Lapita before Lapita: The Early Story of the Meyer/O’Reilly Watom Island Archaeological Collection

Seventeen years before the first excavation at the archaeological site of Lapita (New Caledonia) in 1952, two men of the cloth met and exchanged artefacts, notes and ideas to produce some of the earliest analyses of what later became known as Lapita pottery. Otto Meyer (1877–1937), a Sacred Heart Missionary stationed on Watom Island, described chance finds of ‘prehistoric pottery’ in 1909, following these with more systematic excavations. Patrick O’Reilly (1900–88), a Marist Father associated with the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, drew on Meyer’s work, his own extensive bibliographical knowledge and his observations during a one-year mission in the region in 1934–5 to present part of the collection in France, laying the ground for further theories. The publication, interpretation and curation of the Meyer/O’Reilly collection represents an exemplary journey through the history of Pacific archaeology and the emergence of the Lapita paradigm. We consider the context of Meyer’s encounter with O’Reilly, the ideas both men advanced in analysing the collection and the site, and how these resonated during the development of Pacific and Lapita archaeology throughout the first half of the 20th centuryThis work was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellowship Project ‘The Collective Biography of Archaeology in the Pacific: A Hidden History’ (CBAP) [grant number FL140100218] and by The Australian National University (ANU)

The size inherited age effect on radiocarbon dates of alluvial deposits: redating charcoal fragments in a sand-bed stream, Macdonald River, NSW, Australia

Radiocarbon dates on charred plant remains are often used to define the chronology of archives such as lake cores and fluvial sequences. However, charcoal is often older than its depositional context because old-wood can be burnt and a range of transport and storage stages exist between the woodland and stream or lake bed ("inherited age"). In 1978, Blong and Gillespie dated four size fractions of charcoal found floating or saltating in the Macdonald River, Australia. They found larger fragments gave younger age estimates, raising the possibility that taphonomic modifications could help identify the youngest fragments. In 1978 each date required 1000s charcoal fragments. This study returns to a sample from the Macdonald River to date individual charcoal fragments and finds the inherited age may be more than 1700 years (mode 250 years) older than the collection date. Taphonomic factors, e.g., size, shape or fungal infestation cannot identify the youngest fragments. Only two fragments on short-lived materials correctly estimated the date of collection. In SE Australia, this study suggests that wood charcoal will overestimate the age of deposition, taphonomic modifications cannot be used to identify which are youngest, and multiple short-lived materials are required to accurately estimate the deposition age

Modes of Operation and Integrationin the Kanak Territories - [precolonial plant forest resources]

This paper aims to explore models for the territorial management of forest and for the subsistence system in precolonial Kanak societies. The study is part of a broader project using anthracology to examine vegetarian changes linked to precolonial settlement patterns and management of wood resources. Archaeological field survey was combined with botanical recording and ethnobotanical observations. These data, together with information from the ethnological, archaeological, botanical and ethnobotanical literature, are used to redefine the precolonial horticultural system and to suggest a territorial pattern for tree species and forests, in which three kinds of area are distinguished, on the basis of their diversity and degree of "domestication"

Evidence of forest management and arboriculture from wood charcoal data: an anthracological case study from two New Caledonia Kanak pre-colonial sites

Archaeological wood charcoal analysis or anthracology has been applied for the first time in New Caledonia as part of an interdisciplinary research program examining Kanak pre-colonial landscape management in a valley on the northeast coast of the subtropical Pacific island. In contrast to previous hypotheses, this study demonstrated that when the Kanak traditional cultural complex emerged around ad 1000, following the initial 2,000 years of human presence on the island, the vegetation cover showed few signs of deforestation and the tropical rainforests were still prominent. The vegetation surrounding Kanak settlement sites evolved during the first half of the 2nd millennium ad towards a more open but more complex composition that included useful taxa. This was interpreted as showing a form of forest management and possible arboriculture (the cultivation and management of trees). However, in sharp contrast to its Melanesian neighbours, very little is known about arboricultural practices in New Caledonia. Through the interpretation of data from two sites in particular, a discussion of the two-step analytical process is used to argue for the existence of arboricultural practices associated with these sites: (1) using anthracological data to reconstruct the vegetational landscape, together with ethnobotanical, ethnohistorical and archaeological data; (2) allowing for the recognition of specific practices of forest domestication, based on the manipulation of plants and of spatial patterns of forests. At a time when archaeology is engaged in a process of post-colonial re-evaluation of its schemes of interpretation, it seems timely for archaeobotany to try integrating more indigenous systems of representation into its analyses. The approach presented here is an effort in this direction, trying to make sense of new data by reading them through a local lens

Bois anc{u00EA}tre : arbres, for{u00EA}ts et occupation kanak pr{u00E9}coloniale sur la Grande Terre de Nouvelle-Cal{u00E9}donie : {u00E9}tude de cas et approche anthracologique dans la vall{u00E9}e de la Tiwaka (Nord Est)

CD-ROM contains: v. 1. Text -- v. 2. Atlas -- v. 3. Appendices -- Notice for v.

How Dare Our 'Prehistoric' Have a Prehistory of Their Own?! The interplay of historical and biographical contexts in early French archaeology of the Pacific.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th century, France was securing its presence as a colonial power in the Pacific. Some of the early French settlers quickly began to take notice of relics: petroglyphs, monumental buildings, buried ceramics and human remains were those most commented upon. A rich and sometimes surprisingly detailed literature appears, describing these objects and their antiquity. In the interpretations proposed, a recurrent theme emerges: the apparent need to appeal to waves of migrations or cataclysms to explain traces of a prehistory and ancient ‘civilisations’ where ‘primitive’ people now live – even more so in the so-called region of Melanesia. In this paper, the ideas of three principal authors in the early archaeology of the region are presented: Gustave Glaumont, Marius Archambault and Jean-Baptiste Suas. The ways these authors conceptualised the past of the islands will be discussed in light of the complex relations between their own biographical histories and the intellectual context of the time. It appears that the colliding of the paradigms developed in the new field of prehistory on the one side and in regards to representation of Pacific peoples on the other side created a somewhat confusing intellectual situation for the first archaeologists of Melanesia.This research is funded by the ARC Laureate Fellowship Project ‘The Collective Biography of Archaeology in the Pacific: A Hidden History’, directed by Professor Matthew Spriggs at The Australian National Universit