Southeast Solomon Islands in Regional Perspective: Settlement History, Interaction Spheres, Polynesian Outliers and Eastward Dispersals

Authors

  • Peter J. Sheppard University of Auckland

Keywords:

Marginal East Melanesia–Central Micronesia (MEMCM) Interaction Zone, southeast Solomons, Melanesia, Polynesia, Micronesia, Remote Oceania settlement, culture history, Pacific archaeology, DNA, Oceanic linguistics

Abstract

This paper reviews the prehistory of the greater southeast Solomons region in the light of the 46 years of research which has been conducted since Green and Yen published the preliminary results of their Southeast Solomons Culture History Project in 1976. Green saw the region as key to investigating some of the major questions relating to Oceanic culture history, and as subsequent archaeological, linguistic and genetic research has shown, this has proven to be the case. The evidence is reviewed for initial Lapita and subsequent settlement, the development of a Marginal East Melanesia–Central Micronesia Interaction Zone, early proto-Polynesian settlement of the Polynesian Outliers and the probable role of the region in the settlement of East Polynesia.

Author Biography

Peter J. Sheppard, University of Auckland

Peter Sheppard is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, University of Auckland, having joined the academic staff in 1992 and retired in 2021. He has conducted archaeological research in the Solomon Islands since 1989 when, as a post-doctoral fellow, he was sent by Roger Green to Malaita to locate sources of chert found in the Lapita sites of Temotu Province. Returning to the Solomon Islands in 1996 he began a series of projects with his students and colleagues that involved survey and excavation throughout the islands of the Western Province. In 2009 he turned to the eastern Solomons, where he carried out field studies on Santa Ana, followed by research on Santa Cruz in Temotu Province with re-excavation and dating of the SE-SZ-8 Lapita site originally excavated by Green. Much of this work is summarised in the first monograph-length survey of Solomon Island archaeology, Archaeology of the Solomon Islands (University of Otago Press, University of Hawai‘i Press), which he published with Richard Walter in 2017. Peter is also Co-editor of the journal Archaeology in Oceania with Peter White.

Cover of JPS June 2022

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Published

2022-09-04

Issue

Vol. 131 No. 2 (2022): June 2022

Section

Articles

License

Copyright © 2022 by the Polynesian Society (Inc.)

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