, The Australian National University, Canberra. doi.org/10.25911/5e96e30f77539.

Ormond-Parker, L. 2005 Indigenous peoples’ rights to their cultural heritage. Public Archaeology 4(2):127–140.

Osborne, D. 1966 The archaeology of the Palau Islands: An intensive survey. Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 230. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press.

Parke, A.L. (eds M. Spriggs and D. Scarr) 2014 Degei’s descendants: Spirits, place and people in pre-cession Fiji. Terra Australis 41. Canberra: ANU Press. doi.org/10.22459/TA41.08.2014.

Perry, W.J. 1923 The children of the sun: A study in the early history of civilisation. London: Methuen and Co Ltd.

Posth, C., K. Nägele, H. Colleran, F. Valentin, S. Bedford, K.W. Kami, R. Shing, H. Buckley, R. Kinaston, M. Walworth, G.R. Clark, C. Reepmeyer, J. Flexner, T. Maric, J. Moser, J. Gresky, L. Kiko, K.J. Robson, K. Auckland, S.J. Oppenheimer, A.V.S. Hill, A.J. Mentzer, J. Zech, F. Petchey, P. Roberts, C. Jeong, R.D. Gray, J. Krause and A. Powell 2018 Language continuity despite population replacement in Remote Oceania. Nature Ecology & Evolution 2(4):731–740. doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0498-2.

Posth, C., K. Nagele, H. Colleran, F. Valentin, S. Bedford, R. Gray, J. Krause and A. Powell 2019 Response to ‘Ancient DNA and its contribution to understanding the human history of the Pacific Islands’ (Bedford et al. 2018). Archaeology in Oceania 54:57–61. doi.org/10.1002/arco.5181.

Quanchi, M. 2008 End of an epoch: Towards decolonisation and independence in the Pacific. Agora 43(4):18–23.

Rauzon, M.J. 2016 Isles of amnesia: The history, geography, and restoration of America’s forgotten Pacific Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. doi.org/10.21313/hawaii/9780824846794.001.0001.

Richards, M. 2019 Duff’s adze typology versus Polynesian adze exchanges. Archaeology in Oceania 54:173–183. doi.org/10.1002/arco.5194.

Roe, D. 1992a Investigations into the prehistory of the Central Solomons: Some old and some new data from Northwest Guadalcanal. In J.C. Galipaud (ed.), Poterie Lapita et peuplement: Actes du Colloque Lapita, Nouméa, Nouvelle-Calédonie, Janvier 1992, pp. 91–101. Nouméa: ORSTOM.

Roe, D. 1992b Rock art of Northwest Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. In J. McDonald and I. Haskovec (eds), State of the art: Regional rock art studies in Australia and Melanesia, pp. 107–127. Occasional AURA Publications 6. Melbourne: Australian Rock Art Research Association.

Sand, C. 2008 French archaeology in the Pacific: achievements, challenges and prospects. In A. di Piazza, E. Pearthree and C. Sand (eds), At the heart of ancient societies: French contributions to Pacific archaeology, pp. 19–34. Nouméa: Département Archéologie, Direction des Affaires Culturelles et Coutumières de la Nouvelle-Calédonie.

Sand, C. 2018 L’archéologie en Océanie: quels objectifs, quelles méthodologies de terrain, quels rendus en pays calédonien? In H. Mokaddem, S. Robertson and I. Sykes (eds), La Nouvelle-Calédonie et l’imagination intellectuelle. Repenser et reformuler les disciplines, savoirs et pratiques, pp. 15–29. Paris: L’Harmattan.

Sand, C., J. Bole and A. Ouetcho 2006 What is archaeology for in the Pacific? History and politics in New Caledonia. In I. Lilley (ed.), Archaeology of Oceania: Australia and the Pacific Islands, pp. 321–345. Oxford: Blackwell.

Shipton, C., M. Weisler, C. Jacomb, C. Clarkson and R. Walter 2016 A morphometric reassessment of Roger Duff’s Polynesian adze typology. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 6:361–375. doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.03.005.

Shutler, M.E. and R. Shutler Jr 1965 A preliminary report of archaeological explorations in the southern New Hebrides, 1963–64. Photo-offset. Honolulu: Anthropology Department, Bishop Museum.

Sinoto, Y. 2016 The curve of the hook. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

Skinner, H.D. 1940 Maori adzes, axes, chisels, and gouges from the Murihiku Region, New Zealand. In F.N. Chasen and M.W.F. Tweedie (eds), Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Prehistorians of the Far East, Singapore, 24th January – 30th January 1938, pp. 142–172. Singapore: Government Printing Office.

Skinner, H.D. 1943 The classification of greywacke and nephrite adzes from Murihiku, N.Z. Journal of the Polynesian Society 52:65–85 and 157–190.

