A Anderson
Biographic Data
| ID | 2759 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Anderson |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Anderson |
| SIGNATURE | ANDERSON A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Australian National University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7636-7306 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 108 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 617 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 108 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Wiggles, Plateaus, and Precision
Achieving precise archaeological chronologies in island environments has long been hindered by plateaus and wiggles in the radiocarbon calibration curve. This study shows how to overcome these temporal bottlenecks by integrating Bayesian principles with high-precision sample selection, and demonstrates how the interpretation of archaeological context affects the results. Using two iconic Aotearoa, New Zealand sites previously dated over 30 years …
‘Hardy rascals of doubtful fame’ Historical perspectives upon sealers in southern New Zealand
In paying tribute to the late Ian Smith this lecture takes up a theme arising from his interests in the exploitation of marine mammals and the early historical archaeology of southern New Zealand. The commercial sealing industry, about 1792-1830, is known from shipping and other historical records and to some extent from historical archaeology but the activities and experiences of sealers, as individuals and in their gangs, remain little known. A…
Houghton Mifflin Readers’ Reports and the Shape of Charles W. Chesnutt's Literary Career
Between 1891 and 1931, Charles Chesnutt submitted fiction to Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston. The in-house readers’ reports reveal racial preconceptions, commercial concerns, and institutional self-perception, and they shed light on the trajectory of Chesnutt’s career with the elite firm—four books in rapid succession and then rejections
Did Indigenous long-distance voyaging occur below 50°S
Genealogies and oral histories as chronological networks
Human genealogies serve multiple functions beyond documenting one's pedigree. They operate as complex social frameworks that structure knowledge, delimit group membership, explain historical causation, are political tools, and provide chronological foundations for understanding past events and processes across diverse knowledge systems. Archaeologists, ethnologists, and historians have long related historical information from genealogies and asso…
Transportation to school and academic outcomes
The age and position of the southern boundary of prehistoric Polynesian dispersal
Prehistoric Polynesian voyaging into high latitudes with landfall in Antarctica remains a widely credited proposition. We examine it through archaeological and environmental evidence from the Subantarctic region of the southwest Pacific, focussing upon an extensive archaeological site at Sandy Bay on Enderby Island. Combining a new set of radiocarbon ages with former, older, ages we show that the site is now within the same rapid expansion phase …
Looking for Lost Proficiency in East Polynesian Voyaging Traditions and Ethnology
The lost proficiency hypothesis holds that ancient voyaging technology in East Polynesia was superior to that recorded historically. It provides an indispensable assumption for modern experimental voyaging and associated research, but its origins in traditional migration narratives and associated ethnology are uncertain. Inspection of Maori voyaging traditions, published between 1840 and 1970, implies lost proficiency in the supernatural abilitie…
An Historical Analysis of Waka Unua and the Māori Sail
Waka unua, Māori 'double-hulled canoes' with rudimentary Oceanic spritsails, have long been considered the most devolved of sailing vessels in East Polynesia, compared to an assumed sophistication of voyaging canoes in the prehistoric colonising era. This traditionalist or conventional hypothesis is discussed with reference to early historical data from New Zealand, including both written descriptions and drawings, according to the conviction tha…
A southern Māori perspective on stories of Polynesian polar voyaging
As Ngāi Tahu (southern Maori), we take issue with widespread reference in scholarly publication to Polynesian voyagers reaching the Antarctic, an idea that originated in the translation of Rarotongan traditions in the nineteenth century. Analysis of those indicates that they contain no plausible reference to Antarctic seafaring. Southern Māori interests have extended into the Subantarctic Islands for 800 years but there is no reference to Antarct…
