Abstract
The archaeology of colonialism can destabilize orthodox historical narratives because of its critical engagement with multiple lines of evidence, revealing ways that different perspectives can complement or contradict what was assumed to be known about the past. In Oceania, archaeology that blends evidence from landscapes, sites, and artifacts with written documents as well as oral traditions reveals the role of indigenous people in shaping colonial encounters across the region over the last five centuries. The challenge lies with how to interpret this material in terms of ongoing struggles over land, resources, and identity in the region today, encapsulated by the tension between global and local.
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Introduction
Almost 30 years ago, Connah (1983) suggested that historical archaeologists in Australia faced a dilemma, in the true sense of the word, when they tried to balance the need to do question-driven research against the need to document rapidly disappearing cultural resources threatened by development. In the 21st century, a new dilemma has emerged in South Pacific historical archaeology that resonates in many other areas of the world, which has to do with how we reconcile Western models of culture with the complexities and ambiguities of the colonial past in the context of contemporary society. How do we address the violence of European settlement, especially in the dispossession of native lands? How do we understand colonial culture in light of the great degree of mixing that took place, not only in terms of human gene flows but also in terms of the ecosystems, built landscapes, and material culture that emerged from the recent past? How do we construct the rights and identities of indigenous people as well as settler descendants in light of this history? Can we or should we try to do this? What roles might archaeology play in the construction of colonial and precolonial histories?
Historical archaeology provides a powerful means of addressing these questions, as well as a challenge to the overly simplistic interpretations of history and culture that in many cases reinforce hierarchies derived from colonialism. The use of multiple lines of evidence and the insistence on seeking out the voices that have tended to contribute least to orthodox narratives about culture or history (Hall 2000; Little 2007) reveal the ways that Pacific Islanders and Australian Aboriginals shaped colonialism in Oceania. At the same time, historical archaeologists working on colonial encounters have to tread carefully to avoid paradigms that appropriate indigenous heritage, or that might be misused to define the “authenticity” (or lack thereof) of contemporary indigenous peoples (McNiven and Russell 2005). Rather, the evidence of historical archaeology suggests broadly that the ambiguity and difficulty of clearly defining colonial and postcolonial cultural categories should be embraced in developing an understanding of the broader processes associated with the making of the modern world.
Emphasis on colonialism as a process that affected change on all societies involved has destabilized traditional notions of clearly defined, bounded cultures that somehow come into contact, resulting in a “fatal impact” for one or both, or of “less advanced” indigenous cultures that absorbed the traits of superior, civilized Westerners (e.g., Cusick 1998; Torrence and Clarke 2000a; Wolf 1982). Particularly salient to this debate has been the work of postcolonial scholars who have provided the theories and evidence necessary to challenge orthodox colonial accounts of history and culture (e.g., Appadurai 1986; Bhabha 1993; Said 1994; van Dommelen 2006). A trend toward searching for the indigenous perspective of colonialism likewise reflects shifting emphases in global historical archaeology, notably in North America where the historical archaeology of Native Americans has shown the resilience, creativity, and adaptability of indigenous culture in the face of often brutal colonial projects (e.g., Lightfoot 1995, 2005; Rubertone 2000; Scheiber and Mitchell 2010; Silliman 2009). Australian historical archaeology has likewise been “particularly vigorous” (Smith and Burke 2007, p. 177) in its development of indigenous perspectives for the recent past (Lawrence and Davies 2011; McNiven and Russell 2005; see below). Further challenging the concept of a culture divide between Europeans and natives has been research showing the complex processes of ethnogenesis, the emergence of new cultural categories as a result of colonial entanglements, particularly as a result of sexual encounters (e.g., Voss 2008).
The result is a recognition that the kinds of binary oppositions that have tended to structure enquiry in historical archaeology, such as prehistory/history, European/Native, Western/non-Western, introduced/local, may have been useful initially for defining material categories, as, for example, among types of artifacts, but these tend to fall apart as categories for understanding processes of culture change and experience in situations of colonialism (e.g., Cusick 1998; Murray 2004c; Stein 2005). This is particularly ironic for Oceania since Islander cultures were often used as the foil for those things that defined civilization, simultaneously determining what the West was and what it was not (Haun 2008; Rainbird 2004; Sahlins 1995; Salmond 1991, 2009; Thomas 1991; Torrence and Clark 2000a). Archaeologists often come to the conclusion that the categories and boundaries created in colonial culture were at least in part illusory, requiring great ideological strain and often physical violence to maintain. The material traces left by colonial interactions show the instability, categorical overlap, and permeability inherent to colonial social structures.
This interpretation of colonialism is explored below in terms of the historical archaeology of colonial sites in the region of Oceania. After describing the regional scope of the materials, the concept of “contact” is explored as it challenges the notion of bounded or isolated cultures, even in the remote parts of the Pacific “sea of islands” (Hau‘ofa 1993). Next, the archaeology of longer-term colonial encounters in Oceania is outlined thematically, and transformations in ecology and landscapes, social spaces, material culture, and political economy are explored. Although I present examples from throughout the region to explain each theme, some sections focus more intensively on particularly illustrative case studies from specific islands or archipelagoes. Finally, the relationships between indigenous Pacific Islanders and archaeology is briefly analyzed in terms of the decolonizing potential of the discipline, along with an examination of the future of historical archaeology in the region. Overall, the use of multiple lines of evidence in historical archaeology provides a rich set of materials for understanding the cultural processes, themselves deeply inflected by the colonial experience, that continue to evolve in a modern, globalizing Pacific.
Regional scope
Oceania as used for the purposes of this paper encompasses the islands defined by D’Urville in the mid-19th century as belonging to Melanesia (New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Fiji), Micronesia (atolls and smaller high islands stretching from Palau and Guam in the west to the Kiribati and Tuvalu groups in the east), and Polynesia (the “homeland” of Tonga and Samoa, plus the islands within the great triangle connecting Rapa Nui, Hawai‘i, and New Zealand), along with Australia (Fig. 1). Much historical and anthropological research has challenged these divisions of Pacific geography. Melanesia as traditionally defined is especially problematic. From an archaeological perspective, it crosscuts culture—historical zones, including islands initially settled by non-Austronesian speakers as much as 50,000 years ago as well as those initially settled roughly 3,300 years ago by Austronesian-speaking Lapita peoples. This has led some scholars to suggest that Melanesia should be dropped in favor of a division of the region into Near Oceania and Remote Oceania to reflect historical linguistic and archaeological evidence (Green 1991; Kirch 2000, pp. 4–6). Recent debates about the timing and nature of colonization events in the Pacific further complicate the matter (e.g., Kirch 2010b; Terrell 2011). For the purposes of this paper, however, Oceania and the accompanying tripartite division of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia provide a usable heuristic to cover the islands within which later European colonialism took place, while acknowledging that these apparent regional boundaries do not reflect the complex and continuous networks of exchange that linked islands and peoples in and around the region.
Map of the tropical and subtropical islands of the South Pacific. Island groups and nations labeled in all caps; only the first letter is capitalized for individual islands
Australia is dramatically different from the other islands in Oceania, so it provides a useful foil for exploring the variable forms of colonialism throughout the region for several reasons. One is the size and geographic variability of the Australian landmass. Australia, with a surface area of 7,600,000 km2, dwarfs all of the islands of Oceania, and the continent contains environments that vary from tropical rain forests, to deserts, to temperate forests. A second major difference is the time depth of occupation. The first settlers came to Australia over 50,000 years ago, compared with spans of human occupation of just over 3,000 years for Fiji and well under 1000 years for Hawai‘i and New Zealand; New Guinea is the only island with a time depth similar to Australia (see Kirch 2000; Lilley 2006c). Australian case studies are included in this thematic exploration of historical archaeology in Oceania because historical archaeology in the South Pacific has been dominated by research from the “settler societies” of Australia and New Zealand (see below), and because it often provides a useful comparison with other parts of the region precisely as a result of its apparent differences.
By the 1500s, European powers had begun to project their imperial ambitions into unmapped territories, including the Pacific Ocean. The first European nation to send a ship into the Pacific was Spain, with Ferdinand Magellan in 1521. For the following 200 years, contact between Europeans and Pacific Islanders was mostly brief and fleeting, though as is discussed below, these brief contacts could have lasting impacts. More intensive colonial efforts began in earnest at the end of the 1700s, after Captain Cook essentially completed the map of the major groups of Pacific Islands (Beaglehole 1966). The French and British were the two major imperial powers in the region, with the Spanish occasionally providing significant, if decreasing, competition as time went on over claims to territory, as happened in Tahiti (Salmond 2009). Later powers who would have an impact in Pacific colonialism include Russia, especially in Hawai‘i (Mills 2002) but also in island Melanesia (Spriggs 1997); Germany, which had limited colonial influence in Samoa and New Guinea (Stephenson 2009); and Japan, which made 20th-century inroads into Micronesia especially (Dixon 2004; Rainbird 2000). The outcomes of these colonial endeavors were variable. Some islands (e.g., Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia) saw a massive and permanent influx of European settlers, whereas others remained under colonial influence (e.g., Hawai‘i, the Society Islands, Guam). Many island nations (e.g., Fiji, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands) continue to work toward defining themselves in a postcolonial context. The United States, Australia, and New Zealand, themselves colonial settler societies, established their own Pacific colonies and continue to have varying forms of colonial influence in some islands.
There is a rich tradition of historical archaeology in Oceania, especially in the European settler societies of Australia and New Zealand, which are global leaders in the discipline (e.g., Harrison and Williamson 2004; Lawrence and Karskens 2003; Lydon 2006; Paterson and Wilson 2000; Smith 2004, 2008). Archaeological research on the postcontact period in Oceania emerged out of an interest in documenting and understanding sites associated with European settlement in the 1960s, primarily in Australia and New Zealand, in many ways paralleling developments in North American “historic sites archaeology” (Harrington 1955). Early debates focused on defining method and theory for the emerging discipline and trying to reconcile academic interests with the growing heritage industry’s need to rapidly document increasingly threatened sites (e.g., Birmingham and Jeans 1983; Connah 1983; Coutts 1983), as well as the extent to which indigenous people were represented in historical archaeology (e.g., Bedford 1996; McNiven and Russell 2005). The goal here is not to simply repeat and update existing summaries and analyses of historical archaeology in Oceania and Australia (e.g., Connah 1983; Lawrence and Davies 2011; Lawrence and Karskens 2003; Lydon 2006; Murray and Allen 1986; Paterson and Wilson 2000; Smith and Burke 2007). Rather, the goal is to explore case studies in historical archaeology that challenge some of the cultural frameworks encapsulated in orthodox histories of contact and colonialism written from the Western perspective (e.g., Clark 1968; Reeves 1924; Sutherland 1888).
