Recent Advances in the Archaeology of the Western Pacific

Glenn Summerhayes, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Otago (glenn.summerhayes@otago.ac.nz)
Anne Ford, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Otago (anne.ford@otago.ac.nz)
Ben Shaw, PANGEA Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Science
University of New South Wales (ben.shaw@unsw.edu.au) 
 

The Western Pacific has witnessed some of the largest scale migrations in human history, from the late Pleistocene initial colonization of modern humans, through to the long distance sea voyages of the Austronesians in the late Holocene. These migrations have caused substantial environmental and cultural change as new colonists learn how to adapt to or modify new environments and their resources. For the Austronesians, these new encounters would also have coincided with meeting preexisting populations in Papua New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago, prior to their movement out into the remoter parts of the Pacific, where they transported cultural landscapes onto previously uninhabited islands. The panel participants will discuss the latest research on a range of topics related to this long history, including the colonization of new environments and development of agriculture in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, the Austronesian movement into the Western Pacific, and later regional developments in environment and cultural histories. This panel includes papers focused on the Western Pacific region (Japan, West Papua, Papua New Guinea, Solomons, Vanuatu, Fiji, Micronesia, Madagascar).