Returning to the hypothesis of Amerindian settlement on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
The hypothesis of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) colonisation by Amerindian voyagers has been largely dismissed archaeologically since the mid-twentieth-century controversy generated by Thor Heyerdahl’s American Indians in the Pacific. The orthodox hypothesis today is that Rapa Nui was settled exclusively by Polynesians who, however, brought the sweet potato and a few other items from South America by return voyaging. This view is challenged by recent …
The transfer of kūmara (Ipomoea batatas) from East to South Polynesia and its dispersal in New Zealand
Whether kūmara ‘sweet potato’ (Ipomoea batatas) arrived in South Polynesia with initial colonisation or later is discussed in the light of recent evidence from East Polynesia and by examination and statistical modelling of radiocarbon ages associated with kūmara arrival and dispersal in New Zealand. Largely unresolved difficulties in radiocarbon dating of horticultural sites preclude reaching a secure conclusion about the relative timing of kūmar…
New excavations at Fa’ahia (Huahine, Society Islands) and chronologies of central East Polynesian colonization
The six-hectare site of Vaito'otia-Fa'ahia on Huahine Island in the Leeward Societies is renowned for its wealth of material culture typifying early East Polynesian settlement, including items of wood and fibre preserved by waterlogging, through the research of Yosihiko Sinoto and colleagues in particular. However, the stratigraphy for much of the excavated area is sketchy and no precise chronology of settlement is available. Renewed excavations …
The Ideal Free Distribution, Food Production, and the Colonization of Oceania
Islands in Oceania were some of the last habitable land masses on earth to be colonized by humans. Current archaeological evidence suggests that these islands were colonized episodically rather than continuously, and that bursts of migration were followed by longer periods of sedentism and population growth. The decision to colonize isolated, unoccupied islands and archipelagos was complex and dependent on a variety of social, technological and e…
Alternative Perspectives Upon Tupaia’s Mapmaking
Tupaia’s map has largely eluded understanding for 250 years. Some of his islands offer few clues to their modern identities by name, size, shape, or distance between them, and many others located i
Was there mid Holocene habitation in Madagascar? A reconsideration of the OSL dates from Lakaton'i Anja
Prehistoric Polynesian Impact on the New Zealand Environment
Investigating Premodern Colonization of the Indian Ocean
Jett, Stephen C
Anthropos , Seite 318 - 319
The Distance between Zurich and Todtnauberg
This paper focuses on two poems written by Paul Celan after first encounters he had with writers who held great significance for him. In 1960 Celan met fellow Jewish poet Nelly Sachs at the Stork Inn in Zurich, and afterwards recorded the event in the poem "Zürich, Zum Storchen". Seven years later, Celan visited Martin Heidegger at his hut in the German mountains. Celan's depiction of this encounter is found in the poem "Todtnauberg". In this ess…
The first accurate and precise calendar dating of New Zealand Māori Pā, using Otāhau Pā as a case study
Ecological Contingency Accounts for Earliest Seagoing in the Western Pacific Ocean
Seagoing at 1 mya to Flores, and sea gaps of >50 km crossed by 47 kya to Sahul, are evidence of earlier maritime migration in the western Pacific than anywhere else. Current opinion attributes the latter to the influence of anatomically modern human cultural complexity on seagoing technology and practice, together with the impetus of serial resource depression. It is argued here that seagoing was unusually advantaged in the western Pacific by a f…
Ancient Microbial DNA in Dental Calculus
Ancient human migrations provide the critical genetic background to historical and contemporary human demographic patterns. However, our ability to infer past human migration events, especially those that occurred over rapid timescales, is often limited. A key example is the peopling of Polynesia, where the timing is relatively well defined, but the exact routes taken during the final stages and the source populations are not. Here, we discuss th…
The Archaeology of Raoul Island (Kermadecs) and Its Place in the Settlement History of Polynesia
Disputed Histories