Skoglund, P., C. Posth, K. Sirak, M. Spriggs, F. Valentin, S. Bedford, G.R. Clark, C. Reepmeyer, F. Petchey, D. Fernandes, Q. Fu, E. Harney, M. Lipson, S. Mallick, M. Novak, N. Rohland, K. Stewardson, S. Abdullah, M.P. Cox, F.R. Friedlaender, J.S. Friedlaender, T. Kivisild, G. Koki, P. Kusuma, D.A. Merriwether, F.-X. Ricaut, J.T.S. Wee, N. Patterson, J. Krause, R. Pinhasi and D. Reich 2016 Genomic insights into the peopling of the southwest Pacific. Nature 538:510–513. doi.org/10.1038/nature19844.

Smith, C. and H.M. Wobst 2005 Decolonizing archaeological theory and practice. In C. Smith and H.M. Wobst (eds), Indigenous archaeologies: Decolonizing theory and practice, pp. 1–14. London and New York: Routledge.

Spoehr, A. 1957 Marianas prehistory: Archaeological survey and excavations on Tinian, Saipan and Rota. Fieldiana Anthropology 48. Chicago: Chicago Natural History Museum. doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.3552.

Spriggs, M. 1999 Pacific archaeologies: Contested ground in the construction of Pacific history. Journal of Pacific History 34(1):109–121.

Spriggs, M. 2014a You will never know the why of a region’s history if you haven’t pinned down the when: Getting the dates right in Eastern Polynesia. In I. Hoem (ed.), Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki in new light, pp. 169–180. Kon-Tiki Museum Occasional Papers 14. Oslo: Kon-Tiki Museum.

Spriggs, M. 2014b Aubrey Parke: An enthusiastic amateur in Fiji? In A.L. Parke (eds M. Spriggs and D. Scarr), Degei’s descendants: Spirits, place and people in pre-cession Fiji, pp. vii–xvi. Terra Australis 41. Canberra: ANU Press. doi.org/10.22459/TA41.08.2014.

Spriggs, M. 2016 The hidden history of a third of the world: The Collective Biography of Australian and International Archaeology in the Pacific (CBAP) Project. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 27(1):3, 1–11. doi.org/10.5334/bha-583.

Spriggs, M. 2019a Covert control? Indigenous agency in Edward Winslow Gifford’s Fijian archaeological expedition of 1947. Journal of Pacific History 65(3):397–416.

Spriggs, M. 2019b Towards a history of Melanesian archaeological practices. In M. Leclerc and J. Flexner (eds), Archaeologies of Island Melanesia: Current approaches to landscapes, exchange and practice, pp. 9–31. Terra Australis 51. Canberra: ANU Press. doi.org/10.22459/TA51.2019.02.

Spriggs, M. 2020 Everything you’ve been told about the history of Australian archaeology is wrong! Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 30(1):3, 1–16. doi.org/10.5334/bha-626.

Spriggs, M. In press Lapita: History of a name, its terminologies and influences [details of volume not yet available].

Spriggs, M. and D. Reich 2020 An ancient DNA Pacific journey: A case study of collaboration between archaeologists and geneticists. World Archaeology 51(4):620–639. doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2019.1733069.

Spriggs, M., F. Valentin, S. Bedford, R. Pinhasi, P. Skoglund, D. Reich and M. Lipson 2019 Revisiting ancient DNA insights into the human history of the Pacific Islands. Archaeology in Oceania 54(1):53–56. doi.org/10.1002/arco5180.

Suggs, R.C. 1960 Historical traditions and archaeology in Polynesia. American Anthropologist 62:764–773. doi.org/10.1525/aa.1960.62.5.02a00020.

Suggs, R.C. 1961 The archaeology of Nuku Hiva, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 49(1). New York: American Museum of Natural History.

Thompson, L. 1932 Archaeology of the Marianas Islands. Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 100. Honolulu: Bishop Museum.

Thompson, L. 1940 The function of latte in the Marianas. Journal of the Polynesian Society 49(195):447–465.

Urwin, C. and M. Spriggs 2021 The development (and imagined re-invention) of Australian archaeology in the twentieth century. In I.J. McNiven and B. David (eds), The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea [published online]. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190095611.013.44.

Walter, R. and Sheppard, P.J. 2017 Archaeology of the Solomon Islands. Dunedin: University of Otago Press.

Webb-Gannon, C. 2021 Morning Star rising: The politics of decolonization in West Papua. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv17kw97w.

Wood, R. 2015 From revolution to convention: The past, present and future of radiocarbon dating. Journal of Archaeological Science 56:61–72. doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2015.02.019.

Zimmerman, L. 1989 Made radical by my own: An archaeologist learns to accept reburial. In R. Layton (ed.), Conflict in the archaeology of living traditions, pp. 60–67. London and Boston: Unwin Hyman.

---