Anthropogenic Environmental Change, Agricultural Intensification, and Socio-Political Evolution in Polynesia

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With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Kirch and his colleagues will conduct archaeological, ecological and paleoecological research on the island of Mangaia which is part of the Cook Islands chain. They will extract several soil cores to obtain pollen to reconstruct changing vegetation over the last several thousand years. These data will be supplemented by the analysis of faunal remains which document the periods both before and after first human occupation. Geomorphological studies will show how landforms changed in response to both changing sea level and intensive human exploitation. Finally, archaeological survey and excavation will serve to elucidate the estimated 2000 year span since the first occupation of the island by humans. Dr. Kirch wishes to trace changes in population density, land use and political organization. These data will then provide a context within which to study the social organization and economy of the present day descendants. A wealth of ethnographic data exists. The islands of Polynesia provide a unique anthropological laboratory because they were all colonized in the last several thousand years by basically a single cultural group. The islands vary in size and environment and degree of isolation. The inhabitants also exhibit a number of different forms of social organization. Anthropologists have attempted to relate variation in social behavior to variation in island type and through this exercise understand the mechanisms which govern human response to environmental variation. Mangaia exhibits an unusual form of organization in which chiefly inherited rights are balanced by individually achieved status. Kirch believes that this can only be understood in terms of changing human - environment relations over time and this project is designed to investigate that interaction. This project is important for several reasons. It will increase our understanding of the organizational principles of tribal- based societies (which continue to exist in many parts of the world.). It will also show how groups act in the face of increasingly limited resources and the strategies of adaptation they develop. The work will provide data of interest to a large group of archaeologists and help to train young scientists.