Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2020. 348 pp. (B&W photos.) US$160.00, cloth. ISBN 9781138303546.
This collection of essays surveys a range of current theoretical approaches to archaeology in the Pacific Islands, and explores the local and global deep roots of these ideas, extending beyond archaeology. The Pacific has long been a classic locus of sociocultural and biological research and as Tim Thomas writes, “a supply zone for the circulation of theoretical ideas and models of sociocultural forms” (5). The authors “are interested in how Pacific archaeology, and the Pacific itself, has been constituted as an arena for the exploration of theoretical perspectives, and has contributed to the definition and refinement of their benefits, successes and failings” (2).
Thomas’s introduction reviews the ever-contentious ground of theory in archaeology and how it frames archaeological practice. The long history of outsiders’ interpretations of local encounters and conceptions of place in the Pacific is strongly reflected in global theoretical formulations in a wide range of disciplines. The entanglements of earlier categorical distinctions, such as those of race, language, and culture, with new theoretical approaches and new bodies of data in the Pacific make for challenging and interesting debates.
Thomas Leppard and Scott Fitzpatrick (chapter 2) discuss island archaeology as an emerging global field of practice. In this, the Pacific as the site of innovative theory formation—evolutionary, ecological, and biogeographic as well as anthropological—has been very influential, though Pacific archaeology has been reflected less in Caribbean than in Mediterranean studies. Ethan Cochrane (chapter 3) reviews the Pacific as a crucial site of evolutionary thinking in archaeology, from the influential social evolutionary approach of Marshall Sahlins and later, increasingly sophisticated models of adaptive process, behavioural ecology, and cultural trait transmission. His case study of the first human movement from Near to Remote Oceania (marked by Lapita-style earthenware) compares an approach based on differential access to power over acquisition of prestige items with a selection-based approach to the replication of traits across the Near-Remote boundary. He concludes that the contrasting analytical frames and scales might both contribute further insights. Patrick Kirch (chapter 4) reflects on his long-standing interest in phylogenetic approaches to the analysis of cultural variation and change in Polynesia. He discusses the reformulation of biological classificatory concepts to apply to cultural domains, and makes clear the contribution of historical linguistics, as well as archaeology, in constraining and validating reconstruction of past socio-cultural entities. Recent, more sophisticated statistical methods applied to larger linguistic and other Pacific datasets have expanded this approach and integrated it with more recent, ever-growing data from molecular biology.
Mark Golitko (chapter 5) discusses the contribution of Pacific-based formulations of traditional social life to global social theory, and how these have been reflected in archaeology. He highlights tensions between isolation and interaction, and how these affect explanations of cultural and linguistic diversity. The case study by Katherine Szabó and colleagues (chapter 6) of shell artefact assemblages across the boundary of Island Southeast Asia and Oceania shows how assumed geographic/cultural categories obscure ancient connections.
Thomas (chapter 7) presents a thoughtful overview of theoretical approaches to human dispersal, and reconsiders Pacific founder colonization as a long-term, multiscalar process. He distinguishes models at different scales that disentangle and clarify different modes of island colonization, in which people’s environmental and social relations are both reformulated. This broadening of theoretical perspective enables colonizers’ emergent identities to be understood as both historically and spatially constituted, the results of processes at different scales of alternating mobility and settling in, remaking their worlds.
Matthew Spriggs (chapter 8) extends his hypothesis, drawn from reformulation of Marxist political economy, that prestige practices rather than simply the exchange of prestige goods drove the Lapita expansion. James Flexner (chapter 9) outlines anarchist perspectives to balance over-emphasis on elite power and the pervasive assumption that associated hierarchical political forms are necessarily associated with complex social and economic relations. Tim Denham’s (chapter 10) review of the early development of New Guinea agriculture, framed by practices rather than abstractions such as domestication, similarly disposes of pervasive universalizing concepts and models, and narratives that link early development of agriculture with particular social and political trajectories. Jennifer Kahn’s (chapter 11) study of settlement patterns and political stratification in the Society Islands, based on a rich archaeological and ethnohistorical record of inland secondary centres, uses network analysis to examine linkages between site complexes. She suggests that the landscape reflects sociopolitical realignments in a wider context of shifting power relationships and increasing centralization. Cynthia Van Gilder (chapter 12) outlines the history of gender theory in archaeology and its largely unrealized potential in Polynesia. Her analysis of a rich archaeological record of late-period Hawaiian domestic spaces shows that patterns of gender-based practices can be identified, allowing a critique of standard, ethnohistorically derived assumptions.
The chapters by Peter Sheppard (chapter 13) and Yvonne Marshall (chapter 14) both discuss relationships of Pacific traditional knowledge, ethnohistory, and archaeology. Sheppard reviews the long history of tensions between oral traditions and archaeology, as the contexts in which both are framed and practiced have shifted. Much recent archaeology in the Pacific has been enriched by insights from oral traditions, and community engagement in archaeological fieldwork practice has also increased and come to be recognized as productive. Marshall uses Maori scholarship to detach whakapapa from its usual limited translation as genealogy, and shows that the extended indigenous concept affords a productive way of rethinking an otherwise narrowly categorized artefact class.
The wide range of approaches is pulled together thematically in Thomas’s introductory essay, and most authors review the background of their theoretical positions, so that the collection is a useful overview of the diversity of Pacific archaeological practice, rather than merely a summary of current research. It is also a refreshing antidote to the oversimplifications of recent biomolecular research on the peopling of the Pacific. Thus, among the many recent publications on similar themes, this book should have a long shelf life for those curious about Pacific archaeological research.
Jean Kennedy
Australian National University, Canberra