The stone adze and obsidian assemblage from the Talasiu site, Kingdom of Tonga

Typological and geochemical analyses of stone adzes and other stone tools have played a significant role in identifying directionality of colonisation movements in early migratory events in the Western Pacific. In later phases of Polynesian prehistory, stone adzes are important status goods which show substantial spatial and temporal variation. However, there is a debate when standardisation of form and manufacture appeared, whether it can be seen in earliest populations colonising the Pacific or whether it is a later development. We present in this paper a stone adze and obsidian tool assemblage from an early Ancestral Polynesian Society Talasiu site on Tongatapu, Kingdom of Tonga. The site shows a wide variety of adze types; however, if raw material origin is taken into account, emerging standardisation in adze form might be detected. We also show that Tongatapu was strongly connected in a network of interaction to islands to the North, particularly Samoa, suggesting that these islands had permanent populations

Le Pacifique de 5000 à 2000 avant le présent : suppléments à l'histoire d'une colonisation = The Pacific from 5000 to 2000 BP : colonisation and transformations

Depuis 1990, des inventaires et des sondages dans les îles Ha'apai, royaume de Tonga, ont permis de documenter avec succès des sites contenant de la poterie Lapita de style oriental ancien. Ces données sont encore au stade préliminaire de l'analyse mais elles indiquent déjà une homogénéité dans les caractéristiques, dans le contenu et dans les relations temporelles entre ces sites. La période du Lapita oriental ancien à Ha'apai est datée de 3000 à 2800 BP environ. Elle est caractérisée par des formes variées et de nombreux décors pointillés associés à d'autres styles décoratifs. Les sites sont peu étendus et généralement implantés sur des plages de la côte sous le vent bordées d'un récif. La faune des sites du Lapita ancien montre une dépendance importante aux ressources du milieu naturel, ce qui semble indiquer une adaptation de type "écumer de plage". Il n'y a pas d'indication d'échange des poteries, du matériel lithique ou autre objet de troc exotique. Les sites Lapita de Ha'apai, comme d'autres à Fidji et en Polynésie occidentale, ne se comparent pas véritablement aux modèles proposés pour la culture et l'économie Lapita occidentale. (Résumé d'auteur

Prehistoric maritime migration in the Pacific Islands: an hypothesis of ENSO forcing

Long-distance human migration across the Pacific Ocean occurred during the late Holocene and originated almost entirely in the west. As prevailing tradewinds blow from the east, the mechanisms of prehistoric seafaring have been debated since the sixteenth century. Inadequacies in propositions of accidental or opportunistic drifting on occasional westerlies were exposed by early computer simulation. Experimental voyaging in large, fast, weatherly (windward-sailing) double-canoes, together with computer simulation incorporating canoe performance data and modern, averaged, wind conditions, has supported the traditional notion of intentional passage-making in a widely accepted hypothesis of upwind migration by strategic voyaging. The critical assumption that maritime technology and sailing conditions were effectively the same prehistorically as in the historical and modern records is, however, open to question. We propose here that maritime technology during the late-Holocene migrations did not permit windward sailing, and show that the episodic pattern of initial island colonization, which is disclosed in recent archaeological data, matches periods of reversal in wind direction toward westerlies, as inferred from the millennial-scale history of ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation)