Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-f46jp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-05T22:56:25.636Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The first settlement of Remote Oceania: the Philippines to the Marianas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Hsiao-chun Hung ,
Mike T. Carson ,
Peter Bellwood ,
Fredeliza Z. Campos ,
Philip J. Piper ,
Eusebio Dizon ,
Mary Jane Louise A. Bolunia ,
Marc Oxenham  and
Zhang Chi
Hsiao-chun Hung*
Affiliation:
School of Archaeology and Anthropology, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Department of Archaeology and Natural History, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Mike T. Carson
Affiliation:
Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam, Mangilao, GU 96923, USA
Peter Bellwood
Affiliation:
School of Archaeology and Anthropology, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Fredeliza Z. Campos
Affiliation:
School of Humanities, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong S.A.R., P. R. China
Philip J. Piper
Affiliation:
Archaeological Studies Program, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City 1101, Philippines
Eusebio Dizon
Affiliation:
Archaeology Division, National Museum of the Philippines, Manila 1000, Philippines
Mary Jane Louise A. Bolunia
Affiliation:
Archaeology Division, National Museum of the Philippines, Manila 1000, Philippines
Marc Oxenham
Affiliation:
School of Archaeology and Anthropology, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Zhang Chi
Affiliation:
School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University, 5 Yiheyuan Road, Beijing 100871, P. R. China
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The authors compare pottery assemblages in the Marianas and the Philippines to claim endorsement for a first human expansion into the open Pacific around 1500 BC. The Marianas are separated from the Philippines by 2300km of open sea, so they are proposing an epic pioneering voyage of men and women, with presumably some cultivated plants but apparently no animals. How did they manage this unprecedented journey?

Keywords

OceaniaMarianasNeolithic PhilippinesAustronesian
Type
Debate
Information
Antiquity , Volume 85 , Issue 329 , September 2011 , pp. 909 - 926
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2011

References

Amesbury, J. R. 2008a. Prehistoric period, in Amesbury, J. & Hunter-Anderson, R. (ed.) An analysis of archaeological and historical data on fisheries for pelagic species in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Report prepared for Micronesian Archaeological Research Services, Guam.Google Scholar
Amesbury, J. R. 2008b. Pelagic fishing in prehistoric Guam, Mariana Islands. PFRP (Pelagic Fisheries Research Program) Newsletter 13(2): 4–7.Google Scholar
Bellwood, P. 1975. The prehistory of Oceania. Current Anthropology 16(1): 9–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellwood, P. 1978. Man's conquest of the Pacific: the prehistory of Southeast Asia and Oceania. Auckland: Collins.Google Scholar
Bellwood, P. 1985. Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago. Sydney: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bellwood, P. 1997. Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago. Honolulu (HI): University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Bellwood, P. 2005. First farmers: the origins of agricultural societies. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bellwood, P. & Dizon, E. 2005. The Batanes archaeological project and the Out of Taiwan hypothesis for Austronesian dispersal. Journal of Austronesian Studies 1(1): 1–33.Google Scholar
Blust, R. 2000. Chamorro historical phonology. Oceanic Linguistics 39: 83–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blust, R. 2009. The Austronesian languages (Pacific Linguistics 602). Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University.Google Scholar
Butler, M. 1994. Early prehistoric settlement in the Mariana Islands: new evidence from Saipan. Man and Culture in Oceania 10: 15–38.Google Scholar
Butler, M. 1995. Archaeological investigations in the Achugao and Matansa areas of Saipan, Mariana Islands (Micronesian Archaeological Survey Report 30). Saipan: The Micronesian Archaeological Survey, Division of Historic Preservation, Department of Community and Cultural Affairs.Google Scholar
