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Archaeology of
Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific
ARCHY 325/525; Autumn 2014 Mon., Wed., 10:30-12:50 Denny Hall 401
Note: Schedule subject to change. Check at least weekly for updates and changes. Introduction (Wed)
09/24: Introductions
(Mon) 9/29: Who studies
tropical Pacific islands and why?Review themes for the course, introduce instructors and students, go over syllabus. Readings No readings for first class Tropical
Pacific islands have been a sort of playground
for foreign scholars (and others) from Europe
and the Americas for centuries. We'll take a
look at this history and discuss how it
continues to affect the kinds of questions
archaeologists ask and the ways they practice
their research.
Readings
Island biogeographyWallace, Alfred Russell. 1869. The Malay Archipelago. Chapters XXVIII-XXIX, "Macassar to the Aru Islands in a Native Prau", pp. 408-431. You may have to scroll through to get to page 408 (which is page 405 of the google books version). Feel free to continue reading and/or skim other sections for great natural history adventure writing, but be warned that you may find some of the language Wallace uses to be disturbingly racist. (Wed) 10/1: Tropical Pacific
geography
An overview of the geological and biological forces that have shaped tropical Pacific Island and and seascapes. We'll also go over what you should know for the map quiz on Monday 10/6. Readings
Bellwood, Peter. 1997. Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago, 2nd Edition. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, pp. 1-39. Fitzpatrick,
Scott M. and Anderson, Atholl. 2008. Islands
of Isolation: Archaeology and the Power of Aquatic
Perimeters, Journal
of Island and Coastal Archaeology 3:4-16.
(Mon)
10/6: What is special about island ecosystems?
Pleistocene and early
Holocene occupationsIslands are by definition "isolated", but the reality of this isolation is complicated. Is it the same for all forms of life that visit and inhabit them? Can isolation change through time? What factors determine levels of isolation? Readings Keegan, William F. and Jared Diamond. 1987. Colonization of islands by humans: a biogeographical perspective. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 10: 49-92. Map Quiz (20% of your course grade) This will take place in the second half of class and tests your knowledge of the names of places and subregions in the tropical Pacific, as well as wind and currents, geology and environment of the region. Map quiz study guide maps and names PowerPoint slides from class (Wed)
10/8: Hobbits and other relatives
Island Southeast Asia has been a major site of discovery of hominims that revolutionized the way we think about the evolution and dispersal of modern humans. We'll go over the latest discoveries and how they have been explained. Readings Morwood,
Michael and W. L Jungers. 2009. Conclusions:
implications of the Liang Bua excavations for
hominin evolution and biogeography. Journal of Human
Evolution 57: 640Ð648.
NatureNews Flores Man website (unfortunately not updated past 2005, but good overview of the original discovery, interactive graphics, etc.). For a more up-to-date coverage, see this blog and related links. (Mon)
10/13: First modern humans
How and when did modern humans get to Sunda and Sahul? What were the limits of human explorations in the early Holocene and why? We will also discuss requirements for your position paper assignment, due two weeks from today. This page has some additional resources that might help you get started with your research. Readings Leavesley, Matthew. 2005. Late Pleistocene Complexities in the Bismark Archipelago. In Archaeology of Oceania: Australia and the Pacific Islands, Ian Lilley, ed. pp. 189-204. Blackwell, London. SahulTime interactive The Island Southeast Asian Neolithic (Wed)
10/15: Fast Trains, Slow
Boats, Languages and Origin Myths
Major
changes in the archaeological record start to
appear in sites dating to about 4000 years ago
in the northern Philippines, and shortly
afterwards humans break through the remote
Oceania boundary. We'll take a look at the major
theories that try to account for that empirical
data.
Readings Bellwood, Peter. 2004. The origins and dispersals of agricultural communities in Southeast Asia. In Southeast Asia: From prehistory to present. Ian Glover and Peter Bellwood, eds. pp. 21-39. Routledge. Hurles, Matthew, Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith, Russell Gray, and David Penny. 2003. Untangling Oceanic settlement:the edge of the knowable. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 18(10):531-540. Powerpoint slides from today's class, and Monday 10/20 (Mon)
10/20:
We continue our discussion of the Island Southeast Asian Neolithic with a look at some current questioning of long held assumptions. What do we really want to learn from the ISEA Neolithic? Readings Spriggs, Matthew. 2011. Archaeology and the Austronesian expansion: where are we now? Antiquity 85: 510-528 Guest presentation Emily Peterson (UW PhD student): Connectedness in the Neolithic Banda Islands, Indonesia link to Emily's ppt slides
(Wed) 10/22: Lapita origins and timing
Sometime around 3500 years ago, humans finally sailed beyond the Solomon Islands to inhabit islands that had never seen humans before. We'll look at current research that tries to explain this phenomenon. What took people so long to break through this barrier? Why did they suddenly break through at 3200 BP? Readings Denham, Tim, Christopher Ramsey, Jim Specht. 2012. Dating the appearance of Lapita pottery in the Bismarck Archipelago and its dispersal to Remote Oceania. Archaeology in Oceania 47:39-46. This 2008 National Geographic article has excellent interactive graphics and interviews with key researchers, and is a good introduction to Lapita and Remote Oceania colonization. (Mon) 10/27: What is going on in New
Guinea?
