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2 results

  • 2 - Demarcating Oceania

  • Stephanie Lawson, Macquarie University, Sydney
  • Book:
    Regional Politics in Oceania
    Published online:
    15 February 2024
    Print publication:
    22 February 2024, pp 33-56

  • Summary

    This chapter begins with the way in which Oceania was first populated by successive waves of migration beginning around 50,000 to 45,000 years ago, noting that studies of the early period often deploy the geographic terms ‘Near Oceania’ and ‘Remote Oceania’ that have no ethnic or cultural connotations as some later naming practices do. It goes on to examines the demarcation of Oceania, or the various parts of it, by European explorers. The most controversial exercise in naming is undoubtedly the tripartite division of the Island Pacific devised by eighteenth-century Europeans, namely, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The distinctions between these subregional entities arose in a context in which racialist ideas were prominent and that therefore bear their imprint. The tripartite division receives special attention in this chapter due not only to the scholarly critiques surrounding it but also because of the extent to which it underpins contemporary subregional developments.

  • Radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling of one of Remote Oceania's oldest cemeteries at Chelechol ra Orrak, Palau

  • Scott M. Fitzpatrick, Nicholas P. Jew
  • Journal:
    Antiquity / Volume 92 / Issue 361 / February 2018
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    09 February 2018, pp. 149-164
    Print publication:
    February 2018

  • Research at the Chelechol ra Orrak rockshelter in Palau has revealed an extensive cemetery with at least 50 interred individuals, their graves overlain by later occupational deposits. Previous radiocarbon dating placed this sequence of burial and occupation at c. 3000 cal BP, making it one of the earliest Pacific Island cemetery sites. To provide a more robust chronological framework, Bayesian modelling was applied to construct probability ranges for the date and duration of activity at the site, assisted by a suite of new 14C determinations. The results provide more secure evidence for burial activity dating back to c. 3000 cal BP, thus confirming Chelechol ra Orrak as one of the only cemeteries in Remote Oceania that dates to the earliest, known stages of island colonisation.