Callaghan, R. & Fitzpatrick, S. M. 2008. Examining prehistoric migration patterns in the Palauan archipelago: a computer simulated analysis of drift voyaging. Asian Perspectives 47(1): 28–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campos, F. Z. 2009. The ichthyoarchaeology of Batanes Islands, northern Philippines. Unpublished MA dissertation, University of the Philippines.Google Scholar
Campos, F. Z. & Piper, P. J. 2009. A preliminary analysis of the animal bones recorded from the OLP II site 2006, southern Taiwan, in Cheng, C. W., Cultural change and regional relationships of prehistoric Taiwan: a case study of Oluanpi II site: Appendix B. Unpublished PhD dissertation, National Taiwan University.Google Scholar
Carson, M. T. 2008. Refining earliest settlements in Remote Oceania: renewed archaeological investigations at Unai Bapot, Saipan. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 3: 115-39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carson, M. T. 2010. Radiocarbon chronology with marine reservoir correction for the Ritidian archaeological site, northern Guam. Radiocarbon 52: 1627-38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carson, M. T. 2011. Palaeohabitat of first settlement sites 1500-1000 BC in Guam, Mariana Islands, western Pacific. Journal of Archaeological Science 38: 2207-21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chang, K. C. 1969. Fengpitou, Tapenken, and the prehistory of Taiwan. NewHaven (CT): Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Chazine, J. M. & Ferrie, J. G. 2008. Recent archaeological discoveries in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 28: 16–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chia, S. M. S. 2003. The prehistory of Bukit Tengkorak as a major pottery making site in Southeast Asia (Sabah Museum monograph 8). Kota Kinabalu: Department of Sabah Museum.Google Scholar
Clark, G., Petchey, F., Winter, O., Carson, M. T. & O'Day, P. 2010. New radiocarbon dates from the Bapot-1 site in Saipan and Neolithic dispersal by stratified diffusion. Journal of Pacific Archaeology 1(1): 21–35.Google Scholar
Dickinson, W. R. 2000. Hydro-isostatic and tectonic influences on emergent Holocene paleoshorelines in the Mariana Islands, western Pacific Ocean. Journal of Coastal Research 16: 735-46.Google Scholar
Dilli, B. J., Haun, A. E. & Goodfellow, S. T. 1998. Archaeological mitigation program: Mangilao golf course project area. Volume 2: data analyses. Report prepared by Paul H. Rosendahl PhD Inc., Hilo, Hawai'i.Google Scholar
Hung, H-C. 2005. Neolithic interaction between Taiwan and northern Luzon: the pottery and jade evidences from the Cagayan Valley. Journal of Austronesian Studies 1: 109–134.Google Scholar
Hung, H-C. 2008. Migration and cultural interaction in southern coastal China, Taiwan and the northern Philippines, 3000 BC to AD 1. Unpublished PhD dissertation, The Australian National University.Google Scholar
Kirch, P. V. 1995. The Lapita culture of western Melanesia in the context of Austronesian origins and dispersals, in Li, P. J-K., Tsang, C. H., Huang, Y. K., Ho, D. A. & Tseng, C. Y. (ed.) Austronesian studies relating to Taiwan (Symposium series of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica 3): 255-94. Taipei: Academia Sinica.Google Scholar
Kirch, P. V. 2000. On the road of the winds: an archaeological history of the Pacific islands before European contact. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kirch, P. V. 2010. Peopling of the Pacific: a holistic anthropological perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology 39: 131-48.Google Scholar
Leach, B. F. & Davidson, J. M. 2006. Analysis of faunal material from an archaeological site complex at Mangilao, Guam (Technical report 38). Wellington: Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa.Google Scholar
Li, K-C. 1983. Report of archaeological investigations in the O-luan-pi Park at the southern tip of Taiwan. Taipei: Kending Scenic Area Administration, Ministry of Communications; Department of Anthropology, National Taiwan University; Council for Cultural Planning and Development, Executive Yuan (in Chinese).Google Scholar
Li, K-T. 1997. Change and stability in the dietary system of a prehistoric coastal population in southern Taiwan. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Arizona State University.Google Scholar