A quick trip through the
rest of the PacificMeanwhile, in the highlands of New Guinea, people have developed complex agricultural systems, incredible linguistic and cultural diversity and extensive trade networks. How does this relate to what is happening on the coast and in the smaller islands? Readings Denham, Tim, et al. 2003. Origins of Agriculture at Kuk Swamp in the Highlands of New Guinea. Science 301: 189-193. Guest presentation Jenn Huff (UW PhD student): Eastern Highlands PNG archaeology link to Jenn's ppt slides link to Peter's ppt slides (Wed) 10/29: Navigation basics
We'll take a look at what we know about early Oceanic boats, sails and navigation technology. We will spend the second half of class doing a read-around style peer review of each other's papers. Readings Irwin, Geoffrey. 2008. Voyaging with Regard to Theories of Migration. Asian Perspectives 47(1): 12-27. Position Paper Draft due Bring a printed copy of your paper to class for read-around peer review session. (Mon) 11/3: Extreme
voyaging
Natural
and anthropogenic disastersHumans found and colonized increasingly remote islands after the end of the Lapita period. How did they do it? How has thinking about this amazing achievement changed in western scholarship and Oceanic traditions? How does recent revised dating change this picture? Readings Allen, Melinda and Andrew McAlister. 2010. The Hakaea Beach site, Marquesan colonisation, and models of East Polynesian settlement. Archaeology in Oceania 45: 54Ð65. Wilmshurst, Janet, Terry L. Hunt, Carl P. Lipo and Atholl J. Anderson. 2011. High-precision radiocarbon dating shows recent and rapid initial human colonization of East Polynesia. PNAS 108(5): 1815Ð1820. **FIELD TRIP to Burke Museum boat collection at its off-site storage warehouse: Meet at the Burke cafe at 10:30 AM, vehicles leave N1 parking lot at 10:40 AM, return to campus by 12:30 PM. (Wed)
11/5: How
to not get along
Was warfare a feature of the tropical Pacific Islands before European contact? We'll take a look at the evidence and investigate some possible causes for group conflict. Readings East Timor warfare and climate PPT slides from today (Mon) 11/10: Ecocide? How has the archaeological record of the Pacific been used as a metaphor for present-day challenges or fears?We'll spend some time going over the requirements for your final proposal paper, the first draft for which is due three weeks from today on Wednesday 12/1. Click here for Grant Proposal Guidelines, a Sample Proposal, and a blank budget spreadsheet. Click here to see the actual National Geographic grants info (but use our class guidelines for this assignment). Readings Diamond, Jared. 2005. Twilight at Easter. In Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. pp. 79-119. Viking. (Wed)
11/12: Was it really that
bad?
Island SE
Asia and Oceania encounters with Europe and the
AmericasCan disasters be good things and bad lessons? Readings Hunt, Terry. 2006. Rethinking Easter IslandÕs ecological catastrophe. Journal of Archaeological Science 34: 485-502. Spriggs, Matthew. 1997. Landscape catastrophe and landscape enhancement: Are either or both true in the Pacific? In Historical Ecology in the Pacific Islands: Prehistoric Environmental and Landscape Change, pp. 80-104. P. V. Kirch and T. Hunt, Yale University Press, New Haven. Position Paper Final Version due (25% of your course grade) Bring print out of your revised paper to class, stapled to your first draft with peer review comments included. (Mon) 11/17: Combining documents and artifacts Tropical Pacific history is not just archaeology. How can we use written documents, oral traditions and other forms of evidence about the past? How well do they get along with archaeological evidence? Can a discipline with a long association with (and partly a product of) colonialism be used to investigate colonial situations? (Wed) 11/19: What to think
about Captain Cook
One of the greatest battles in anthropology in the 1990s and early 2000s was over what happened to Captain Cook on the big island of Hawaii over 200 years earlier, in 1779. This was a battle about colonialism and scholarship, and is highly relevant to the questions raised in this class. What role does archaeology play in these debates (if any)? Readings Sahlins, Marshall 1978. The Apotheosis of Captain Cook. Papers of the Kroeber Anthropological Society 53-4:1-31. Blog posts by Chris Kavanagh with overview of the debate between Sahlins and Obeysekere, with links; part 1 and part 2 Kirch, Patrick V. 2000. The Polynesian Chiefdoms. In On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Polynesian Islands before European Contact, pp 289-301, UC Berkeley Press. (Mon)
11/24: Chickens and sweet potatoes
Thanksgiving dinner, aloha style? Readings Storey, Alice et al. 2007. Radiocarbon and DNA evidence for a pre-Columbian introduction of Polynesian chickens to Chile. PNAS 104(25): 10335Ð9. Montenegro, ç., Avis, C., & Weaver, A. 2008. Modeling the prehistoric arrival of the sweet potato in Polynesia. Journal of Archaeological Science 35(2): 355Ð367. (Wed) 11/26: no class, happy feasting!Final wrap-up (Mon) 12/1: The
politics and practicalities of archaeology in
the tropical Pacific
We will spend part of the class doing a read-around style peer review of each other's papers, and part discussing project ideas in the context of some political considerations Readings Sand, Christoph, Jacques Bole and AndrŽ Ouetcho. 2005. What is archaeology for in the Pacific? History and Politics in New Caledonia. In Archaeology of Oceania: Australia and the Pacific Islands, Ian Lilley, ed. pp. 321-345. Blackwell, London. Project Proposal paper draft due Bring a printed copy of your paper to class. I'll collect the papers at the end of class, and return to you on Wed 12/3. Final revised version is due on Tuesday 12/9. Your draft will not be graded, but your comments on other people's papers will be part of your final paper grade. If you miss this class, you are responsible for getting at least two peers to review your paper and for reviewing at least two other papers. (Wed) 12/3:
Presentations by ARCHY 525 students, final
wrap up
Graduate students in Archy 525 have been working on independent research projects this quarter. This week, they will present their projects to the class.
(Tues) 12/9: Project
Proposal
final version due, 4:30 PM (25%
of your course grade)
Print out your paper and staple it to your first draft with peer review comments. Drop in Peter Lape's faculty mailbox, Anthropology office, Denny Hall mezzanine.
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