The Early Prehistory Of Fiji

I enjoyed reading this volume. It is rare to see such a comprehensive report on hard data published these days, especially one so insightfully contextualised by the editors' introductory and concluding chapters. These scholars and the others involved in the work really know their stuff, and it shows. The editors connect the preoccupations of Pacific archaeologists with those of their colleagues working in other island regions and on "big questions" of colonisation, migration, interaction and patterns and processes of cultural change in hitherto-uninhabited environments. These sorts of outward-looking, big-picture contextual studies are invaluable, but all too often are missing from locally- and regionally-oriented writing, very much to its detriment. In sum, the work strongly advances our understanding of the early prehistory of Fiji through its well-integrated combination of original research and the reinterpretation of existing knowledge in the context of wider theoretical and historical concerns. In doing so The Early Prehistory of Fiji makes a truly substantial contribution to Pacific and archaeological scholarship. Professor Ian Lilley, The University of Queensland

I enjoyed reading this volume. It is rare to see such a comprehensive report on hard data published these days, especially one so insightfully contextualised by the editors' introductory and concluding chapters. These scholars and the others involved in the work really know their stuff, and it shows. The editors connect the preoccupations of Pacific archaeologists with those of their colleagues working in other island regions and on big questions of colonisation, migration, interaction and patterns and processes of cultural change in hitherto-uninhabited environments. These sorts of outward-looking, big-picture contextual studies are invaluable, but all too often are missing from locally- and regionally-oriented writing, very much to its detriment. In sum, the work strongly advances our understanding of the early prehistory of Fiji through its well-integrated combination of original research and the reinterpretation of existing knowledge in the context of wider theoretical and historical concerns. In doing so The Early Prehistory of Fiji makes a truly substantial contribution to Pacific and archaeological scholarship.

Oceania was the last region on earth to be permanently inhabited, with the final settlers reaching Aotearoa/New Zealand approximately AD 1300. This is about the same time that related Polynesian populations began erecting Easter Island's gigantic statues, farming the valley slopes of Tahiti and similar islands, and moving finely made basalt tools over several thousand kilometers of open ocean between Hawai'i, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, and archipelagos in between. The remarkable prehistory of Polynesia is one chapter of Oceania's human story. Almost 50,000 years prior, people entered Oceania for the first time, arriving in New Guinea and its northern offshore islands shortly thereafter, a biogeographic region labelled Near Oceania and including parts of Melanesia. Near Oceania saw the independent development of agriculture and has a complex history resulting in the greatest linguistic diversity in the world. Beginning 1000 BC, after millennia of gradually accelerating cultural change in Near Oceania, some groups sailed east from this space of inter-visible islands and entered Remote Oceania, rapidly colonizing the widely separated separated archipelagos from Vanuatu to S?moa with purposeful, return voyages, and carrying an intricately decorated pottery called Lapita. From this common cultural foundation these populations developed separate, but occasionally connected, cultural traditions over the next 3000 years. Western Micronesia, the archipelagos of Palau, Guam and the Marianas, was also colonized around 1500 BC by canoes arriving from the west, beginning equally long sequences of increasingly complex social formations, exchange relationships and monumental constructions. All of these topics and others are presented in The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania written by Oceania's leading archaeologists and allied researchers. Chapters describe the cultural sequences of the region's major island groups, provide the most recent explanations for diversity and change in Oceanic prehistory, and lay the foundation for the next generation of research.

Disturbing History focuses on Fiji’s people and their agency in responding to and engaging the multifarious forms of authority and power that were manifest in the colony from 1874 to 1914. By concentrating on the lives of ordinary Fijians, the book presents alternate ways of reconstructing the island’s past. Couched in the traditions of social, subaltern, and people’s histories, the study is an excavation of a large mass of material that tells the often moving stories of lives that have largely been overlooked by historians. These challenge conventional historical accounts that tend to celebrate the nation, represent Fiji’s colonial experience as ordered and peaceful, or British tutelage as benevolent. In its contribution to postcolonial theory, Disturbing History reveals resistance as a constant but partial and untidy mix of other constituents such as collaboration, consent, appropriation, and opportunism, which together form the colonial landscape. In turn, colonialism in Fiji is shown as a force shaped in struggle, fractured and often fragile, with a presence and application in the daily lives of people that was often chaotic, imperfect, and susceptible to subversion. The book divides the period of study into two broad categories: organized resistance and everyday forms of resistance. The first examines the Colo War (1876), the Tuka Movement (1878–1891), the Seaqaqa War (1894), the Movement for Federation with New Zealand (1901–1903), the Viti Kabani Movement (1913–1917), and the various organized labor protests. The second half of the book addresses resistance manifested in the villages and plantations, including tax and land boycotts, violence and retributive justice, avoidance protest, petitioning, and women’s resistance. In their entirety these forms reveal a complex web of relationships between powerful and subordinate groups and among subordinate groups themselves. The author concludes that resistance cannot be framed as a totality but as a multilayered and multidimensional reality. In the wake of Fiji’s present volatile climate, this book will aid readers in understanding the continuities and disjunctures in Fiji’s interethnic and intraethnic relations.

The traditional view of the colonisation of Fiji is one of an initial movement to the islands three thousand years ago followed by relative isolation until the 19th century. Therefore it is no surprise that these islands and their inhabitants have been widely studied as examples of cultures evolving in isolation. However, recent archaeological evidence and new theoretical models have questioned the degree of isolation experienced in the early years of the occupation of the islands. One important site within this debate is the Sigatoka sand dunes on the south-west shore of Fiji's largest island. Here the archaeological evidence from this site is reassessed and presents a dynamic, interactive picture of island life, with constant contacts with other islands to the east and west. The information from this site is not only placed within the broader context of this group of islands, but also within other theoretical migrationist and evolutionary models of island groups.

In recent years the bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands has seen enormous progress. This new and exciting research is synthesised, contextualised and expanded upon in The Routledge Handbook of Bioarchaeology in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. The volume is divided into two broad sections, one dealing with mainland and island Southeast Asia, and a second section dealing with the Pacific islands. A multi-scalar approach is employed to the bio-social dimensions of Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands with contributions alternating between region and/or site specific scales of operation to the individual or personal scale. The more personal level of osteobiographies enriches the understanding of the lived experience in past communities. Including a number of contributions from sub-disciplinary approaches tangential to bioarchaeology the book provides a broad theoretical and methodological approach. Providing new information on the globally relevant topics of farming, population mobility, subsistence and health, no other volume provides such a range of coverage on these important themes.