Li, K-T. 2002a. Prehistoric marine fishing adaptation in southern Taiwan. Journal of East Asian Archaeology 3(1-2): 47–74.Google Scholar
Li, K-T. 2002b. Historical remains in Hengchun Peninsula. Kending: Kending National Park (in Chinese).Google Scholar
Moore, D. R. 1983. Measuring change in Marianas pottery: the sequence of pottery production at Tarague, Guam. Unpublished MA dissertation, University of Guam.Google Scholar
Moore, D. R. 2002. Guam's prehistoric pottery and its chronological sequence. Report prepared for the International Archaeological Research Institute, Inc., Honolulu, and the Department of the Navy, Pacific Division, Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Pearl Harbor, HI, by Micronesian Archaeological Research Services, Guam.Google Scholar
Pawley, A. 2002. The Austronesian dispersal: languages, technologies and people, in Bellwood, P. & Renfrew, C. (ed.) Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis (McDonald Institute monographs): 251-73. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Pawley, A. & Pawley, M. 1994. Early Austronesian terms for canoe parts and seafaring, in Pawley, A. & Ross, M. (ed.) Austronesian terminologies: continuity and change (Pacific Linguistics Series C 127): 329-61. Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University.Google Scholar
Pellett, M. & Spoehr, A. 1961. Marianas archaeology: report on an excavation on Tinian. Journal of the Polynesia Society 70: 321-5.Google Scholar
Peterson, W. E. 1974a. Summary report of two archaeological sites from northeastern Luzon. Archaeology and Physical Anthropology in Oceania 9: 26–35.Google Scholar
Peterson, W. E. 1974b. Anomalous archaeology sites of northern Luzon and models of Southeast Asian prehistory. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Hawai'i.Google Scholar
Piper, P. J., Hung, H-C., Campos, F. Z., Bellwood, P. & Santiago, R. 2009a. A 4000 year-old introduction of domestic pigs into the Philippine Archipelago: implications for understanding routes of human migration through Island Southeast Asia and Wallacea. Antiquity 83: 687-95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piper, P. J., Campos, F. Z. & Hung, H-C. 2009b. A study of the animal bones recovered from pits 9 and 10 at the site of Nagsabaran in northern Luzon, Philippines. Hukay 14: 47–90.Google Scholar
Pregill, G. K. & Steadman, D. W. 2009. The prehistory and biogeography of terrestrial vertebrates on Guam, Mariana Islands. Diversity and Distributions 15: 983-96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rainbird, P. 2003. The archaeology of Micronesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ray, E. R. 1981. The material culture of prehistoric Tarague Beach, Guam. Unpublished MA dissertation, Arizona State University.Google Scholar
Reid, L. A. 2002. Morphosyntactic evidence for the position of Chamorro in the Austronesian language family, in Bauer, R. S. (ed.) Collected papers on Southeast Asian and Pacific languages (Pacific Linguistics 530): 63–94. Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University.Google Scholar
Reimer, P. J., Baillie, M. G. L., Bard, E., Bayliss, A., Beck, J. W., Bertrand, C. J. H., Blackwell, P. G., Buck, C. E., Burr, G. S., Cutler, K. B., Damon, P. E., Edwards, R. L., Fairbanks, R. G., Friedrich, M., Guildernson, T. P., Hogg, A. G., Hughen, K. A., Kromer, B., McCormac, G., Manning, S., Ramsey, C. Bronk, Reimer, R. W., Remmelle, S., Southon, J. R., Stuiver, M., Talamo, S., Taylor, F. W., Plicht, J. Van Der, Weyhenmeyer, C. E. 2004. IntCal04 terrestrial radiocarbon age calibration, 0-26 cal kyr BP. Radiocarbon 46: 1029–1058.Google Scholar
Reinman, F. M. 1970. Fishhook variability: implications for the history and distribution of fishing gear in Oceania, in Green, R. C. & Kelly, M. (ed.) Studies in Oceanic culture history: papers presented at Wenner-Gen Symposium on Oceanic Culture History, Sigatoka, Fiji, August 1969, Volume 1 (Pacific Anthropological Records 11): 47–60. Honolulu (HI): Bernice P. Bishop Museum.Google Scholar
Ross, M., Pawley, A. & Osmond, M. 1998. The lexicon of proto Oceanic: the culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society. Volume 1: material culture (Pacific Linguistics series C 152). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University.Google Scholar
Sand, C. 1999. Archéologie des origines: le lapita calédonien (Cahiers de l'archeologie en Nouvelle-Calédonia 10). Nouméa: Service des Musées et du Patrimoine de Nouvelle-Calédonie.Google Scholar
