Anthropological Study on Prehistoric Polynesian Dispersal

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The major point of the present study was to carry out an extensive, multidisciplinary field research in Mangaia, the southernmost island of the Cook group, central Polynesia, and to collect basic data which are necessary for reconstructing the physical characters and life way of prehistoric Polynesian people at the initial stage of settlement in the Polynesian islands. To be more concrete, it was to excavate archaeologically the Vairoronga site on the island, to gather information on the traditional arts of fishing, plant using and artefact manufactures, and to collect folkloristic words and chants for the purpose of linguistic reconstruction of ancient life.Archaeological excavation was carried out twice one each in 1993 and in 1994 at the Vairoronga site which has been proved provisionally to date at most 1,000 years BP by C14 dating. Through the excavation, human skeletal remains for a total of 30 individuals were collected in the burial area of the site. This collection of human sk … More eletons may be reckoned as one of the largest materials to date excavated in the Polynesia proper. In the habitual area of the site, there were excavated plenty of stone tools, bone tools, and shell artefacts such as fishhooks, harpoons and tatoo combs. Furthermore, a heap of food remains such as animal bones, fish bones and shells, and C14 dating materials were sampled there. The food remains amount to more than 10 kilograms, and the C14 materials to more than 500 samples. Those human skeletal remains, archaeological materials and C14 samples are now being analyzed and examined by the co-laborators of the present study at their laboratories in Japan. Those materials are all too large in volume to analyze in a short term, but must be very promissing in getting evidence to make a scenario on prehistoric Polynesian dispersals and adaptation starategies to small oceanic islands.Linguistic data have been accumulated enough to make a Mangaian-English dictionary. The dictionary will become a package source to derive data to reconstruct linguistically the culture, social structure and life way of an ancient Mangaian society, and it should be very important to preserve an indigenous Polynesian language which is vanishing year by year. Less