Radiocarbon determinations from the Mulifanua Lapita site, Upolu, western Samoa

The Mulifanua ferry berth has the distinction of being the only site in Samoa with dentate-stamped Lapita wares, and is the most easterly Lapita site in the Pacific. Two new radiocarbon determinations of material associated with Lapita pottery found at Mulifanua are presented. The accuracy of this data is evaluated according to the results of recent reassessment of pottery from the site, and current theories regarding the age of Lapita settlement in the eastern Pacific. The resulting calibrated radiocarbon ages put occupation of the Mulifanua Lapita site at around 2880-2750 cal BP (930–800 BC). This conclusion is in agreement with the pottery chronology and supports recent hypotheses of rapid Lapita settlement in the Fiji/Tonga region around 2850–2700 cal BP (900–750 BC)

Use of three isotopes to calibrate human bone radiocarbon determinations from Kainapirina (SAC), Watom Island, Papua New Guinea

In archaeological dating, the greatest confidence is usually placed upon radiocarbon results of material that can be directly related to a defined archaeological event. Human bone should fulfill this requirement, but bone dates obtained from Pacific sites are often perceived as problematic due to the incorporation of ¹⁴C from a range of different reservoirs into the collagen via diet. In this paper, we present new human bone gelatin results for 2 burials from the SAC archaeological site on Watom Island, Papua New Guinea, and investigate the success of calibrating these determinations using dietary corrections obtained from δ³⁴S, δ¹⁵N, and δ¹³C isotopes

Endogenous local public good prices in decentralised economies with population mobility and inter-regional transfers

Economic models of regional economies with local public goods, corrective inter-regional transfers and population mobility assume decision-makers are small price takers. We argue this is reasonable for private goods but that local public good prices are in fact endogenous, varying with settlement patterns and hence regional/central policies. Decision-makers should therefore be modelled as having the power to distort policies in order to manipulate public good prices. We show that incentive equivalence in regional economies is sufficient to ensure that known efficiency results, whether the transfer is assigned to regions or the centre, are undisturbed by endogenous local public good prices. However, the corrective inter-regional transfer now includes input price externalities arising from migration which are not accounted for in price taking models. Hence, allowing for endogenous local public good prices extends what we know about the theory of corrective inter-regional transfers

An Efficiency Rationale for Expenditure Equalization

This paper provides an efficiency rationale for expenditure equalization in federations. It does so by developing a fiscal federalism model with two citizen types; immobile non-workers and mobile workers. Three decision-makers, a federal transfer authority and two states, play a game as Nash competitors. In any Nash Equilibrium the federal authority chooses an efficient transfer that 'equalizes' for inter-state differences in state benefit and redistributive taxes as well as differences in per capita revenues (economic rents). Since state taxes are equal to per capita state expenditures on services this provides an efficiency rationale for expenditure equalization. Using examples it is shown that Australian equalization gets expenditure equalization in the 'right' direction from an efficiency perspective; from low to high cost states. This is not to say, however, that the magnitude of inter-state transfers induced by expenditure equalization in Australia is efficient

New ΔR for the southwest Pacific Ocean

ΔR results of known-age shells from the Solomon and Coral Seas and the northwest coast of New Ireland are presented. The results are too few to be conclusive but indicate that ΔR in this region is variable. An average ΔR value of 370 ± 25 yr is recorded for a range of shell species from Kavieng Harbor, New Ireland, and is primarily attributed to weak equatorial upwelling of depleted 14C due to seasonal current reversals. In contrast, values from the Solomon and Coral Seas are lower (average ΔR = 45 ± 19 yr). Higher ΔR values for some shellfish from these 2 seas is attributed to ingestion of 14Cdepleted sediment by deposit-feeding species

Murray-Darling basin freshwater shells: riverine reservoir effect

We report carbon isotope measurements on pre-bomb museum samples of freshwater mussel shells collected alive from riverine locations in New South Wales, Australia. The calculated reservoir ages, ranging from -60 to +112 years, are much smaller than those for Australian marine shells and not considered significant for the radiocarbon dating of Late Pleistocene freshwater shells from the Murray-Darling Basin

New observations on the stratigraphy and radiocarbon dates at the Cross Creek site, Opito, Coromandel Peninsula

This paper re-examines stratigraphy and radiocarbon dates at Cross Creek in Sarah's Gully. Three new radiocarbon dates are presented for Layer 9, the earliest, and previously undated, occupation. This investigation is part of a programme of archaeological work being carried out on the Coromandel Peninsula. Although there are several individual research projects underway, they have a common theme related to the Polynesian settlement period on the Coromandel Peninsula. The two seasons of excavation at Tairua are being written up by Matthew Campbell of CFG Heritage on behalf of Roger Green. Louise Furey, also CFG Heritage, is researching a thematic study on early sites for the Department of Conservation, Archaeological research in the Opito area includes documenting a pollen sequence for Opito under a grant obtained from the Green Foundation for Polynesian Research: Pam Chester, Louise Furey and Brenda Sewell are participants. In addition, positively identifying the Kaharoa Ash in the Opito-Sarah's Gully area is a priority

Tracking ancient beach-lines inland: 2600-year-old dentate-stamped ceramics at Hopo, Vailala River region, Papua New Guinea

The Lapita expansion took Austronesian seafaring peoples with distinctive pottery eastward from the Bismarck Archipelago to western Polynesia during the late second millennium BC, marking the first stage in the settlement of Oceania. Here it is shown that a parallel process also carried Lapita pottery and people many hundreds of kilometres westward along the southern shore of Papua New Guinea. The key site is Hopo, now 4.5km inland owing to the progradation of coastal sand dunes, but originally on the sea edge. Pottery and radiocarbon dates indicate Lapita settlement in this location c.600 BC, and suggest that the long-distance maritime networks linking the entire southern coast of Papua New Guinea in historical times may trace their origin to this period

Inter-state transfers for cost differences in federations with population mobility and natural resources

The Australian system of horizontal scal equalization (HFE) transfers output from low to high cost states. This paper develops a standard model of a federation with an imperfectly mobile population and states which capture economic rents from natural resources and recycle the revenue on the basis of residency. A federal agency, which can be thought of as mimicking the role of the Commonwealth Grants Commission, chooses an inter-state transfer to maximize national social welfare. The contribution of the paper is to show that under the assumptions of the model, the optimal transfer to a state is increasing in its costs, for given costs in other states. This supports the notion of inter-state transfers in favour of high cost states. However, the result does not necessarily validate the magnitude of transfers that we see in practice in the Australian federation

Efficient Environmental Standards with Imperfect Competition

Economists have been concerned that sovereign communities may distort environmental policies to attract mobile capital. This paper provides something of a challenge to this idea. It does so by extending the model of Oates and Schwab (1988) to allow the supply of capital to a state, whether acting independently or strategically as part of a federation, to be less than perfectly elastic due to capital market imperfections. This gives the state an incentive to distort its policies in order to manipulate its domestic capital price relative to the given world return for capital. The key result is to show that the state always prefers to use a dedicated capital tax to achieve its desired domestic price, leaving environmental standards at efficient levels. Only when the state is denied access to a capital tax will it resort to distorting environmental standards. Thus, distortions to environmental standards arise from restrictions on the set of policy instruments rather than non-cooperative behavior or capital mobility per se, at least when the incentive to distort policy arises from capital market imperfections