Introduction: Angles of Vision 1 Retrievable Time: Prehistoric Colonisation of South polynesia from the Outside In and the Inside Out 2 Leadership in Ancient Polynesia 3 Asia in Murihiku: Towards a Transnational History of a Colonial Culture 4 'In-Between' Lives: Studies from within a colonial Frontier 5 Marriage and family on the Colonial Frontier 6 Is there a Good Case for New Zealand Exceptionalism? 7 Chance Residues: Photographs and Social Hi…
The chronology of colonization in New Zealand
New Zealand was the last substantial landmass to be colonized by prehistoric people. Even within Oceania, where there are much smaller and more remote islands, such as Pitcairn and Easter Island, New Zealand stands out as the last-settled archipelago. Its prehistory promises, therefore, better archaeological evidence concerning prehistoric colonization of pristine land-masses than is the case anywhere else, as is apparent in the extinction of meg…
The age of Lapita settlement in Fiji
Recent and earlier research in Fiji has documented the approximate period of settlement there during the Lapita era. Age estimates extended back to about 3200 BP. A survey of the radiocarbon ages from sites containing dentate‐stamped pottery, and especially from sites or levels where there are only Lapita wares, indicates that there is no convincing case for Lapita settlement earlier than about 2900 cal BP. In fact, the period of dentate‐stamped …
Faunal collapse, landscape change and settlement history in Remote Oceania
Substantial anthropogenic environmental change occurred in Remote Oceania following the first arrival of people at 3000 BP and their spread throughout the region by 700 BP. It included numerous faunal extinctions, widespread deforestation and the erosion
Prehistoric maritime migration in the Pacific islands
Long-distance human migration across the Pacific Ocean occurred during the late Holocene and originated almost entirely in the west. As prevailing tradewinds blow from the east, the mechanisms of prehistoric seafaring have been debated since the sixteenth century. Inadequacies in propositions of accidental or opportunistic drifting on occasional westerlies were exposed by early computer simulation. Experimental voyaging in large, fast, weatherly …
The To'aga Site
A model of prehistoric collecting on the rocky shore
New Marine ΔR Values for the South Pacific Subtropical Gyre Region
This paper presents 31 new ΔR results of known-age, pre-AD 1950 shells from the South Pacific subtropical gyre region, spanning from the Tuamotu Archipelago in the east to New Caledonia in the west. This doubles the number of available ΔR values for the Oceania region. These values indicate that the regional offset (ΔR) from the modeled radiocarbon marine age has remained relatively constant over the last 100 yr prior to 1950. Variation from the …
The transient village in southern New Zealand
Southern New Zealand is a cool‐temperate insular region, first colonized about 800 BP by hunter‐gatherers. Archaeological data, particularly from the site at Shag River Mouth, show that small villages, established early in the settlement sequence, were occupied only briefly and that by about 400 BP village habitation had ceased. Ethnographic observations and some archaeological evidence show that villages were re‐established late in the sequence,…
The Subsidy from Nature
This paper outlines the importance of the small-scale extractive sector to extremely impoverished households in rural areas of tropical Brazil. Extractive activities are important as inputs to household reproduction, and are critical as a source of cash income. In the case study we analyze, small-scale extraction was roughly equivalent to wage labor and to agriculture in its contribution to household income. We suggest that in rural development a…
The pattern of Lapita settlement in Fiji
At continental and oceanic geographic scales radiocarbon chronologies are important for calibrating the expansion of prehistoric populations, and understanding the type of dispersal process. In Fiji where the colonisation phase was relatively brief — within two standard deviations of most C14 dates — there are significant differences between Lapita sites and material culture suites. To investigate this variability three models of intra‐archipelag…
Was Rattus exulans in New Zealand 2000 years ago? AMS Radiocarbon ages from Shag River Mouth
AMS radiocarbon determinations on the collagen of Rattus exulans bones from natural sites have been interpreted as evidence of human contact with New Zealand more than 2000 years ago. Some AMS determinations on Rattus exulans collagen products in archaeological samples from Shag River Mouth have yielded similar results, but these are very different from the radiocarbon chronology of the site established previously on multiple samples of different…
Stability in the South Pacific surface marine 14C reservoir over the last 750 years. Evidence from American Samoa, the southern Cook Islands and the Marquesas
Human Colonization of the Palau Islands, Western Micronesia
Adaptation to new environments is an important issue in colonization research with implications for accurately establishing the timing of human arrival and interpreting the dispersal pattern from the distribution of early archaeological sites. Island groups frequently contain a diverse range of landscapes and geographic variation in their colonization records that might reflect the environmental preference of prehistoric migrants. In the Palau Is…
Islands of Isolation
Isolation has contributed over time to the development of humans culturally and biologically. The concept of isolation was popular in earlier anthropological and archaeological discussions of island settlement, but it has waned in favor of models emphasizing interaction. Although many islanders around the world developed sophisticated techniques for seafaring, these did not assure them of constant access to other peoples or places. Using case stu…
Indo-Pacific Migration and Colonization-Introduction
In this Introduction we comment on issues raised by the present collection of papers as they appear relevant in thinking about the settlement of the Indo-Pacific from the Pleistocene to the late Holocene. Successful maritime migration across this vast region was obviously related to voyaging technology and colonizing behaviors. Here we critique earlier models that indicate simple unidirectional expansion and posit farming, or indeed any other sin…
Faunal Depletion and Subsistence Change In the Early Prehistory of Southern New Zealand
Times of sand
The orthodox archaeological sequence at the Sigatoka Dunes site (VL 16/1) in Fiji proposes three phases of occupation spanning Fijian prehistory, each associated with a period of dune stability. It has been taken as the standard model of Fijian prehistory for more than 30 years. Recently, however, it has been argued that there is no stratigraphic support for three discrete levels and that the occupation history was fragmented, complex, and contin…
Towards the Recognition of Convergent Cultural Adaptation in the Subantarctic Zone [with Comments and Replies]
In their more optimistic papers, Oceanic prehistorians have contended that that area, with its hundreds of islands, diversity of physical environments, and short period of human occupation, offers "laboratory conditions" for the study of culture change. This paper reports an attempt to take advantage of those conditions. The prehistory of the isolated and temperate Chatham Islands is outlined, and causes of the "devolutionary" culture change whic…
Ecological Contingency Accounts for Earliest Seagoing in the Western Pacific Ocean
Seagoing at 1 mya to Flores, and sea gaps of >50 km crossed by 47 kya to Sahul, are evidence of earlier maritime migration in the western Pacific than anywhere else. Current opinion attributes the latter to the influence of anatomically modern human cultural complexity on seagoing technology and practice, together with the impetus of serial resource depression. It is argued here that seagoing was unusually advantaged in the western Pacific by a f…
Dating the first New Zealanders
The first colonization of New Zealand is a much debated issue. The lack of appropriate absolute dating has meant chronology has been poorly understood. New 14C dating of materials from archaic Polynesian graves and occupation levels provides important precision and understanding of early exploitation on New Zealand
Radiocarbon dates from archaeological rat bones
AMS radiocarbon determinations on rat bone gelatin from Pleasant River, New Zealand, are presented. These differ significantly from radiocarbon ages for the same deposits on multiple samples of other materials, and in conjunction with previously reported data from Shag River Mouth show a consistent pattern of divergence between the results from two laboratories suggesting that pretreatment or other laboratory procedures may have influenced the re…
The Lapita site at Votua, northern Lau Islands, Fiji
Archaeological sites of exclusively Lapita provenance are important because they present an opportunity to tease out the elements of material culture and economic behaviour which belonged to the first colonisation phase in Remote Oceania from those which might have come later. Such sites are rare in the eastern Lapita province (Fiji and West Polynesia). We describe one from Mago Island in the northern Lau group of Fiji. Although excavations at th…
Mechanics of overkill in the extinction of New Zealand moas
Radiocarbon Ages for Two Sites on Ua Huka, Marquesas
