Last-Millennium Settlement on Yadua Island, Fiji: Insights into Conflict and Climate Change
| Autor: | Neil Tindale, Javier León, Frank R. Thomas, Niko Tokainavatu, Patrick D. Nunn, Piérick C. M. Martin |
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| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
Tropical pacific
010506 paleontology History Archeology geography geography.geographical_feature_category 060102 archaeology Climate change 06 humanities and the arts 01 natural sciences Archaeology Globalization Anthropology Human settlement Archipelago 0601 history and archaeology Radiometric dating Settlement (litigation) Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics 0105 earth and related environmental sciences |
| Zdroj: | Asian Perspectives. 58:316-330 |
| ISSN: | 1535-8283 |
| DOI: | 10.1353/asi.2019.0018 |
| Popis: | A50–70 cm sea-level fall around A.D. 1300 may have led to a prolonged food crisis which caused conflict among coastal dwellers on high Pacific islands. The conflict may have necessitated abandoning difficult to defend coastal settlements and establishing ones in fortifiable locations inland. To test this idea, abandoned hillforts (koronivalu) on20km Yadua Island were studied. Yadua Island is 20 km off the western extremity of Vanua Levu Island, the second largest island in the Fiji archipelago, where many such hillforts once existed. Human-made structures (stone walls), artifacts (potsherds and lithics), and accumulations of edible seafood waste (shellfish middens), all implying sustained occupation, were identified at four sites in upland Yadua, including two hillforts (Koromakawa and Uluinakoro) and two lookout posts (Nacelau and Uluikota). Radiometric ages suggest the two hillforts were occupied during the seventeenth century or perhaps established earlier, making them coeval with hillforts elsewhere in Fiji and other tropical Pacific Island groups. Information about Pacific Islands settlement throughout the last millennium can still be obtained from islands like Yadua through fieldwork and the collection of oral traditions. Oral traditions and human-made structures are likely to disappear within a few decades, owing to the increasing reach of globalization and ongoing physical degradation respectively; research of the kind described in this article is thus a priority. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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