Dramatic change following human settlement on small Pacific Islands
by
John Dodson
University of Western Australia

Dramatic change following human settlement on small Pacific Islands

John Dodson,

University of Western Australia,

Perth, WA, Australia

Islands are by their very nature confined and limited in resources. In the western Pacific there are large numbers of islands of a variety of sizes spread over a vast range of climates. A number of archaeological studies have been undertaken over the last few decades and these reveal the major patterns of human settlement for some regions. The large island continent of Australia and adjacent New Guinea and Tasmania have supported human populations for many tens of thousands of years. The smaller islands tend to have archaeological records stretching over a few thousand years (e.g. New Caledonia, Fiji, Guam and Micronesia), a few hundred years (New Zealand, Chatham Islands) and in some cases only since European colonization of the Pacific (Norfolk Island). It appears some islands have never supported human populations and others have been settled then subsequently abandoned. This mix of places and prehistories provide a number of natural laboratories in order to test the impact of settlement and cultural contexts on vegetation and environmental systems. The confined nature of islands often translates into immediate environmental response to human impact in sedimentary systems.

In this paper case studies are presented from New Caledonia and Micronesia to show the kinds of records that emerge and how a collapse in vegetation structure and diversity emerges which is unprecedented in terms of the longer perspective evident in pollen diagrams. The combination of archaeological and palaeoecological science in these situations enriches the degree of information and interpretation for both sciences.

Date received: July 8, 2002

Copyright © 2002 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # caji-38.