The Growth and Collapse of Pacific Island Societies: Archaeological and Demographic Perspectives Contributor(s): Kirch, Patrick Vinton (Editor), Rallu, Jean-Louis (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0824831489 ISBN-13: 9780824831486 Publisher: University of Hawaii Press OUR PRICE: $35.15 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 2007 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Archaeology - Social Science | Anthropology - General - History | Oceania |
Dewey: 306.099 |
Physical Information: 1.01" H x 5.99" W x 9" (1.44 lbs) 408 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - Oceania |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Were there major population collapses on Pacific Islands following first contact with the West? If so, what were the actual population numbers for islands such as Hawai'i, Tahiti, or New Caledonia? Is it possible to develop new methods for tracking the long-term histories of island populations? These and related questions are at the heart of this new book, which draws together cutting-edge research by archaeologists, ethnographers, and demographers. In their accounts of exploration, early European voyagers in the Pacific frequently described the teeming populations they encountered on island after island. Yet missionary censuses and later nineteenth-century records often indicate much smaller populations on Pacific Islands, leading many scholars to debunk the explorers' figures as romantic exaggerations. Recently, the debate over the indigenous populations of the Pacific has intensified, and this book addresses the problem from new perspectives. Rather than rehash old data and arguments about the validity of explorers' or missionaries' accounts, the contributors to this volume offer a series of case studies grounded in new empirical data derived from original archaeological fieldwork and from archival historical research. Case studies are presented for the Hawaiian Islands, Mo'orea, the Marquesas, Tonga, Samoa, the Tokelau Islands, New Caledonia, Aneityum (Vanuatu), and Kosrae. |
Contributor Bio(s): Kirch, Patrick Vinton: - Patrick Vinton Kirch is professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. |