1. Migrations of early Humans into Island SE Asia and Melanesia

2. New Guinea transition to farming

3. Kuk Swamp, New Guinea
Evidence for transition to agriculture from early hunter-gatherer societies
forest clearing and possible water management (diversion), ca BC
Early Holocene domestication of taro and banana, together with some varieties of sugarcane and yams
More organized agricultural works, including mounding for cultivation by ca BC and grid-like ditching by 2000 BC, with evidence for more extensive forest clearing related to banana and taro cultivation
Recent development of more complex systems related to introduction of sweet potato (the “Ipomean revolution”); food for pigs?
Foundation for surplus production for exchange rituals in pigs and shells (called “Big-man” systems)

5. Early “Vegeculture”
In the 1950s, geographer Carl Sauer suggested that early agriculture occurred first in tropical forest regions of SE Asia
Based on vegeculture, growing not by seeds by plant cuttings, of tropical forest plants, most notably root crops
Happened along major rivers first, where early settled villages had emerged based on highly productive exploitation of rich aquatic resources

7. The Austronesians
Peter Bellwood

8. British-American
English

10. Taiwan Earliest Austronesians Dabenkeng culture (3000-2000 BC)
Nanguanli site, waterlogged site dating to BC, which yielded cord-marked, red-slipped ceramics, clay spindle whorls, shell knives, carbonized rice and foxtail millet
From BC Austronesians spread from Taiwan through Philippines, eastern Indonesia, Western Pacific (Micronesia and Island Melanesia), and western Polynesia (Tonga and Samoa)
Red-slipped and often cordmarked pottery; outside of Taiwan developed into circle and punctate stamped pottery in the Philippines, Micronesia, and Lapita sites in Melanesia

11. Settlement pauses relate to development of watercraft, notaby
outrigger canoes
(pause 1) by 2000 BC
and “double canoe”
in Polynesia
(pause 2)
500 BC-AD 1
1500 BC AD BC

12. Outrigger canoe

13. Double canoe

14. Pigs, chickens, yams, dog, taro carried on sailing vessels
Lapita Colonization in Melanesia, BC (Proto-Oceanic Austronesian)
“Tattooed pottery”
Pigs, chickens, yams, dog, taro carried on sailing vessels

15. In malaria-free regions, beyond Vanuatu, populations grew rapidly.
Lapita settlements, with sand and crushed shell tempered and decorated pottery, are
rich in diverse artifacts and cultural features, like ovens, hearths, and postholes,
tied to maritime and horticultural economy, which included pigs, fowl, and dogs.
Sites average 1 ha (2.5 acres) with some larger sites (7-8 ha; acres).
In malaria-free regions, beyond Vanuatu, populations grew rapidly.

16. Groundstone
Bone, and
Shell Tools
Tikis

19. Tapa (bark cloth)

20. Polynesian Colonization
Eastern Polynesia colonized ca. AD
500 BC – AD 1 AD
APS

21. Forms of Social Organization (Elman Service, 1962)
Pre-State small-scale and kin-based “simple” societies:
bands and tribes: small-sized (10s to 100s autonomous social groupings, egalitarian, division of labor and status based on age, sex, and personal characteristics or achievements);
Chiefdoms: medium-sized social formations
(1000s to 10,000s), ranked kin-groups based on hereditary status (incipient classes), regionally-organized, integrated (non-autonomous) communities
State (territory and class-based societies);
Large societies divided into stratified social classes, with centralized government, a ruling elite class, able to levy taxes (tribute), amass a standing army, and enforce law.

22. The Rise of Social Inequality and Complexity
“Rank Revolution”
What led to the emergence of social stratification (rise of social classes) and complexity (regional integration and institutional differentiation within communities)
How were personal and social autonomy and egalitarian social structures transformed into societies in which people were subordinate to others based on birth and social position, at both community and regional levels

23. Chiefdoms
simple “two-tiered” hierarchy: people are either elite or commoner, in part related to hereditary (incipient classes);
generally based on semi-intensive economies;
various communities integrated into regional society, typically showing a “bi-modal” or rank-ordered settlement pattern: one or a few large (first-order) settlements, with smaller (second-and third-order) satellite settlements linked to these;
formal, even full-time specialists: religious specialists, warriors, chiefs, artisans;

24. Ancient Polynesian Society
The chiefdom was first clearly defined in Polynesia (Sahlins 1958; Service 1962)
Societies based not only on reciprocity, but on redistribution economies: strategic resources were concentrated in the hands of a few (chiefs) who then redistributed these to lower ranking community members
APS has its roots in earlier forms of hierarchical social organization in Lapita societies, and later diversified as it spread throughout Polynesia
In Polynesia, chiefdoms developed complex forms of terrace fields, canal irrigation fields, and other semi-intensive forms of food production (fish ponds, pond fields), marked warfare and conquest, monumental architecture, and, in some cases (Hawaii, Tonga), highly stratified social organization

25. The Ramage or Conical Clan
Internally ranked, or hierarchical, social organization based on primogeniture
Tendency to “ramify,” that is subordinate lineages split off main group to found new communities

26. results in long-distance migrations (island-hopping)
Over time this process
results in long-distance
migrations (island-hopping)
that helps explain colonization
of Polynesia by Austronesians

27. Trade, Interaction, Alliance
Shell necklace, a component of the
famous Kula trade ring in the Trobriands
Trobriand (Melanesia) kula trading vessel
The Tui Tonga, the sacred ruler of the 160+ island polity of Tonga (western Polynesia), for instance, engaged in alliance marriages with daughters of ruling lineages from Samoa and Fiji, many hundreds of miles away.

28. The Navigators
Polynesian ocean map

29. Colonization: Western Polynesia (Lapita), 1350-900 BC,
and eastern Polynesia, AD 700 to 1250

30. Diversification: Population, ecology, and social structure (status rivalry)
As colonizing populations
adapted to the unique
conditions of different islands,
APS groups became increasingly
diversified and distinctive
Marshall Sahlins (1958) proposed that differences in environment
and food production strategies were critical to divergent
cultural development through Polynesia
(big, high islands supported larger groups, with more
Intensive economies and small, low islands less)

31. High islands, which provided the richest environments for human
exploitation, are where
the largest and most complex
of the Polynesian chiefdoms emerged;
Atolls were at the opposite extreme

34. Bora Bora

36. Marae (general term for shrine/temple in Polynesia)
Fish Weirs
Stone Houses

37. Langi: coral slabbed earthen burial mound for Tongan nobles
Mound for Tui Tonga, sacred ruler of Tongan
empire (160 islands), at Tongatapu, the small
sacred capital where the Tui Tonga and related
nobles lived