Contact
The idea of contact is a problematic one from an archaeological perspective, because it arguably assumes the dominance of one group over another and, as typically used, assumes that cross-cultural interactions “before contact” were limited or nonexistent among simple, stable, isolated indigenous cultures who were then contacted by complex, dynamic Europeans (e.g., Terrell 1998; Torrence and Clarke 2000b, pp. 12–15). Thus the concept of contact is a European one, based on the initial recognition and definition of difference among cultural others. The duration of “first-contact” events was variable across time and space in Oceania, spanning four centuries; some islands saw long-term and intensive colonization almost immediately, and others only glimpsed Europeans and other outsiders sporadically. For example, Abel Tasman visited New Zealand in 1642 but departed after an attack on one of his boats in Taitapu; Europeans did not return to these islands for 120 years (Beaglehole 1966, pp. 148–151; Salmond 1991, pp. 63–84). Contrast this with James Cook’s second visit to Hawai‘i in 1779, which began an essentially continuous period of contact with the West and which has been the subject of a remarkable amount of analysis and debate in historical anthropology, especially regarding the nature of Cook’s apotheosis and what it reflects about Hawaiian culture at the time (e.g., Obeyesekere 1997; Sahlins 1987, 1995).
Even where scholars reject the idea that moments of contact represent an opportunity to examine “pristine” native cultures before they are somehow tainted by European influence, initial encounters between Europeans and Pacific Islanders are attractive for the degree to which they throw into relief the differences between the groups, as well as the creative ways that people reacted to others (e.g., Dening 1980, 1988, 2004). For all their variability, moments of initial contact can provide at least a starting point for more nuanced analyses of intercultural interactions in Oceania. One fruitful way of approaching contact histories involves integrating longer-term perspectives that take into account the cultural development of both groups leading up to the events “on the beach.” This shifts the narrative from specific events to the long-term processes and cultural traditions that shaped the lives of both Pacific Islanders and Europeans (Dening 1980, 2004; Salmond 1991, 2009; Torrence and Clarke 2000b). That said, even very brief encounters could have long-term consequences for Oceanic peoples and landscapes, especially in the realm of introduced biota (e.g., Yen 1973). Historical archaeology in Oceania thus incorporates a sense of both the longer-term nature of long-distance migration, trade, and exchange of ideas as well as objects in the region (e.g., Clark 2003; Kirch 2000; Rainbird 2004; Spriggs 1997; Terrell 1998) and the complex nature of the results of early colonial encounters between Pacific Islanders and others (e.g., Allen and Green 1972; Clarke 2000; Erskine 2004).
Oral traditions, archaeology, and pre-European contacts
One of the hallmarks of archaeological practice in Oceania has been the integration of early European explorers’ accounts and oral histories into the interpretation of archaeological materials from the deeper past. For example, Garanger (1972, 1982) used local oral traditions about chief Roi Mata to interpret an elite burial site in his pioneering archaeological work on Efate, Vanuatu. Increasingly in Oceania, oral histories are taken seriously as acceptable scientific evidence, even where they may challenge orthodox archaeological methods of interpretation (e.g., Beck and Somerville 2005; David et al. 2012; McNiven and Russell 2005, pp. 242–258). Hawai‘i provides a useful case study of the relationship of oral traditions and archaeology. Native histories recorded in the 19th century (e.g., Kamakau 1976, 1991; Malo 1951) have variably been embraced by archaeologists as useful evidence and considered of limited value for scientific research (Dye 1989). Toward the end of the 20th century, archaeologists working in Hawai‘i were moving back to integrating oral histories into archaeological analysis. Kirch (1985, pp. 306–308) proposed a “proto-historic” period that includes the century before Captain Cook’s arrival in the islands based on the prevalence of recorded sources. Figures such as Pā‘ao, who made a famous 14th-century voyage from Tahiti to Hawai‘i, and ‘Umi-a-Līloa, the first king of Hawai‘i Island, whose stories were once thought to be basically mythical, are now considered likely to have been actual historical people chronicled in Hawaiian traditions (e.g., Kamakau 1991, pp. 3–5, 97–100; Kirch 2010a, pp. 86–87, 92–98; Malo 1951, pp. 257–266).
The relationship between oral tradition and archaeology in Polynesia has worked in both directions. Discoveries such as a stone adze recovered in the Tuamotu group in central Polynesia, with a chemical composition sourcing it most likely to Kaho‘olawe in the Hawaiian chain some 4000 km to the north (Collerson and Weisler 2007), provide supporting evidence for extensive voyaging between the 13th and 15th centuries. At the same time, the use of oral traditions has also pushed archaeological interpretation further, as with the assertion, using native traditions and archaeological materials, of the emergence of a form of divine kingship leading to the formation of archaic states in Hawai‘i before the arrival of Captain Cook (Kirch 2010a). A similar use of ethnographic and ethnohistoric sources has been influential in the archaeology of New Zealand prior to European colonization. For example, changing settlement patterns on the North Island have been interpreted in terms of concrete events recorded in oral traditions, notably warfare, rather than as reflections of changes in environmental resources or abstract social structures (Campbell 2008; Phillips 2000).
In light of archaeological evidence, as well as increasingly insightful uses of oral tradition, it appears that for many parts of Oceania, the idea that European contact was somehow unique or unprecedented is a tenuous one at best and only makes sense when privileging the European worldview. Long-distance voyaging, cultural contact, and trade and exchange, rather than beginning with the arrival of Europeans, are part of the deep history of Oceania, stretching as far back as 30,000 years in some places (Terrell 1998) and covering the regions of Melanesia (Spriggs 1997), Micronesia (Rainbird 2004), and Polynesia (Kirch 1984). Thus rather than representing a break between precontact and postcontact worlds, the incursion of Europeans into Oceania, even in the first moments, continued a long history of interaction with outsiders and the reinterpretation of their ideas and objects in local contexts. At the same time, there is potentially a space for using this insight to revisit some of our assumptions about prehistory in the Pacific. For example, how could changes in monumental architecture in Hawai‘i, after Pā‘ao introduced a new set of ideological and ritual beliefs and practices, be analyzed using the kinds of theories that inform the historical archaeology of mission sites in Oceania (see below)? Or how might we use cross-cultural analyses of colonialism (e.g., Stein 2005), which are significantly inspired by historical archaeology, to understand pre-European contacts associated with the Tongan “maritime empire” (e.g., Clark et al. 2008; Kirch 2000, pp. 288–289)? Historical archaeologists and “prehistorians” might beneficially work across subdisciplinary boundaries in developing theoretical and methodological frameworks for better understanding the past in Oceania.
Contacts from beyond Oceania
Regardless of the issues at stake, many scholars continue to refer to the moment of initial European encounters in many of the world’s colonized places as the “contact period.” This is problematic when considering the ample evidence for pre-European cross-cultural encounters and even colonialism. It is even more damaging from an interpretive perspective when culture contact is used to describe the longer-term entanglements that emerge from these encounters. Archaeologists must critically consider the difference between culture contact, which is short-term and emphasizes cultural difference, and colonialism, which emphasizes the hybridized or creolized nature of intercultural interaction and the ability of social agents to shape history in such situations (Silliman 2005). For Oceania, as mentioned above, many early intercultural encounters were quite fleeting, often with large spans of time elapsing between arrivals of European ships. Although artifacts related to these early moments of cross-cultural exchange might be thought of as foreign or local based on their place of origin, they also must be understood in terms of a dynamic local context, as the objects of others were of equal fascination for Pacific Islanders and Europeans (Thomas 1991). Even brief moments of contact have left their mark on the historical archaeology of the region. The investigation of sites where new kinds of cross-cultural interaction took place, but where long-term settlement or permanent colonial relationships were extremely limited or nonexistent, has led to the emergence of notable patterns in historical archaeology.
Archaeological remains of shipwrecks and settlements associated with early explorers stranded in Oceania provide a unique opportunity to explore the results of initial moments of contact between island people and Europeans. These are often the earliest remains studied by historical archaeologists and provide unique glimpses into the nature of the initial encounters between Pacific Islanders and Europeans. Maritime archaeology in Oceania is heavily focused on Australia at this point, composed of research that explores early shipwrecks and associated terrestrial sites (e.g., Gibbs 2003; Henderson 1986; Staniforth 2003; Staniforth and Nash 2006). Research in Vanikoro, part of the Santa Cruz group in the Solomon Islands, has combined terrestrial and underwater archaeology to explore the remains of a shipwreck and French camp associated with the 1788 voyage of La Pérouse (Galipaud and De Biran 2006), though there have been very few similar studies. Maritime archaeology in the Pacific Rim likely warrants its own review article and is not a major focus here, though it does have immense potential to inform archaeological work on contact and colonialism in the region, as ships were crucial to forging transoceanic connections (e.g., Richards 2008).
Some of the earliest historical archaeology in Island Melanesia was carried out during archaeological research in the southeast Solomon Islands. During a survey focused primarily on discovering sites associated with the earliest settlement of Remote Oceania, archaeologists discovered a surface deposit of glazed pottery that was clearly not of local origin. After a bit of archival detective work and limited excavations, researchers realized the area was most likely a Spanish settlement established on Santa Cruz by marooned sailors during the voyage of Mendaña and Quiros in 1595 (Allen and Green 1972). These excavations also yielded evidence of architectural features, including a ditch, presumably built by the Spanish for defensive purposes, and a house floor, which also is probably associated with the 16th-century Spanish settlement based on its rectangular plan and associated artifacts (Allen and Green 1972, pp. 80–83). This research also confirmed the presence of a previously unknown 16th-century Spanish camp associated with the voyages of Mendaña and Quiros on San Cristobal Island, located uphill from an indigenous settlement (Green 1973). Ethnohistoric accounts suggest that the impact of the Spanish settlement was minimal, and habitation of the site was interpreted in terms of “months and not years” (Green 1973, p. 27). Yet later accounts of 16th-century Spanish explorers suggest the presence of numerous introduced cultigens on these islands, a tangible legacy of even brief European contact with island people (Yen 1973).
Archaeological research carried out elsewhere in Island Melanesia has documented additional artifacts related to 17th-century Spanish contacts, especially glazed pottery as found on Taumako in the Solomon Islands and Mota in Vanuatu (Bedford et al. 2009). In other places where major contact events are known to have occurred, however, archaeological evidence has not been forthcoming, as is the case at Big Bay on Espiritu Santo Island in Vanuatu, possibly because objects exchanged directly during this event were subsequently dispersed through wider trade networks (Bedford and Spriggs 2008, p. 112). Archaeology of the last 400 years or so in Island Melanesia shows the long history of indigenous exchange networks through which foreign objects likely moved throughout the region (Bedford et al. 2009; Clark 2003). Simultaneously, the changing nature of local cultures—for example, the recent disappearance of indigenous pottery manufacture in northern Vanuatu—shows that indigenous cultures likely changed in response to foreign influences, tempering the extent to which an “ethnographic present” might be projected into deeper history (Bedford and Spriggs 2008; see also David 2006; Spriggs 2008).
The mutiny on the Bounty is one of the most evocative and famous events in the history of Europeans in the Pacific, especially regarding the dramatic conflict between Captain William Bligh and the leader of the mutineers, Fletcher Christian (Dening 1992; Salmond 2011). Yet surprisingly little is known about the actual settlement set up by Christian and his fellow mutineers on Pitcairn after the mutiny, perhaps reflecting the tendency of historical documents to focus on specific events rather than related long-term cultural transformations. In addition to surveying the remains of the ship itself, which was sunk by the mutineers after their arrival at Pitcairn Island, archaeological survey and excavation on land has revealed a variety of artifacts from the mutineer’s settlement between 1790 when the settlers arrived and 1856 when the population was removed to Norfolk Island (Erskine 1999, 2004). The community created by the Bounty mutineers and their descendants on Pitcairn represents a unique case study in the archaeology of isolation, where a culture emerged that adapted to a local environment with minimal interaction with the outside world, though this would change later in the history of this settler society (Erskine 2004). Birmingham and Jeans (1983) once suggested a “Swiss Family Robinson” model for colonization and environmental adaptation and learning in a situation of relative isolation. While this is certainly evocative, it should be noted that cases like that of the settlers of Pitcairn were probably exceedingly rare, and research on colonialism should consider the global networks to which European settlers in Oceania were connected, however tenuously, especially over the long term (Ritchie 2003a; see below).
Finally, it should be noted that the contact period need not apply only to European sailors visiting the Pacific Islands. In northern Australia, some of the first outsiders came from the Macassar region of Sulawesi, Indonesia, attracted by the lucrative opportunities offered by the trade with China in trepang (also known as sea cucumber or bêche-de-mer). These traders are referred to as Macassans, and the processing sites associated with their activities represent a prominent type of contact-era context for coastal northern Australia from the 1650s through 1907, when the practice was outlawed by the Australian government (Clarke 2000; Clarke and Frederick 2006; MacKnight 1976, 1986). Archaeological research focused on the Aboriginal perspective of Macassan contact on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory, Australia, has revealed evidence for increased coastal orientation in response to this trade (Clarke 2000). Trade relationships between Aboriginal Australians and Macassans appear to have been fairly egalitarian, and settlement by outsiders was temporary and seasonal, though it does appear that the same areas were used repeatedly as processing sites (MacKnight 1976).
Rock art from Groote Eylandt has shown that Aboriginal people distinguished between different groups of outsiders in trying to understand the colonial encounter. Images of Macassan praus (ships) are always done in paint and tend to be polychromes, while the majority of images of European ships are done in monochromatic dry pigment, indicating that images of Macassan praus generally required more planning and forethought. More telling, praus tend to be more detailed, and 95% of the anthropomorphic figures from rock art dealing with boats are associated with praus, suggesting that Aboriginal people associated the Macassan ships with close, personal interaction, while contact with European ships was distant and likely brief (Clarke and Frederick 2006). Macassan sites on Groote Eylandt show the expansion of exchange networks driven partly by the expansion of global trade, but without direct European influence. These sites represent a counterpoint to later periods in which dispossession and more violent forms of inequality figured more prominently in Aboriginal history. These encounters would shape the local context, with potential impacts on language, material culture, gender relations, and demography (Clarke 2000; MacKnight 1986). However, local changes in response to the Macassan trade should still be informed by an understanding that cross-cultural interaction was an ongoing process and part of the deeper history of both Aboriginal Australians and Southeast Asians (Clarke 2000; Lape 2003).
Long-term colonial entanglements in Oceania
Early colonial encounters between Pacific Islanders and outsiders could have a lasting effect on both local societies and the global networks to which they became attached. Many of the more dramatic transformations in Oceania, however, can be linked to longer-term colonial projects, in which a concerted effort was made by outsiders to establish permanent political, social, economic, and territorial relationships in these islands. One of the crucial outcomes of these encounters was a process often glossed as “ecological imperialism” (Crosby 1986), which resulted in major transformations of the world’s landscapes through the spread of Old World biota, including domesticated plants and animals as well as weeds, pests, and infectious diseases. Domestic architecture and other kinds of spatial arrangements were altered in response to changing beliefs and ideologies associated with colonialism. Local political economies were permanently transformed by colonial encounters, both on the systemic and the everyday scale of interaction with objects, which are, of course, linked. Yet archaeological investigation of these varied phenomena repeatedly indicates that cultural transformation was not simply a result of outside influences, as indigenous people often creatively adapted to and shaped colonial encounters. Even in the “settler societies” of New Zealand, Australia, and New Caledonia, “the product[s] of a mass European immigration where people settled on land appropriated by conquest, treaty, or simple dispossession from indigenous groups” (Murray 2004a, pp. 5–6), the settler culture would drift from the ancestral European forms to create something new, transformed by the local environment and peoples.
Ecology, landscapes, and settlement patterns
As Europeans entered the South Pacific, they encountered islands that had already been shaped by the Islanders who lived in these variable environments. Most Pacific Islanders were agriculturalists, though Europeans were often struck by the differences in indigenous subsistence and land management systems, idealizing Polynesian “gardens” in places like Tahiti and New Zealand, but failing to even recognize the environmental management practices of Aboriginal Australians. Although there is a remarkable degree of regional variability in precontact environmental histories (e.g., Kirch 1997), the patterns of extirpation of local and endemic species, deforestation, and expansion of land management, sometimes with intensification of agriculture, apply broadly throughout the region as Pacific Islanders adapted to different environments (e.g., Fosberg 1963; Kirch 2000; Lilley 2006b). New Zealand and Australia provide useful examples of colonial environmental histories in Oceania. Both are outliers for the region, being more subtropical to temperate in terms of climate and consisting of larger landmasses. But New Zealand does fit broadly into Polynesian patterns of landscape management, and Australia provides a valuable foil for the rest of the region. In both cases, the perception of the land by foreigners shaped the colonial experience during major demographic influxes of foreign, largely British, people.
In Aotearoa (as Polynesians called New Zealand), Maori had caused the extinction or extirpation of a number of endemic faunal species, including birds such as the flightless moa, marine mammals, especially fur seals, and countless invertebrates, either directly through hunting or from predation or competition with introduced mammals such as rats and dogs (e.g., Anderson 2002; Smith 1989). Of the suite of Polynesian domesticates available, sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) was the major staple crop that flourished in the colder climate of New Zealand. Polynesian agriculture contributed to deforestation in New Zealand, as elsewhere in the region, as Maori burned land on the North Island for agriculture and on the South Island for ease of access to increasingly scarce moa while simultaneously encouraging the growth of bracken fern, a staple plant food (Anderson 2002; McGlone and Wilmshurst 1999; McGlone et al. 2005). Polynesian rats (Rattus exulans), likewise contributed to deforestation and extirpation of New Zealand’s endemic flora and fauna. Maori settlement patterns had caused visible changes in the way the landscape was arranged, especially on the North Island, where dense clusters of agricultural fields and fortified hilltop villages, called pa, were established, elaborated, and expanded from the early 16th century (Anderson 2002, pp. 26, 33; Kirch 2000, pp. 280–283). Fortification of hilltop settlements also has been observed elsewhere in the Pacific, as in Fiji, where the practice is often seen as a defensive adaptation in response to conflict over resources (e.g., Field 1998, 2005; Rowland and Best 1980).
The defensive orientation of settlement patterns would continue to shape North Island landscapes, especially during the period of European colonialism. Colonial settlement in New Zealand resulted in open warfare with the British Army (e.g., Stokes 2002, pp. 46–48). Archaeological evidence of historic and protohistoric warfare includes both European forts and Maori pa (e.g., Ladefoged 1995). A unique form called the “gunfighter pa” was developed to take advantage of new weaponry, primarily muskets introduced in the 1820s and 1830s, and was used to deadly effect during the Land Wars fought against the British in the 1850s and 1860s (Prickett 2005; Stodart 2002; Wylie 2006). Guns not only shaped the relationships between Maori and Pakeha (white New Zealanders) in important ways, they also were integral to the transformation of indigenous warfare, which had definite impacts on settlement patterns and the political relationships between native groups (e.g., Phillips 2000). Marine resource procurement also transformed local economies and societies in New Zealand, especially as the whaling industry expanded in the 1800s. Such sites represent interesting examples of places where Maori and Pakeha, among others, worked together toward common goals (e.g., Coutts 1976; Lawrence and Staniforth 1998; Prickett 2002, 2008; Smith and Prickett 2006).
Aboriginal Australian subsistence practices have been characterized as hunting and gathering, and Europeans assumed that the lands inhabited by Aboriginal peoples were terra nullius (empty or wasteland). The original inhabitants of Australia were dispossessed of their land and erased from its memory through policies that stressed that the land did not belong to indigenous people in the places being colonized (Gosden 2004, pp. 25–27; Jones 1985, p. 182). Possession of the land in Australia by Europeans was an ideological process, involving naming and mapping practices as techniques for taming the landscape, often characterized by Europeans as “harsh” or “forbidding” (Seddon 1997, pp. 20–27), adjectives also sometimes applied to other Pacific landscapes, as in New Zealand. The concept of possession was equated with notions of improvement, which in European eyes meant agriculture. Unlike elsewhere in Oceania, Aboriginal people did not practice agriculture in any form recognizable to Europeans, which made it easier to characterize their land as empty wilderness, to be converted “into something imbued with human [i.e., Western] values” (Gosden 2004, p. 114). The lack of Aboriginal cultivation was seen as evidence that these were primitive Stone Age people locked in a static, simple culture from time immemorial. In a subtle way, archaeology has reinforced this perspective by focusing on the technical aspects for dating the early colonization of Australia rather than the long-term dynamics and regional variability of Aboriginal cultures, though this is changing rapidly in the 21st century (McNiven and Russell 2005; O’Connor and Veth 2006).
Anthropological and archaeological research has shown that the European belief that Aboriginal people had little or no impact on the Australian environment was fundamentally misplaced, even in the desert interior (e.g., Veth et al. 2005). There is ample evidence of complex environmental management techniques practiced by Aboriginal Australians, particularly through the use of fire (Jones 1969, 1985, p. 204). Further, the idea of unchanging native culture is no longer accepted, as evidence for the complex set of cosmological relationships usually glossed as “the Dreaming” can be traced back through the last two millennia, emerging from earlier systems of land tenure and resource use that may have been quite different (David 2006). Thus, Aboriginal people had dynamic, regionally variable cultures in which relationships to the land have changed dramatically since the deep history of initial human settlement in Australia, with a rich, textured sensibility for understanding the landscape that developed during the late Holocene. Nonetheless, the ideology of Aboriginal land as empty space was so insidious that Native Title in Australia was not formally recognized until 1993 (http://www.nntt.gov.au/).
Contemporary landscapes in the settler societies of New Zealand and Australia, from hills covered with sheep and introduced grasses to urban botanical gardens, reflect the process of ecological imperialism across the 19th century. During that time a variety of plant and animal species were introduced to the islands, and the landscape was transformed into one suited to European-style settlement (Crosby 1986; Harrison 2004b; Pawson and Brookings 2002). During the colonial era, the countryside of Aotearoa/New Zealand was burned, deforested, separated into farms and urban centers, and colonized by Old World domesticates, a transition representing environmental as well as demographic colonialism by people primarily of British descent (e.g., Arnold 1994; Guthrie-Smith 1999 [1921]; Reeves 1924 [1898]; Vaggioli 2000; Walker 1990). Australian historical archaeology has often focused on similar changes to the landscape and the adaptation of British technologies to challenging local conditions in order to develop the Australian economy (Connah 1988; Lawrence 2003; Ritchie 2003a). Yet Maori land tenure practices and beliefs continue to shape life in New Zealand, and Australian pastoral landscapes must be understood as part of the Aboriginal experience as well. What emerged then was not simply a transported Britain in the antipodes but a set of landscapes that reflect the long-term processes of environmental learning, management, and adaptation in an emerging multicultural context (Allen et al. 2002; Harrison 2004a; Pawson and Brooking 2002). As is typical of Oceania in the colonial and postcolonial eras, contemporary landscapes should be considered multitemporal, consisting of a palimpsest of human activities spanning the entire human occupation of the islands (Fig. 2).
Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill, Auckland, New Zealand, is an example of a multitemporal landscape reflecting New Zealand’s history of colonialism and is one of the most heavily trafficked public parks in Auckland. The underlying Maori pa is covered with a fence for a sheep paddock (foreground). The obelisk at the top is dedicated to “Maori Accomplishment” at the same time that it expresses pakeha dominance of the landscape
Land tenure systems and whole ecosystems were transformed throughout the colonial era, both because European interest in possessing land changed the ways that land was conceptualized and because capitalism would alter the ways that island landscapes and resources were managed. In Hawai‘i, land disenfranchisement resulted from a series of reforms known as the Māhele, when lands were officially transformed into commodities and thus became alienable (Kame‘eleihiwa 1992; Sahlins 1992). Further environmental transformations resulted from the incursion of capitalism and development of economic dependency in the islands (Kent 1993). Archaeologically, these historical transformations are manifested in the cultural landscapes of Hawai‘i from the late 18th century onward. Upland areas were largely deforested by sandalwood collection. Variability in productivity within the agricultural field systems of the Anahulu Valley, O‘ahu, was affected by historical events occurring throughout the Hawaiian Islands, notably changes in population and the varying demands of changing systems of political economy (Kirch 1992, pp. 168–174). From the second half of the 19th century, activities such as sugar cane planting and cattle ranching would further transform the landscape in Hawai‘i to one better suited for commodity production (Mills 2007; Takaki 1983).
Feeding into the idea that some Pacific Islands represented unoccupied land, or that native peoples were “disappearing,” was the impact that foreign diseases had on local populations. Epidemics of influenza, smallpox, and other illnesses for which Islanders had little or no immunity repeatedly decimated indigenous populations, and sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis depressed birth rates throughout Oceania (Kirch and Rallu 2007). In Hawai‘i, estimates of depopulation range from 70 to 95% within the first 100 years following contact (e.g., Cordy 2007; Kirch 2007a; Stannard 1989). Certain changes in postcontact settlement patterns have been linked to demography, specifically the movement of Hawaiians to growing urban centers (Sahlins 1992, p. 153), or depopulation as a result of introduced diseases (Kirch 2007b; Sweeney 1992). In New Zealand, a similar picture of depopulation is reported, with mortality estimated to be as high as 75% (Walker 1990, p. 81). In Tahiti, introduced diseases may have caused the population to plummet from about 200,000 in 1772 to about 30,000 just 16 years later (Salmond 2009, p. 195). Ironically, the depopulation of Pacific Islands could have a beneficial effect for local fauna impacted by human exploitation, as has been documented for fur seals in New Zealand (Smith 2005) and ‘opihi (Hawaiian limpets, Cellana spp.) in Hawai‘i (McCoy 2008). Yet the arrival of Europeans not only contributed to the destruction of local populations, sexual encounters often resulted in the birth of children with a mixture of European and indigenous genes, as was common in New Zealand whaling stations (Coutts 1976, p. 292). This genetic mixing is an often underexplored aspect of colonial history that subverts the tendency to think of people as belonging exclusively to one group or another and is increasingly a challenge as indigeneity is redefined in contemporary contexts.
Architecture and social space
In addition to broad transformations of landscapes because of changing economies and land tenure systems, colonialism brought about important alterations to built environments. As with other types of material culture, the evolution of colonial house forms and architecture was shaped as much by indigenous practices and habits as by what was introduced from the West. At Pā ‘ula‘ula o Hipo, a fort built by Russian colonists who became entangled in a local Hawaiian power struggle, the spatial patterning of domestic refuse may reflect a separation of the sacred (kapu) and secular (noa) in terms of Hawaiian cosmology and beliefs in both architecture and daily activities (Mills 1996, 2002). In the Anahulu Valley of O‘ahu, large stone walls were constructed both to control the movement of livestock and to outline “newly acquired allodial property rights” following the Māhele, a pattern seen throughout Hawai‘i during the second half of the 19th century (Kirch 1992, pp. 175–177).
Ladefoged (1991, 1998) has suggested for Hawai‘i that the transition from indigenous kau hale, house compounds with separate architectural features divided by function as well as along gender lines, to internally differentiated but attached household architecture reflects the relaxation of kapu (ritual restrictions) in the 1820s. This transformation, among other architectural innovations such as cut and dressed threshold stones, was likewise noted in Anahulu, O‘ahu (Kirch 1992, p. 177). Anderson (2001) confirms these patterns for the Hālawa Valley, Moloka‘i, interpreting changes in architecture as reflecting shifting Hawaiian commoner ideologies about the house (hale) and the land (‘āina). The incorporation of new building materials into Hawaiian houses was a marked process during the 19th century, especially the use of lime mortar, which was seen as a crucial building material marking the distinction between primitive and civilized housing (Mills 2009). At the same time, photographic and archaeological evidence shows that the traditional thatched hale was remarkably persistent, with examples documented well into the 20th century, albeit often incorporating introduced architectural features and materials (e.g., Bayman 2009, pp. 141–147).
In the colonial capital of Levuka, Fiji, Nasova House, which served as the Parliamentary and administrative building of the indigenous Cakabau government from 1871 to 1874, and as the house of the British colonial government in Fiji from 1875 to 1882, is seen as a prototypical hybrid structure (Chatan 2003). The building follows traditional Fijian practices of reserving the largest, most elaborate structures for chiefly elites, incorporating “both western and Fijian architectural vocabularies and grammars” (Chatan 2003, p. 278). As a Fijian vale levu, the “symmetrical layout of the Cakobau Government Building seems to be a modification or adaptation of the ideal traditional Fijian village plan that emphasized chiefly dominance and commoner subordination” (Chatan 2003, p. 284). Over time, especially with the arrival of Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon, the first British governor of the colony beginning in 1875, this public building became the locus of colonial rituals, such as the reception of important people and enactment of important events, emphasizing the Fijian-ness of the colonial government (see below).
Another more popular form of colonial architecture was the bungalow, which became “an instantly recognizable imprint of British imperial presence” throughout the tropical world by the late 19th century (Purser 2003, p. 295). Bungalows are wooden houses, typically built “with pyramidal or hipped roofs, and the presence of encircling verandahs often at least partially partitioned to form small rooms” (Purser 2003, p. 295). Besides Levuka (Purser 2003, pp. 300–306), bungalows appear in the historical archaeology of Australia (Allen 1973; Connah 1988, pp. 72–77) and New Zealand (Trotter and McCullough 2003), representing the expansion and development of a specifically regional form of colonial architecture (see also Rodman 2001). Yet the expansion of a settler population in Levuka was not a monolithic process of foreign transformation and dominance of the landscape. “Houses built by descendants of European settlers bespeak an increasingly localized frame of reference in the choices made regarding built form, materials, and the organization and use of space” (Purser 2003, p. 312). The variability of colonial architecture in Fiji is a reflection of the heterogeneity of power relations in the Pacific edges of European empires. Europeans often simultaneously attempted to distance themselves from Pacific Islanders in dress and material culture, while also adapting to emergent local settler cultures that were themselves inflected with indigenous objects, language, and architecture.
Social space in Oceania was further transformed by new types of Western institutions brought to the region; however, following the refrain from throughout the historical archaeology of Oceania, these spaces were transformed by local environments and cultures. Two kinds of institutions were absolutely integral to the projection of global ideologies into the world’s local communities. The first, despite a somewhat common assumption that modernity is associated with increasing secularization, were Christian missions, which used a universal vision of history and cosmology to attempt to shape local religious beliefs around the world (e.g., Keane 2007). The second were total institutions, which attempted to impose certain forms of disciplined behavior on unruly modern subjects [e.g., Foucault 1988, 1995; Goffman 1962; though see Rowse (1993) for a major critique of Goffman’s approach to institutions in an Australian context]. Both missions and total institutions played an important role in Oceanic modernity, and their historical archaeology is best approached from a comparative perspective (Casella 2005; Lydon and Ash 2010; Middleton 2010). These types of sites represent particularly powerful attempts to force European ideologies into local contexts, and their archaeology and anthropology often reflect the deep conflicts that could arise out of institutional projects, especially regarding the participation of indigenous people in colonial society (Rowse 1993).
Christian missions in Oceania have tended to follow two broad models, one organized around missionary households, sometimes attached to a mission church or school and inhabited by a missionary family who would be largely dependent on the local community, and one organized as an institution with more elaborate architecture and inhabited by local converts who were expected to conform to a disciplinary regime set by the mission (Middleton 2008, pp. 28–31, 2010). Broadly speaking, missions in Australia tended to be set up on the institutional model, while in New Zealand and elsewhere in Oceania there was a tendency toward the household model. That said, there were institutional missions in New Zealand, as with the Melanesian Mission School in Mission Bay (Fig. 3), and household missions in Australia, as at Ebenezer Mission (Lydon 2009a), so clearly there is some variability here, and this dichotomy could be considered a hypothesis to be tested within specific contexts rather than a foregone conclusion.
The last standing building of the Melanesian Mission School at Mission Bay, New Zealand. Young men from Island Melanesia were brought here by Anglican missionaries for instruction in literacy, religious beliefs, and Western practices in a mission set up according to the institutional model (Hilliard 1978). The building later served as a museum of Melanesian culture and is now a cafe
Christian missionaries often believed that the first step to conversion of the soul involved what they perceived as the improvement of the material conditions of heathen lives. Household missions often consisted of small clusters of buildings, typically a church, house, and outbuildings meant to project an idealized image of Western domesticity. These stations served as a base for missionaries who might then “itinerate,” moving out to preach among sometimes widely dispersed local communities, upon whom mission families were often heavily dependent (Brooks et al. 2011; Lydon 2009a; Middleton 2003, 2006, 2008). At the Moravian Ebenezer Mission in Victoria, southeastern Australia, missionaries sought to convert Aboriginal people to consumer-oriented agriculturalists as a first step to bringing them the light of the gospel. This was expressed in the landscape of the mission house, which represented a model of appropriate domestic practice that missionaries expected Aboriginal people to emulate (Lydon 2009a, pp. 109–116). There was, of course, at least some resistance to conversion to Western domestic life, as Aboriginal people “deployed strategies of mobility and evasion to pursue their own objectives, played out across different levels and scales of colonial space” (Lydon 2009a, p. 117). At the Te Puna mission in New Zealand (Middleton 2008), domestic architecture and practices likewise shaped Maori experiences of conversion, especially in attempts to integrate children from the local pa into the household.
At both Te Puna, New Zealand, and Ebenezer, Australia, local indigenous people had their own ideas about the mission and likely used mission resources for their own purposes, while interpreting mission space and material culture according to local frames of reference (e.g., Lydon 2009a, pp. 150–161; Middleton 2003). This tendency seems to be common to mission stations in Oceania in general, where indigenous landscapes and practices often continued to shape mission life well into the 20th century (e.g., Ash et al. 2010; Birmingham and Wilson 2010; Morrison et al. 2010). It is worth noting that limited access to resources appears to have marked at least some mission houses in New Zealand and Australia as particularly frugal. It is quite clear in these analyses that the performance of proper domesticity was not accompanied by conspicuous displays of extravagant wealth among mission families (e.g., Brooks et al. 2011; Middleton 2008, pp. 219–220).
In the more institutional missions, attempts to combine conversion to Christianity with a civilizing project are likewise apparent, notably the attempts by missionaries to model an idealized form of European domestic life and efforts by indigenous people to maintain certain aspects of their culture even in the face of sometimes dramatic change. The major differences lie in the more highly regimented labor regimes enforced on the institutional mission grounds and an architectural arrangement designed to project institutional dominance and discipline (Griffin 2010). Institutional missions tended to be set up with elaborate barracks, high walls, and even barbed wire in places to maintain separation between the sexes, between converts and nonconverts, inmates and staff, while ensuring centralized production of and access to food and other economic resources (Morrison et al. 2010; Sutton 2003). In at least one case, a convict agricultural station designed for prison inmate labor was repurposed by the Anglican Church as a mission station in western New South Wales (Ireland 2010). Yet the dominant theme in the archaeology of these spaces appears to be the persistence of native practices and interpretations of the missions as places of cross-cultural interaction (Birmingham and Wilson 2010; Dalley and Memmott 2010). This is reflected in the maritime orientation of Torres Strait islander “seascapes” that shaped mission life in various ways (Ash et al. 2010), as well as in missions where traditional Aboriginal resource procurement was an integral part of the institutional subsistence economy (Morrison et al. 2010). In some cases, Aboriginal Australians see mission sites as unambiguously indigenous spaces (McNiven and Russell 2005, pp. 226–227).
Total institutions emerged as the ultimate expression of modern discipline, as shifting ideologies about proper behavior for capitalist laborers led to the definition of those groups that threatened the social order (e.g., Foucault 1995; Poovey 1995). Included among groups that “did not belong” were the criminal, the ill, the insane, and the poor. In Oceania, all these groups were institutionalized in different contexts, and in much of the region indigenous people were likely to be classed in one of these ways or simply incarcerated because their very lack of civilization was deemed deviant and in need of reform. In Australia, missions sometimes served as institutions designed to transform Aboriginal life, though other kinds of institutions emerged during the 19th century in which the majority of the inmates were guilty of simply being indigenous (see above; Flexner 2012a; Sutton 2003). Total institutions also were sometimes central to the formation of European settler societies, as both Australia and New Caledonia served as sites of penal transport for Great Britain and France, respectively.
Penal institutions form an important component of historical archaeology in Australia, emphasizing the importance of convict heritage in contemporary Australian society (e.g., Casella 2001, 2005; Casella and Fredericksen 2004). Institutional power and labor relations are encapsulated in the materiality of penal heritage landscapes in Australia (Casella 1999, 2005). This heritage has been sanitized and commodified, however, as something to be consumed by modern tourists, as with convict sites on Tasmania (Casella 2001, p. 67). “Australian heritage gaols can be read as commemorations of ‘belonging’—of forging a new nation, of fermenting a non-European and uniquely Australian consciousness” (Casella 2005, p. 464), revealing undercurrents of nationalism in the archaeology of penal settlements.
Archaeological research at prison sites in New Caledonia has brought renewed attention to the importance of Caldoche (settler) heritage in the French colony. Between 1864 and 1897, over 33,000 convicts from mainland France, Italy, Spain, and North Africa were sent to New Caledonia (Sand et al. 2005, p. 147). Artifact analyses from prison sites have revealed that, after a brief period of reliance on imported products of non-French origin, there was a shift to “near-total reliance on metropolitan products” in the colony, at the exclusion of products from Australia and New Zealand (Sand et al. 2005, p. 156). In addition, the presence of “a massive quadrangular pavement of very fine workmanship” at the archaeological site of Teremba is seen as an indicator of professional stonemasons among the prisoner population (Sand et al. 2005, p. 152). This interpretation echoes findings from Port Essington in Australia, where work carried out by convicts on a hospital kitchen “bears all the aspects of professionalism” (Allen 1973, p. 52). The use of prisoners with professional craft skills in the penal colonies of Oceania is an interesting pattern, though the extent to which institutional administrators would intentionally import skilled convict labor remains to be explored.
Not all institutions in settler societies were prisons. Military outposts, such as Port Essington in northern Australia (Allen 1973, 2008), were important institutions for expanding European settlement. Settlers at Port Essington relied on other settlements and trade with local Aboriginal people to meet their subsistence needs. Evidence for the latter appears in the form of middens and worked glass (Allen 1973, pp. 54–55, 2008, pp. 45–48, 79–86). Despite the remoteness and generally poor conditions of the settlement, there appears to be little time lag between the introduction of new ceramic styles to the market and their appearance in Port Essington (Allen 1973, p. 56), showing the increasing efficiency of global trade networks by the mid-19th century.
The colony of South Australia used a system of controlled immigration, where people of a certain age and with certain skills were given assisted passage; others could pay to immigrate (Piddock 2001, p. 79). Some of these settlers who were unable to support themselves through wage labor wound up in almshouses and workhouses, such as the Destitute Asylum of Adelaide, which was nominally tasked with reforming those who would not or could not work into productive members of society. Piddock (2001, pp. 88–89) interprets the Destitute Asylum as based on the English workhouse model, which was one of a number of typical 19th-century attempts to reform behavior through the built environment, for example, spatially separating inmates based on gender, health, and morality. These types of institutions of reform were emblematic of the emergent ethic of capitalism that would come to dominate life in colonial settler societies.
Insane asylums were remarkable settler institutions in that they had a mission to reform people into productive laborers but also were tasked with providing a safe, quiet space for those deemed incapable of recovery because of the severity of their mental illness (Piddock 2007, pp. 22–29). There were often significant discrepancies between the ideal plans for architectural layouts of Australian asylums and the actual built structures, reflecting changing concepts of treatment, lived use of space, overcrowding, and resource limitations, as seen at places like the Adelaide and Parkside Asylums on the Australian mainland and New Norfolk in Tasmania (Piddock 2007, pp. 107–182). Gender and class still marked the use and arrangement of space in these institutions, which created an “artificial world” that emphasized observation in spaces that blurred the usual Western divisions between work and nonwork, public and private, often stressing custodianship of the inmates over reform (Piddock 2007, pp. 221–222).
Leprosaria were another type of institution designed more for the management of potentially threatening members of society than their reform. The establishment of leprosy settlements in the South Pacific in places like Hawai‘i, New Zealand, and Australia (Flexner 2010, 2012a; Prangnell 1999, 2002; Trotter and McCullough 2003) followed from a broader 19th-century sanitary movement that led to the emergence of the discipline of tropical medicine. Sanitary ideology associated disease with poverty and, outside of Europe, a lack of civilization (e.g., Anderson 2006; Gilbert 2004; Moran 2007). Archaeological research on the 19th and early 20th century landscape of the leprosy settlement in Kalaupapa, Moloka‘i Island, Hawai‘i, indicates that despite the power of the institution and the associated bureaucracy to make rules and impose certain kinds of physical order, spatial organization and material culture followed distinctly Hawaiian patterns (Flexner 2010, 2012a). The Hawaiian Board of Health built prefabricated houses that they believed to be ideal for inmates of the institution, but archaeological remains indicate that inmates of the leprosarium continued to inhabit traditional thatched hale through the end of the 19th century. This was typical for the archipelago but surprising in the institutional context (Flexner 2010, pp. 153–196). Overall, the archaeology of Kalaupapa represents an institution in which community structure and everyday life were shaped by indigenous practice, reflected in a landscape that is remarkably similar to those of contemporaneous rural Hawaiian villages (Fig. 4) (Flexner 2012a).
Mapping a Hawaiian landscape, Kalaupapa, Moloka‘i. Recent features such as the masonry staircase and enclosure wall (in foreground) often overlap with and are sometimes shaped by the pre-existing landscape of agricultural field walls from both the pre- and postcontact periods (in background). In contrast, the lighthouse (far background) was constructed without regard to the previous features and represents a more recent phase of American imperialism in the islands
Total institutions were a critical component of modernizing projects in Oceania. Convict sites represent a very important part of Australia’s recent heritage and have been the subject of much archaeological work that often has to negotiate a difficult landscape of identities and beliefs about the relationship between historic places and nationhood (Casella and Fredericksen 2001, 2004). The Aboriginal experience of incarceration is often underemphasized or explored outside of the mission context, though this is changing through excavations such as that of Fannie Bay Gaol in Darwin, which had a population heavily skewed towards Aboriginal and Chinese inmates (Dewar and Fredericksen 2003). Elsewhere, archaeologists studying the heritage of total institutions are exploring the shared experience of these places between convict settlers and Pacific Islanders, as with newly emerging understandings of the connections between indigenous Kanak and settler Caldoche in New Caledonia (Sand et al. 2005). Future research might fruitfully examine more specifically the roles and experiences of indigenous people in the prisons, insane asylums, and other total institutions of Australia and beyond in Oceania.
Material culture: Resistance and creativity
From the earliest moments of contact, exotic material culture was a site of fascination for both Pacific Islanders and the peoples with whom they interacted. New Guinea provides an illustrative example of the ways that material culture can and has shaped colonialism in Oceania. In the opening to Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond 1999, p. 14), a man named Yali asks an apparently simple question: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” This is an interesting question because it encapsulates the paternalistic and condescending attitude of Westerners regarding Melanesians: “they” are primitive, simple, and backwards, which is exactly what “we” are not, since we are civilized, complex, and progressive. The second-largest island in the world is viewed from the European perspective as the very essence of primitive humanity (e.g., Jenkins 2012), where these backwards savages would naturally be overwhelmed by the superior technology of the modern world. Faced with Yali’s question, scholars such as Diamond have found it easier to simply explain the apparent great divide in wealth between societies by appealing to geographic, cultural, or economic inevitability, “excusing the haves and blaming the have-nots” (Errington and Gewertz 2010) rather than recognizing the complexities of colonial encounters in the region.
This picture of Papua New Guinean astonishment at the wealth of the West in contrast to their own poverty ignores the long, rich history of contact and exchange with outsiders in the region (Terrell 1998; Torrence 2000), as well as the complex autochthonous developments that allowed people to survive in some of the island’s more challenging environments for over 50,000 years, including an independent invention of agriculture that ranks among the world’s oldest (Denham 2006; Gosden 2010). Further, the sense of how little “cargo” people in New Guinea had in relation to white people should be contextualized in terms of the relatively recent incursion of European colonialism. Papua New Guinea’s colonial history did not truly begin until the late 19th and early 20th century, when global capitalism driven by mass production was in full swing, despite sporadic contacts with explorers, whalers, and traders beginning in the early 17th century (Gosden 2004, p. 93). Colonial culture throughout New Guinea also was remarkably variable, reflecting precontact regional differences, though there were shared elements to the colonial experience, such as interest among indigenous people in outside goods for their utility within local indigenous trade networks. Gosden (2004, pp. 93–103) suggests that Papua New Guinea should be considered a colonial “middle ground” in which relationships were defined not by dominance and resistance but by the emergence of new forms of cultural belief and practice in response to exchanges of ideas and objects. This may be the case until later in the 20th century when more pervasive forms of inequality entered the picture through the expansion of extractive industries and more direct colonial influences (Errington and Gewertz 2010).
The importance of material culture to colonial processes in New Guinea and elsewhere in Melanesia can be seen in the development of what have become known as “cargo cults” in the Western world. Cargo cults involve the ritualized reinterpretation of Western material practices in local indigenous contexts. These varied sets of ritual practices have been understood in many ways by modern scholars and colonial agents, seen as representing everything from madness to incipient nationalism, though it is likely that there is no one definition that encapsulates all the behaviors that have been defined as cargo cult (Lindstrom 1993). Cargo cults in Papua New Guinea have been interpreted as an indigenous attempt to reconcile the material inequalities between Papua New Guinean people and European colonizers by gaining access to the spiritual basis of accumulation of goods through the ancestors (Gosden 2004, p. 95). Cargo cults fit well with Appadurai’s (1986, p. 52) assertion that, “given [indigenous people’s] sudden subjection to a complex international economical system of which they saw only few and mysterious aspects…their response was occasionally to seek to replicate what they regarded as the magical mode of production of these goods.” In this sense, cargo cults might still be interpreted as a continuation of local exchange networks into which the global movement of objects was subsumed.
The fascination with unfamiliar material culture was mutual between Europeans and Pacific Islanders, and cargo was equally likely to travel in the form of masks and feathered and beaded items to the West, as it was to flow into the interiors of Pacific Islands as glass bottles, furniture, and metal tools (Thomas 1991). Further, trade goods created specifically for exchange with outsiders, such as obsidian-tipped spears and daggers from the Admiralty Islands, are remarkable for the apparent rationality with which they were produced, changing in response to consumer tastes and maximizing the efficiency of economic returns for indigenous producers (Torrence 2000). In characterizing exchange between Europeans and Pacific Islanders, it is important to remember that the barter relationships that often emerged were characterized by egalitarianism rather than domination and resistance, and these relationships were almost entirely determined by indigenous exchange networks, even well into the 20th century (Errington and Gewertz 2010, p. 333; Gosden 2004, pp. 93–104; Torrence 2000). It is misleading in these contexts to characterize the behavior of Europeans as rational and economically driven and that of Melanesians as irrational and driven by magical or spiritual motivations. Clearly, all groups participating in exchange in New Guinea in the 19th and 20th centuries were equally capable of rational and irrational economic decision making, whether using Western or Melanesian standards of rationality.
Artifacts from pastoral sites in Australia likewise undermine attempts at creating clear, binary divisions between settler and indigenous objects and spaces (Harrison 2004a, b). At Old Lamboo station, located in the east Kimberly region, there appears to be a spatial division between “inside” and “outside” the station fence, where the inside is characterized by local chert, finished tools, and European goods, including flaked glass and ground metal, while the outside is characterized by the presence of nonlocal stone and less dense settlement (Harrison 2004a, p. 134). Yet in many ways, the two realms overlapped. Just as “many white pastoralists developed large collections of indigenous artifacts…Aboriginal people appropriated and ‘Aboriginalised’ such European activities as tea drinking” (Harrison 2004a, p. 141). Pastoral landscapes in Australia were inhabited equally by Aboriginal people and white settlers in the past and can be seen as equally a part of the heritage of both groups in the present (Harrison 2004b, but see McNiven and Russell 2005, pp. 211–231). Australian pastoral history reflects the fact that “All contact landscapes are crowded and ambiguous” (Murray 2004b, p. 218). Perhaps no set of artifacts is as evocative of that ambiguity as the glass Kimberley spear points that developed at least partly out of an adaptation of local stone tool technologies to suit the tastes and expectations of European consumers (Harrison 2002, 2006). These artifacts are deeply tied to the construction of gendered identities in ways that challenge orthodox notions about indigeneity, masculinity, and cross-cultural exchange in the context of colonial production and consumption regimes.
Choice in the emerging commodity exchanges of Oceania during the colonial period was often structured by indigenous preferences in materials, as well as traditional exchange practices and networks. The adoption of foreign material culture by Hawaiians was not simply a matter of accumulating status through wealth or adopting “technologically superior” material. Bayman (2003, 2009, pp. 134–137) underscores the persistence of stone adze technology, despite the availability of metal from the late 18th century, partly because of Native Hawaiian preference of stone tools for canoe manufacture. Ceramics from the Anahulu Valley were represented primarily by bowl forms that likely were used in the communal serving of poi (cooked taro paste) or stews, a continuation of Hawaiian foodways (Kirch 1992, p. 182). Kapa (barkcloth) was likewise a persistent part of Hawaiian material culture, though styles of dress as well as patterns of production changed in light of evolving standards of bodily modesty and the economic opportunities afforded women of different ages (Bayman 2009, pp. 137–141; Linnekin 1990, pp. 173–177). In the leprosarium at Kalaupapa, Moloka‘i, Hawai‘i, faunal assemblages are marked by continuity and change, as inmates of the leprosarium were eating beef provided by the institution along with traditionally procured marine fish and shellfish (Flexner 2011b). Resistance to institutional power may be expressed in the bottle glass assemblage from Kalaupapa, as there is evidence of alcohol consumption that was initially banned and then simply discouraged in the settlement, though this also is interpreted as reflecting a need to escape from the stresses of the small, isolated institutional community (Flexner 2011a). As was the case elsewhere in Oceania, the relationships of Hawaiians to foreign material culture were complicated and driven by a variety of motivations that were shaped not only by cultural identity but also by age, gender, and rank (Fig. 5).
Surface-collected artifacts from a domestic midden, Kalaupapa, Moloka‘i. The mixture of lithics, local shellfish, and imported ceramics, glass, and building materials confounds the division of “prehistoric” and “historic” materials, as well as “local” and “nonlocal.” The lithics postdate European contact, and the foreign items were used in a Hawaiian context
As Lydon (2009a, p. 154) points out for the Aboriginal descendants of inhabitants of Ebenezer mission, artifacts such as ceramics, buttons, and bottle glass that are typically classed as non-Aboriginal are interesting for living descendants of mission inhabitants “as evidence for Indigenous experience.” Aboriginal people adopted certain forms of what were considered appropriate and desirable foreign habits, such as smoking tobacco, eating from refined earthenwares, and wearing trousers, and some things that were not desirable from the missionary perspective, such as alcohol consumption. These new habits were paralleled by continuity of Aboriginal practices, blurring the boundary between “local” and “introduced” artifacts (Lydon 2009a, pp. 136–154). The adoption of new habits was deeply colored by gender and class, as women were especially pressured to behave according to Western standards of domesticity. It was clear that Aboriginal people were expected to take on European practices without ever really becoming the equals of Europeans (Lydon 2009a, pp. 154–155).
Materials from the mission station at Te Puna, New Zealand, reveal much about colonial entanglements as experienced by a specific family working for the Church Missionary Society (CMS) during the first half of the 19th century (Middleton 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008). Detailed analysis of material culture and historical documents reveal patterns in household architecture, household economy, and consumption that reflects the identities at play in the mission encounter. Food and drink were markers of social standing within the Maori and missionary communities as the King family adapted to their living situation at Te Puna. Specifically, evidence of alcohol consumption was related to the apparent social distance between the King family and other members of the CMS (Middleton 2008, p. 214). At the same time, the material reveals the extent to which the King family attempted to represent themselves as exemplars of proper domesticity to the local people. Part of the King family’s role in the Maori community at Te Puna included the integration of children from the local pa into the household and its domestic life, but very little archaeological evidence pertaining to children’s lives was recovered (Middleton 2008, pp. 219–220). The presence of the mission station did provide some economic opportunities for local people that are reflected in domestic assemblages, though the overall evidence of consumer goods suggests a fairly frugal household with limited access to luxuries (Middleton 2006, 2007, 2008).
In addition to forging connections, material culture could be a powerful means of constructing difference in colonial society. A major element of life in Levuka, Fiji, according to historic documents and reflected in the archaeological record, was the consumption of alcohol (e.g., Burley 2003, pp. 251–252). Even after written documents suggest that Levuka had been “sanitized” of excessive drunkenness as part of the development of British colonial culture, archaeology reveals the persistence of alcohol consumption on a large scale, especially around the Royal Hotel, which was one of the town’s main elite watering holes (Burley 2003, p. 259). Continued alcohol consumption, and the consumption of industrially produced goods in general, is interpreted as a way that European settlers, especially planters who were increasingly drawn to Fiji from the 1870s, and visitors distanced themselves from indigenous Fijians, who were forced to pay higher prices for introduced goods (Burley 2003, pp. 262–263). In this way Europeans could emphasize their superiority and ties to a distant homeland in contrast to locals who did not have the same level of access to alcohol or ceramics, among other goods. Objects were thus another site of colonial tension, having the power to homogenize material assemblages across space, transform exchange networks, reinforce traditions, and throw into relief cultural differences.
Changing politics, economics, and cosmologies
Before European contact, indigenous political and economic systems across Oceania were extremely variable, from small groups of hunter-gatherers to the emergence of “archaic states” in Hawai‘i (e.g., Hommon 2008, 2013; Kirch 1984, 2000, 2010a; Lilley 2006c). Local political economies often played a key role in shaping the colonial encounter, as the interests of indigenous people structured cross-cultural interactions. Far from passively accepting or reactively resisting European dominance, Pacific Islanders and Aboriginal Australians often actively used outsiders within the framework of local political and economic systems. Hawai‘i provides an especially dramatic example of the role of indigenous political economy in shaping the colonial experience (Osorio 2002). Work in the Anahulu Valley (Kirch 1992; Sahlins 1992) has been very influential for Hawaiian historical archaeology for two major reasons. First, the study examined Hawaiian ethnohistory in terms of broad changes in political economy rather than prominent historical events, and these changes were understood in terms of transformations driven largely by Native Hawaiians. Second, these broad transitions were deeply rooted in place, as the local experiences of people living in the Anahulu Valley were used to understand the nature of Hawaiian history as a whole.
The history of Hawaiian engagement with the political economy of the world system took place according to Hawaiian structures. Ali‘i, chiefly elites, participated in a “political economy of grandeur,” purchasing everything from bolts of cloth to metals to Western-style sailing ships in great quantities in the pursuit of mana, the sacred power that was the true measure of value in the political economy of Hawai‘i (Mills 2003; Sahlins 1990, 1992). Sailing ships and Western weapons were particularly important in Kamehameha’s conquest and unification of the archipelago, though equally important to his status as paramount of all Hawai‘i were his hoards of cash and trade goods, and eventually the latter would come to dominate the chiefly repertoire (Daws 1968, pp. 29–49; Sahlins 1992). As a result, economic competition overtook warfare in structuring power struggles among Hawaiian ali‘i (Sahlins 1992, p. 65). This adventure in world system economics was not limited to the chiefly elite, as goods such as imported ceramics from England, perfume from Paris, and buttons from imported clothes, among other exotic artifacts, turn up on archaeological sites from the 19th century in rural areas such as Anahulu on O‘ahu and Hālawa and Kalaupapa on Moloka‘i with increasing frequency over time (Anderson 2001; Flexner 2010; Goodwin 1994; Kirch 1992).
For much of the history of the islands, haole (Western) interest in Hawaiian politics was linked to economic goals, while Hawaiian interest in foreign economics was linked to political goals (Sahlins 1992, p. 3). The landscape of Pā ‘ula‘ula o Hipo (Fort Elisabeth) on Kaua‘i, Hawai‘i, reflects the use of built spaces in the construction of local histories, as both Russian colonial agents and Native Hawaiians perceived and socially constructed the fort within their own cosmological and architectonic systems (Mills 1996, 2002). Mills’ (2002) analysis of the historical anthropology of this site stresses the importance of choices made by Native Hawaiians and the importance of Hawaiian culture in structuring the history of Russian involvement in the islands. The construction of the fort was driven largely by local political rivalries, as the Kaua‘i chief Kaumuali‘i looked for outside help in resisting Kamehameha I’s expanding kingdom (Mills 2002, p. 107).
Missionary endeavors in Hawai‘i were tied to the incursion of traders and whalers but also were shaped by chiefly interests in controlling foreign power. The first group of American Protestant missionaries arrived after the traditional kapu system was outlawed in 1819, with the goal of simultaneously converting and civilizing the Hawaiian people (Daws 1968, p. 62). They were soon joined by French Catholics in 1827 (Daws 1968, p. 80). As was the case elsewhere, this was a somewhat contradictory relationship, as the missionaries sought to encourage modern, Christian capitalistic discipline among Hawaiian laborers on the one hand, while attempting to protect them from the excesses of trade in alcohol, tobacco, and other vices on the other. The remains of the activities of these missionaries are spread throughout the Hawaiian Islands in the form of churches and mission stations, such as those at Waialua (Sahlins 1992, pp. 155–159) and Kalaupapa (Greene 1985).
Christianity in Hawai‘i was transformed as much by Polynesian religion as it was transformative of Hawaiian practices. The Makahiki, an annual ritual cycle that was “a structure of the long run, an enduring organizing principle of Hawaiian history” (Sahlins 1992, p. 121), continued to intervene in the unfolding of Hawaiian events. After the abolition of kapu by the monarchy in 1819 (Kuykendall 1965, p. 65), the acceptance of missionaries by Hawaiian people remained cyclical. Native conversions followed the Makahiki structure, in which the system of kapu was lifted annually, to be reinstated by chiefly and priestly authorities at a proper time (Sahlins 1992, pp. 69–72). The chiefly class also used physical manifestations of religion, especially church-building projects, as another kind of competitive activity that manifested power at the intersection of religion, education, and politics (Sahlins 1992, p. 91; Sissons 2011, p. 212). Commoner lives, meanwhile, were transformed through the relaxing of spatial practices related to the kapu system, notably those that separated the sexes (see above, Sissons 2011). Though the Hawaiian missions on a large scale followed the general pattern of indigenous reinterpretation of Christianity, more local studies are necessary to understand how these dynamics worked at the scale of everyday life.
A similar structuring of colonial history by the Pacific Islands cultural context can be seen throughout the region. Historical archaeology in the Hauraki plains of New Zealand has revealed that early interactions between Maori and pakeha (foreigners) largely favored the indigenous population in terms of trade and resources in the century following Cook’s arrival in the islands in 1769 (Bedford 2004, p. 147). Archaeological sites dating to the early and mid-19th century reflect sustained practices of Maori traditions, though late 19th century sites, despite some evidence of continuity, yield exclusively nontraditional material remains (Bedford 2004, pp. 148–149). Further, Maori interests in engaging with foreigners for trade goods, especially guns, were often driven by conflict between local groups (e.g., Phillips 2000). The home of the colonial government in Fiji provides a useful example of hybrid architecture and the hybrid nature of colonial power. Even as the home of a colonial government, Nasova House became a manifestation of “[British Colonial Governor] Gordon’s vision of ‘Fijian-ness’ […] It became his vale levu as the paramount chief of the colony” (Chatan 2003, p. 287). The use of traditional Fijian architectural elements in Nasova House reflects the incorporation of island cultural elements as an aspect of British imperial hegemony in the Pacific. Gordon was consuming Fijian culture as he was transformed by it, just as the Fijians were transformed as the subjects of empire. Hybrid architecture in the governor’s palace in Fiji was meant to reflect the power of outsiders over local people through the appropriation of indigenous spatial layouts, but it also reflects the transformation of imperial power in the local context (Chatan 2003, p. 289).
History, archaeology, and indigenous communities
Archaeologists in Oceania have become quite concerned with the role of the discipline in shaping regional histories, especially in the construction of indigenous cultures by outsiders (e.g., McNiven and Russell 2005). One of the most powerful ways that we can make archaeological practice reflect our understanding of the complex nature of colonial heritage is by integrating the voices of living indigenous people into research that integrates many lines of evidence, not only as informants but as equal partners and practitioners of archaeology (e.g., Beck and Somerville 2005; David et al. 2012; Lydon 2009a; Lilley 2009; Murray 2010, pp. 308–309; Paterson et al. 2003; Purser 2012). The focus of the above analysis has been the material evidence needed to understand colonialism as an endeavor that required and was shaped by the agency of all parties involved, but many of these archaeological projects also involved close work with indigenous communities, especially within the last 20 years (see also Allen et al. 2002; Conte 2006; Crosby 2002). As historical archaeology and the archaeology of colonialism in Oceania and Australia develop in the future, this will continue to be an integral, if problematic, aspect of work in the discipline.
In many parts of the Pacific, indigenous archaeology is still a developing field. The results of the second “Hawaiian Renaissance” of the 1960s and 1970s in many ways can be seen in the widespread interest by Native Hawaiians and others in their indigenous language, cultural practices, and material culture, and in renewed engagement with archaeological sites, including the rebirth of ritual practices at places like Pu‘ukoholā, the temple where Kamehameha’s conquest of Hawai‘i began (Tengan 2008). The relationship between Native Hawaiians and archaeology has been a problematic one, however, and finding ways to work across different frameworks for creating and using knowledge remains one of the challenges here as elsewhere in the region (Kawelu 2007). Historical archaeology in Levuka, Fiji, has focused primarily on the localization of British settler culture, but the development of participatory research involving local people is an encouraging recent direction for this area that has great potential (Purser 2012).
The history of heritage in New Caledonia is a conflicted one in which historical archaeology has only recently begun to play a role. Until the 1980s, “non-indigenous heritage was not considered of any importance” (Sand et al. 2005, p. 146). While the Kanak (indigenous New Caledonians) sought to preserve their heritage, the Caldoches, who are ancestors of the French convict settlers of New Caledonia, were dealing with historical issues of their own. New Caledonia’s history as a French colony began in 1853, but it was not until the establishment of a penal colony in 1864 that the main settlement of Noumea began to grow. Around 80% of contemporary Caldoches are thought to have convict ancestry, but many people in the past sought to intentionally destroy any evidence of such a legacy (Sand et al. 2005, p. 147). Simultaneously, Kanak identity was wrapped up in deeply flawed ethnographic models that emphasized the unchanging nature of indigenous society. Archaeological research has challenged this, showing that society in New Caledonia prior to the arrival of the French was more complex, dynamic, and regionally variable than had been assumed. This has resulted in a sense that much of New Caledonia’s history must be radically rewritten to reflect the archaeological evidence, though there is a certain amount of resistance to this from various groups with political stakes in maintaining the status quo (Lilley 2009; Sand et al. 2006).