Radiocarbon dates are presented and discussed for two sites with deep stratigraphy on Ua Huka Island, Marquesas. The lowest layer at the Hokatu site dates to the eleventh to thirteenth centuries A.D. At Hatuana, earlier radiocarbon-age estimates extended to the sixth to ninth centuries A.D. New results from the Waikato and Oxford Radiocarbon laboratories indicate that the lower levels at Hatuana are no older than about the fourteenth century
No meat on that beautiful shore
In the Pacific there are two main groups of so-called 'mystery islands', i.e. islands that were settled and then abandoned (or their populations died out) in prehistory. One consists of low coral islands in the equatorial zone and the other of high basaltic islands in the subtropical zone. Consideration of environmental and archaeological evidence about the latter suggests that they lay in a relatively impoverished zone of faunal resources (marin…
A model of prehistoric collecting on the rocky shore
Barracouta fishing in prehistoric and early historic New Zealand
The New Zealand barracouta (Thyrsites atun) was the principal species caught by the Maori in southern New Zealand throughout the prehistoric and early historic periods. It is a voracious pelagic species which was taken in early autumn by an unusual type of trolling gear operated from stationary canoes in calm seas. Barracouta were caught most abundantly along the east coast of the South Island and were dried as a source of winter food. By the lat…
Economic change and the prehistoric fur trade in Northern Sweden
It is widely assumed that fur trading was an important aspect of north Swedish prehistory, although there is very little evidence directly apparent from the archaeological record. This difficulty may be circumvented by looking for broader or indirect effects of an assumed influential fur trade. A model of the effect of fur trading upon boreal forest subsistence economies, drawn from the history of the Canadian fur trade, is examined in relation t…
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Towards the Recognition of Convergent Cultural Adaptation in the Subantarctic Zone [with Comments and Replies]
In their more optimistic papers, Oceanic prehistorians have contended that that area, with its hundreds of islands, diversity of physical environments, and short period of human occupation, offers "laboratory conditions" for the study of culture change. This paper reports an attempt to take advantage of those conditions. The prehistory of the isolated and temperate Chatham Islands is outlined, and causes of the "devolutionary" culture change whic…
Anbarra Shellfishing
(1983). ANBARRA SHELLFISHING: Shell bed to shell midden by Betty Meehan. Australian Archaeology: Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 157-159
Faunal Depletion and Subsistence Change In the Early Prehistory of Southern New Zealand
Recent developments in Japanese prehistory
Japanese archaeology, in both its practice and its substantive results, has its own character. The scale of archaeological activity, especially in salvage work, is massive. The intellectual framework of study has its special concerns and aims. The cultural sequence has some exceptional features. Here the pattern of Japanese archaeology is set out with particular reference to the major new synthesis, Pearson's Windows on the Japanese past (1986, A…
Moa extinctions in Southern New Zealand
The Subsidy from Nature
This paper outlines the importance of the small-scale extractive sector to extremely impoverished households in rural areas of tropical Brazil. Extractive activities are important as inputs to household reproduction, and are critical as a source of cash income. In the case study we analyze, small-scale extraction was roughly equivalent to wage labor and to agriculture in its contribution to household income. We suggest that in rural development a…
Mechanics of overkill in the extinction of New Zealand moas
Prehistoric two‐way voyaging between New Zealand and East Polynesia
Six prehistoric flakes of obsidian were analysed by X‐Ray fluorescence. Four flakes, from Raoul Island in the Kermadec Group, are identical to obsidian from Mayor Island, New Zealand. The four flakes, from a Polynesian settlement site between 450 and 640 years old, provide the first clear demonstration that Polynesians who had reached New Zealand had, as Maori tradition records, some success in return voyaging. The two other flakes, from two Arch…
The chronology of colonization in New Zealand
New Zealand was the last substantial landmass to be colonized by prehistoric people. Even within Oceania, where there are much smaller and more remote islands, such as Pitcairn and Easter Island, New Zealand stands out as the last-settled archipelago. Its prehistory promises, therefore, better archaeological evidence concerning prehistoric colonization of pristine land-masses than is the case anywhere else, as is apparent in the extinction of meg…
