Settlement Systems and Sea-Level History in the Central Pacific

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With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Jeffrey Clark and his colleagues will conduct one field season of archaeological and geological research on Tutuila Island, American Samoa. Archaeological research will focus on the 'Aoa and Leone valleys and combine survey with excavation of known sites. The data collected will, hopefully, permit the culture history of the region to be reconstructed. Changing lifestyle and settlement pattern over time will be studied. The central goals of the geological part of the project will be to determine how relative sea level changed over time and how landforms were modified by human activity. To accomplish this, ancient shorelines will be located and mapped. Geological cores will be extracted and analyzed to determine geomorphological changes. Palynological data will also assist in this process. The results will be generalized to other islands in the Pacific. Through integration of both aspects of the research, it should be possible to reconstruct the mutual interactions between changing human practices and landforms. In recent years, archaeologists have come to realize that Pacific islands provide a excellent context to study complex human- landform interactions. On the one hand, changes in relative sea level due to local tectonism altered the landscape available for human subsistence. On the other hand, the felling and burning of forests by local populations also had a major effect because of the erosion which resulted. The response by these groups in many instances led to the rise of the complex chiefdoms observed by early Western explorers. Archaeologists, however, disagree on the specific interaction mechanisms and this study should provide new insight. This research is important for several reasons. It will provide basic geological information on changing sea levels which, hopefully, can be generalized to other islands in the region. It should yield new insight into human-land relationships and shed new light on the rise of cultural complexity. Finally, it will help to strengthen the scientific infrastructure at North Dakota State University.