Approaches to historical archaeology that incorporate oral traditions have been extremely useful for reanalyzing the role of indigenous knowledge for understanding the past (Fig. 6) (David et al. 2012; McNiven and Russell 2005, pp. 242–258). A historical archaeology project in Yarrawarra, Australia, challenged power relations that emphasized archaeological knowledge as more legitimate than oral history and written history as dominant over both (Beck and Somerville 2005). This project focused on the concept of “conversations” in an attempt to “value Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal perspectives on equal terms” (Beck and Somerville 2005, p. 471). Five types of interdisciplinary conversations are identified: co-opting, intersecting, parallel, complementary, and contradictory. Contradictory conversations are seen as the most productive type, as they can lead to more complex interpretations (Beck and Somerville 2005, pp. 474–478). For example, oral histories concerning the structures that once existed at the Fig Tree site, where archaeology did not yield definite architectural remains but did reveal evidence of food and drink consumption, added a layer of meaning to the creation of that site as a historic place (Beck and Somerville 2005, p. 479).
Erromangan men discuss a rock art site near Port Narvin, Erromango, Vanuatu, during an archaeological survey of colonial-era mission sites. This site is associated with a local man, Sousou, who was instrumental in the establishment of the Presbyterian Church on the island. Blending church documents, archaeological remains, and local oral traditions has begun to reveal a new sense of the history of Christianity in the New Hebrides (as Vanuatu was called before it gained independence in 1980)
Work with Aboriginal peoples has been a hallmark of the archaeology of contact and colonialism in Australia. Much of this research has shown the importance of the longue durée of Aboriginal histories on the continent and the shared nature of landscapes and history for the colonial period (Harrison 2004a, b; Harrison and Williamson 2004; Murray 2004b, 2010; Staniforth 2003; Williamson 2004). Orthodox views in white Australia, however, continue to emphasize the accomplishment and importance of European settlers in shaping society, often by drawing connections with global history in places such as the ANZAC beachhead at Gallipoli, while ignoring or downplaying the impact of oppression and dispossession and the accomplishments of Aboriginal people (Lydon 2009b). In working with Aboriginal history, there is often tension between emphasizing the idea that Aboriginal people somehow share colonial history with white settlers and asserting that Aboriginal history, even in the colonial period, remained to some extent a unique entity (compare McNiven and Russell 2005, pp. 211–231 with Lilley 2006a; Murray 2004b). Perhaps the solution lies in approaches that confound the binary oppositions between indigenous and colonial culture and in those that work to integrate indigenous perspectives into archaeology on an equal footing, without appropriating indigenous knowledge for Western frames of reference. This is, of course, easier said than done and will remain a challenge for 21st-century archaeologists and the many communities with which we work, but it is only by working closely with these communities that the problem will be addressed.
Future horizons and prospects
The examples above, which represent a sample of the total literature on historical archaeology in Oceania, give a valuable sense of the ways that landscapes and material culture shaped contact and colonialism in the region, but there is still much potential for future growth in this field of research. The expansion of historical archaeology to places where field research has not yet ventured will be vastly beneficial for the discipline. Australia and New Zealand, reflecting their settler heritage, are exemplars of global historical archaeology, represented by a sizable literature covering a number of time periods and themes. In these places, much historical archaeology remains to be done, of course, especially as the pace of development continues to accelerate in the region. In contrast, the presence of untested historical features in archaeological projects focused on the period prior to European contact in places like the Cook Islands (Walter 1998; Walter and Anderson 2002) and Mangareva (Conte and Kirch 2004) hint that regional historical archaeology has plenty of room to grow in Oceania. Micronesia and Island Melanesia especially have a vast potential that has only recently begun to be developed (Dixon 2004; Flexner 2012b; Rainbird 2000; Spriggs 1985, 2007).
In addition to expanding the geographical scope, an emphasis on prolonged interethnic contact throughout the region, from Chinatowns and ports of call, to rural settlements, missions, and prison colonies, would provide an opportunity to expand our understanding of the long-term effects of colonialism in all their complexity. Archaeologists have been developing a literature on these topics, especially for Asian settler communities, and the pace of research has accelerated in the last decade (e.g., Dixon 2004; Jack et al. 1984; Kraus-Friedberg 2011; Lawrence and Davies 2011, pp. 223–250; Rainbird 2000; Ritchie 2003b; Ritchie and Bedford 1985; Smith 2003; Turner et al. 2005). In Island Melanesia, archaeologists have only begun to test the possibilities of historical archaeology outside of moments of early contact—for example, in the study of mission sites and assemblages in Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands (Flexner 2012b; Smith 2010; Spriggs 1985, 2007).
One aspect of regional historical archaeology in Oceania that is in its infancy is the study of the Pacific labor trade, by which Melanesian people from the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu were shipped to sugar plantations in Fiji and Queensland (Hayes 2002). The historical archaeology of what is essentially plantation slavery should be of immense interest to those who study similar contexts in the Caribbean and the American South. Historical archaeology might also beneficially explore materials from the very recent past, examining the ways that events such as World War II shaped history and culture in the region (e.g., Rodgers et al. 1998). Sites from the 20th century have particularly great potential for integrating archaeology and oral traditions that embed recent social memories. Globalization of historical archaeology in terms of theoretical scope as well as field research has expanded the potential to examine culture contact and colonialism as they occurred in many places (e.g., Orser 1996), and the utility of historical archaeology in Oceania lies in the propensity of islands for facilitating comparison across space and time (Kirch 1997, 2000, pp. 323–325; Kirch and Green 2001).
Conclusions: Historical archaeology and a decolonization of history in Oceania?
As Lydon (2006, 2009a) has pointed out, the idea that Europeans and indigenous Pacific Islanders and Aboriginal Australians were active participants in the colonial process leaves us with a dilemma. On the one hand, emphasizing transformation too much can feed into the idea that living indigenous people are somehow “inauthentic,” having lost their connections to precontact roots. On the other hand, focusing on continuity of indigenous practice ignores the creativity and adaptability of native people and furthermore may exclude portions of the indigenous population, who would again be seen as inauthentic. We also must avoid suggesting implicitly and probably unintentionally that indigenous people somehow “wanted” to be colonized because some chose to incorporate outsiders and their material culture into their trade networks and social lives. Wanting to trade for firearms or take on a new religion is one thing, being dispossessed of land, treated as part of a permanent underclass, and told that you can no longer engage in certain practices or even speak your own language is quite another. This is not simply a matter of academic concern but an absolutely crucial problem for addressing contemporary struggles over land, resources, and identity in Oceania and elsewhere.
Archaeology gives us a method for measuring things like continuity and change in the material record, but it does not necessarily give us a set of simple tools for defining the identities of the people who created, used, and discarded those materials in the past. Even if artifacts might be defined as “European” or “native” based on material type, fancy refined earthenwares might just as easily be consumed and used in an Aboriginal context (Lydon 2009a), while obsidian daggers might be produced in the context of a global tourist trade (Torrence 2000). This is problematic for ideological and, in many cases, legal frameworks that demand clearly defined, bounded cultures that are easily recognizable and continuous with some imagined past.
From the perspective of a historical archaeology that acknowledges colonialism as a process in which all parties participated, the question of what constitutes “authentic” native culture should be difficult to pin down. Authenticity will always be inflected by the colonial process, which was and remains, if nothing else, violent, messy, and confusing for all involved. Historical archaeology in Oceania challenges facile concepts about the interactions of Europeans and Pacific Islanders at the categorical level, not because this is politically convenient or even politically radical. Rather, this ambiguous, troubling picture of the heritage of colonialism should be used to problematize contemporary historical and political narratives because it is realistic. The history of colonialism in Oceania cannot be defined clearly in terms of in-groups and out-groups; rather, the process of historical transformation consists primarily of a network of connections linking social actors across time and space. In emphasizing connections rather than boundaries, historical archaeology can provide a powerful counternarrative for contemporary ideologies based on a simplified, sanitized sense of the past (see Lilley 2006a for an Australian perspective).
The neat excavation units, measured drawings, site reports, and “arrays of salvaged and well-scrubbed artifacts laid out in archaeological laboratories” that come out of scientific, materially based studies of the archaeology of the modern world serve to illuminate the “subaltern voices” that often go unmentioned in orthodox accounts of colonial history (Hall 2000, p. 198). The fragmentary remains of contact and colonialism in Oceania reflect the difficulties involved in defining and maintaining boundaries, cultural, geographical, and otherwise. Much of the violence of projects aimed at dispossession and reform of indigenous people is a reflection of this troubling dynamic. Artifacts and landscapes from the modern world were created in an interethnic past, equally part of the social worlds of Europeans and Islanders, and they are part of an interethnic present. These materials thus resist simple categorizations, requiring critical analyses that integrate multiple lines of evidence, which can sometimes be approached only through archaeology. When interpreting culture, contact, and colonialism in Oceania, we might boil complex assertions about identity, land, and people down to the simple archaeological adage, context matters.
Historical archaeology in Oceania should embrace this perspective, as the future of social life in the region will likely continue to be marked by migration, contact, and ongoing cultural transformation. While globalization has the power to homogenize cultural practices and identities, it also often stimulates powerful assertions of local identities and cultural practices in response to this possibility. Both of these dynamics have been documented archaeologically, as seen above, and should continue to mark historical and cultural change in the region. Historical archaeology reveals the ways that all people living in the Pacific Sea of Islands use land, social spaces, and objects to forge networks that are simultaneously traditional, authentic, and local, as well as modern and global.
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Acknowledgments
Mark McCoy encouraged me to submit this research to the Journal of Archaeological Research and provided valuable comments on the draft manuscript. Thanks are due to Gary Feinman, Linda Nicholas, and the copyediting staff at the journal for helping this paper along. Jim Bayman, Stuart Bedford, and four anonymous reviewers provided valuable suggestions that improved the focus and organization of this paper immensely, in addition to pointing out various errors and omissions. They also have my sincere thanks. Trying to organize such a large body of material is challenging, and while the various editors and reviewers have helped as they can, any errors or lacunae in the final paper are my responsibility.
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Flexner, J.L. Historical Archaeology, Contact, and Colonialism in Oceania. J Archaeol Res 22, 43–87 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-013-9067-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-013-9067-z