Shutler, R. J. R. 1999. The relationship of red-slipped and lime-impressed pottery of the southern Philippines to that of Micronesia and the Lapita of Oceania, in Galipaud, J. C. & Lilley, I. (ed.) Le Pacifique de 5000 à 2000 avant le présent: suppléments à l'histoire d'une colonization: actes du colloque Vanuatu, 31 juillet-6 août: 521-9. Paris: IRD.Google Scholar
Solheim, W. G. II 1968. The Batungan cave sites, Masbate, Philippines, in Solheim, W. G. II (ed.) Anthropology at the Eighth Pacific Science Congress of the Pacific Science Association and the Fourth Far-Eastern Prehistory Congress, Quezon City, Philippines, 1953 (Asian and Pacific Archaeology series 2). Honolulu (HI): Social Science Research Institute, University of Hawai'i.Google Scholar
Spoehr, A. 1957. Marianas prehistory: archaeological survey and excavations on Saipan, Tinian and Rota (Fieldiana: anthropology 48). Chicago (IL): Chicago Natural History Museum.Google Scholar
Spoehr, A. 1973. Zamboanga and Sulu: an archaeological approach to ethnic diversity (Ethnology Monographs 1). Pittsburgh (PA): Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M. 1990. The changing face of Lapita: transformation of a design, in Spriggs, M. (ed.) Lapita design, form and composition: proceedings of the Lapita Design Workshop, Canberra, Australia, December 1988 (Occasional papers in prehistory 19): 83–122. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M. 2007. The Neolithic and Austronesian expansion within Island Southeast Asia and into the Pacific, in Chiu, S. & Sand, C. (ed.) From Southeast Asia to the Pacific: archaeological perspectives on the Austronesian expansion and the Lapita cultural complex: 104–140. Taipei: Academia Sinica.Google Scholar
Stuiver, M. & Reimer, P. J. 1993. Extended 14C data base and revised CALIB 3.0 14C age calibration program. Radiocarbon 35: 215-30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Summerhayes, G. R. 2007. The rise and transformations of Lapita in the Bismarck Archipelago, in Chiu, S. & Sand, C. (ed.) From Southeast Asia to the Pacific: archaeological perspectives on the Austronesian expansion and the Lapita cultural complex: 129-72. Taipei: Academia Sinica.Google Scholar
Summerhayes, G. R. In press. Lapita interaction: an update, in Gadu, M. Z. & Lin, H. M. (ed.) 2009 International Symposium of Austronesian Studies. Taidong: National Museum of Prehistory.Google Scholar
Tabbada, K. A., Trejaut, J., Loo, J. H., Chen, Y. M., Lin, M., Ón-Lahr, M. Miraz, Kivisild, T. & Ungria, M. C. A. De. 2010. Philippine mitochondrial DNA diversity: a populated viaduct between Taiwan and Indonesia? Molecular Biology and Evolution 27(1): 21–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thiel, B. 1987. Excavations at the Lal-Lo shell middens, northeast Luzon, Philippines. Asian Perspectives 27(1): 71–94.Google Scholar
Thompson, L. M. 1932. Archaeology of the Marianas Islands (Bernice P. Bishop Museum. Bulletin 100). Honolulu (HI): Bishop Museum.Google Scholar
Tsang, C-H. 2000. The archaeology of Taiwan. Taipei: Council for Cultural Affairs, Executive Yuan.Google Scholar
Tsang, C-H. 2007 Recent archaeological discoveries in Taiwan and northern Luzon: implications for Austronesian expansion, in Chiu, S. & Sand, C. (ed.) From Southeast Asia to the Pacific: archaeological perspectives on the Austronesian expansion and the Lapita cultural complex: 75–103. Taipei: Academia Sinica.Google Scholar
Tsang, C-H., Li, K. T., & Chu, C. Y. 2006. Xian Min Lv Ji [Footprints of the ancestors: archaeological discoveries in Tainan science-based industrial park]. Tainan: Tainan County Government (in Chinese).Google Scholar
Vilar, M., Lynch, D., Chan, C., Reiff, D., Garruto, R. M. & Lum, J. K. 2008. Peopling of the Marianas: an mtDNA perspective. Abstract from the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Human Biology Association held in Columbus, Ohio, April 9-10, 2008. American Journal of Human Biology 20: 237.Google Scholar
Wickler, S. 2004. Modelling colonisation and migration in Micronesia from a zooarchaeological perspective, in Mondini, M., Munoz, S. & Wickler, S. (ed.) Colonisation, migration and marginal areas: a zooarchaeological approach (Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the International Council of Zooarchaeology, Durham, August 2002): 28–40. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar