The Archaeology of Micronesia PDF Download

Author: Paul Rainbird
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521656306
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Table of contents

Author: Paul Rainbird
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139463942
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 19

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Archaeologists have traditionally considered islands as distinct physical and social entities. In this book, Paul Rainbird discusses the historical construction of this characterization and questions the basis for such an understanding of island archaeology. Through a series of case studies of prehistoric archaeology in the Mediterranean, Pacific, Baltic, and Atlantic seas and oceans, he argues for a decentering of the land in favor of an emphasis on the archaeology of the sea and, ultimately, a new perspective on the making of maritime communities. The archaeology of islands is thus unshackled from approaches that highlight boundedness and isolation, and replaced with a new set of principles - that boundaries are fuzzy, islanders are distinctive in their expectation of contacts with people from over the seas, and that island life can tell us much about maritime communities. Debating islands, thus, brings to the fore issues of identity and community and a concern with Western construction of other peoples.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Coastal zone management
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Author: Mike T. Carson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319314009
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Landscapes have been fundamental to the human experience world-wide and throughout time, yet how did we as human beings evolve or co-evolve with our landscapes? By answering this question, we can understand our place in the complex, ever-changing world that we inhabit. This book guides readers on a journey through the concurrent processes of change in an integrated natural-cultural history of a landscape. While outlining the general principles for global application, a richly illustrated case is offered through the Mariana Islands in the northwest tropical Pacific and furthermore situated in a larger Asia-Pacific context for a full comprehension of landscape evolution at variable scales. The author examines what happened during the first time when human beings encountered the world’s Remote Oceanic environment in the Mariana Islands about 3500 years ago, followed by a continuous sequence of changing sea level, climate, water resources, forest composition, human population growth, and social dynamics. This book provides a high-resolution and long-term view of the complexities of landscape evolution that affect all of us today.

Author: Geoffrey Richard Clark
Publisher: ANU E Press
ISBN: 1921313900
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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"Many of the papers in this volume present new and innovative research into the processes of maritime colonisation, processes that affect archaeological contexts from islands to continents. Others shift focus from process to the archaeology of maritime places from the Bering to the Torres Straits, providing highly detailed discussions of how living by and with the sea is woven into all elements of human life from subsistence to trade and to ritual. Of equal importance are more abstract discussions of islands as natural places refashioned by human occupation, either through the introduction of new organisms or new systems of production and consumption. These transformation stories gain further texture (and variety) through close examinations of some of the more significant consequences of colonisation and migration, particularly the creation of new cultural identities. A final set of papers explores the ways in which the techniques of archaelogical sciences have provided insights into the fauna of the islands and the human history of such places."--Provided by publisher.

Author: William N. Morgan
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292786212
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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In the many centuries preceding Western contact, a richly diverse and innovative architectural tradition reached maturity in the western Pacific. Prehistoric Architecture in Micronesia, the first modern study of this remarkable work, reveals that there is no such thing as primitive architecture but only primitive means. This study presents five distinctly different examples of Micronesia's ancient architecture. The sites include the extraordinary stone cities of Leluh and Nan Madol on the islands of Kosrae and Pohnpei, respectively. Other structures include the meeting houses and residences built on hexagonal stone platforms in the Yap Islands, the earth terraces and ornately decorated meeting houses of Palau, and the megalithic columns and capstones of prehistoric houses in the Mariana Islands. These structures are illustrated by photographs, maps, plans, and other drawings. Many of the basic data come from archaeological investigations of the specific sites. Summaries at the ends of chapters and in the concluding section compare the architectural characteristics of the island groups with each other and with monuments outside Micronesia. One of the most remarkable achievements of any ancient people, the prehistoric architecture of Micronesia is a source of continuing inspiration for persons who search for meaning in the built form of our present-day environment.

Author: Mike T. Carson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351599992
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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This book integrates a region-wide chronological narrative of the archaeology of Pacific Oceania. How and why did this vast sea of islands, covering nearly one-third of the world’s surface, come to be inhabited over the last several millennia, transcending significant change in ecology, demography, and society? What can any or all of the thousands of islands offer as ideal model systems toward comprehending globally significant issues of human-environment relations and coping with changing circumstances of natural and cultural history? A new synthesis of Pacific Oceanic archaeology addresses these questions, based largely on the author’s investigations throughout the diverse region.

Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520234618
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Providing a synthesis of archaeological and historical anthropological knowledge of the indigenous cultures of the Pacific islands, this text focuses on human ecology and island adaptations.

Author: William N. Morgan
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292765061
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Looks at prehistoric meeting houses and residences in Palau, the Yap Islands, Pohnpei, Kosrae, and the Mariana islands and discusses how they were made

Author: William R. Dickinson
Publisher: Geological Society of America
ISBN: 0813724066
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
"Oceanian ceramic cultures making earthenware pottery spread during the past 3500 years through a dozen major island groups spanning 6000 km of the tropical Pacific Ocean from western Micronesia to western Polynesia. Island potters mixed sand as temper into clay bodies during ceramic manufacture. The nature of island sands is governed by the geotectonics of hotspot chains, island arcs, subduction zones, backarc basins, and remnant arcs as well as by sedimentology. Because small islands with bedrock exposures of restricted character are virtual point sources of sand, many tempers are diagnostic of specific islands. Petrographic study of temper sands in thin section allows distinction between indigenous pottery and exotic pottery transported from elsewhere. Study of 2223 prehistoric Oceanian potsherds from 130 islands and island clusters indicates the nature of Oceanian temper types and documents 105 cases of interisland transport of ceramics over distances typically