Prehistoric settlement and economy in a tropical small island environment : the Banks Islands, Insular Melanesia

• Main Author: Ward, Graeme
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Canberra, ACT : The Australian National University
• Subjects: Pacific; High Island; Low Island
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/9949; https://doi.org/10.25911/5d51474126fe6; https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/9949/4/Ward_G.K._1979.pdf.jpg

Searching for the Islas de Salomon and their fabulous wealth, the Great Southern Continent beloved of European cartographers and the multitudes of souls surely awaiting salvation there, Quiros the third of the Spanish voyages into the southerly latitudes of the Pacific, stumbled upon the groups of tiny oceanic islands at the intersection of the Solomons and New Hebrides archipelagos. Three or four millennia earlier these same island groups must have been significant links in the initial human colonization of the island Pacific. Their linking role might well have been invoked more than once because they are near the centre of an area bounded by Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The focus of this study are the Banks Islands, a group of small volcanic islands and atoll-like islets in Insular Melanesia where a variety of ecological situations are manifest, a major source of differentiation being the high-island/low-island dichotomy familiar elsewhere in the Pacific. The research has two major themes: The one concerns the role of the islands in the process of the settlement of the region and the other relates to the processes of economic adaptation of prehistoric communities to small tropical island environments and their changes over time. Various subsidiary themes occur, including the role of ethnographic, or ethnoarchaeological, and ethnohistorical accounts in the interpretation of archaeological data. The main method of enquiry, however, was the collection of archaeological data through survey and excavation. The Banks Islands occur at the north of the New Hebrides archipelago; they comprise a group of several large volcanic islands along with a smaller number of sand quays and raised coral islets. The high islands are characterized by towering peaks, roughly dissected interiors and lush tropical vegetation from high remote fastnesses to tropical strand complexes; rainfall is particularly heavy in the upper reaches and several rivers arise in the centres of the larger islands, depositing at lower attitudes ...