New AMS Radiocarbon Dates and a Re-evaluation of the Cultural Sequence of Tikopia Island, Southeast Solomon Islands

Authors

  • Patrick V. Kirch Department of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley
  • Jillian A. Swift Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15286/jps.126.3.313-336

Keywords:

Lapita, Rattus exulans, Tikopia, Polynesian Outliers, Bayesian modelling, Solomon Islands, Remote Oceania

Abstract

The Polynesian Outlier of Tikopia, situated in the Santa Cruz Islands group (Temotu Province) of the Solomon Islands, has one of the best-defined archaeological sequences in the southwestern Pacific. Archaeological excavations in 1977-78 yielded a rich record of material culture and faunal remains, with a chronological framework provided by 20 radiocarbon dates. These dates, however, were processed on unidentified wood charcoal using the older liquid-scintillation method; the large standard errors associated with these dates rendered this chronology rather imprecise. Here we report 13 new, high-precision AMS radiocarbon dates on carbonised coconut endocarp, rat bone and pig teeth from the original excavations. The new AMS dates confirm the original sequence and, when combined with the original radiocarbon dates in a Bayesian calibration model, allow for a refinement of the cultural chronology for Tikopia. This updated model provides a more precise chronology for key events in Tikopian prehistory including first human colonisation, the arrival of Polynesian-speaking populations to the island and the formation of the sandy tombolo transforming Te Roto into a brackish-water lake.

Author Biographies

Patrick V. Kirch, Department of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley

Patrick Kirch is Chancellor's Professor Emeritus and Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. Prof. Kirch, who received his PhD from Yale University (1975), has conducted extensive archaeological fieldwork throughout Melanesia and Polynesia over more than 50 years and published extensively on related topics. His honours include election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Jillian A. Swift, Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

Jillian Swift is a post-doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2016, with a dissertation that applied isotopically-reconstructed Pacific rat diet as a proxy for paleoenvironmental change on several Polynesian islands. Her research pursues novel applications of stable isotope analysis towards understanding the impacts of human-translocated animals on past island societies and ecosystems.

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Published

2017-09-25