Late colonization of East Polynesia
In a recent A NTIQUITY article (65: 767–95) Atholl Anderson presented a detailed analysis of radiocarbon dates to show that the settlement of New Zealand occurred later than previously thought. In this paper Anderson teams up with another proponent of ‘chronometric hygiene’, Matthew Spriggs (see A NTIQUITY 63: 587–613), to examine the dates for the colonization of the rest of East Polynesia. Once again the generally accepted dates for initial set…
Reconsideration of the Marquesan sequence in East Polynesian prehistory, with particular reference to Hane (MUH1)
Current views about the Marquesan sequence are reviewed through a reassessment of the archaeological evidence from Hane. Particular attention is given to the stratigraphy, radiocarbon dating, adzes, fishhooks, harpoons, ornaments, pottery and faunal remains. These data suggest that the lower levels at Hane represent a single relatively brief phase of occupation, probably about the middle of the first millenium A.D., during the initial settlement …
Palaeoenvironmental evidence of island colonization
More on whether evidence of prehistoric environment on the Pacific island of Mangaia does or does not demonstrate an early human presence there
The To'aga Site
Origins of Procellariidae Hunting in the Southwest Pacific
Small procellariids, mainly petrels, prions and shearwaters, were hunted at their rookeries in various parts of the southwest Pacific during the early historical era. The industries, some of which continue, arose from both traditional, indigenous, practices of prehistoric origin and subsistence necessity in early European settlements. The history and main features of the Tasmanian and southern New Zealand ‘muttonbird’ industries are described, to…
Origins of Procellariidae Hunting in the Southwest Pacific
Small procellariids, mainly petrels, prions and shearwaters, were hunted at their rookeries in various parts of the southwest Pacific during the early historical era. The industries, some of which continue, arose from both traditional, indigenous, practices of prehistoric origin and subsistence necessity in early European settlements. The history and main features of the Tasmanian and southern New Zealand 'muttonbird' industries are described, to…
Radiocarbon dates on shearwater bones from Beeton Shelter, Badger Island, Bass Strait
The studies have shown that small islands in eastern Bass Strait provided rookery sites for a variety of shearwater bones by the mid-Holocene. The two warm-water shearwaters represented in Beeton shelter have shown the climatic changes and their affect on sea-water temperatures in eastern Bass Strait
Was Rattus exulans in New Zealand 2000 years ago? AMS Radiocarbon ages from Shag River Mouth
AMS radiocarbon determinations on the collagen of Rattus exulans bones from natural sites have been interpreted as evidence of human contact with New Zealand more than 2000 years ago. Some AMS determinations on Rattus exulans collagen products in archaeological samples from Shag River Mouth have yielded similar results, but these are very different from the radiocarbon chronology of the site established previously on multiple samples of different…
The transient village in southern New Zealand
Southern New Zealand is a cool‐temperate insular region, first colonized about 800 BP by hunter‐gatherers. Archaeological data, particularly from the site at Shag River Mouth, show that small villages, established early in the settlement sequence, were occupied only briefly and that by about 400 BP village habitation had ceased. Ethnographic observations and some archaeological evidence show that villages were re‐established late in the sequence,…
Does area of residence affect body size and shape?
Material sources of basalt and obsidian artefacts from a prehistoric settlement site on Norfolk Island, South Pacific
Recent discovery of a prehistoric archaeological site at Emily Bay, Norfolk Island, enables the question of settlement origins to be revisited. Analysis of a sample of basalt flakes by non‐destructive, energy‐dispersive XRF analysis indicates that there was local adze production, not merely refurbishment, suggesting that quarry and reduction sites might yet be discovered. Analysis of an obsidian blade by major elements and PIXE shows that it orig…
Radiocarbon dates from archaeological rat bones
AMS radiocarbon determinations on rat bone gelatin from Pleasant River, New Zealand, are presented. These differ significantly from radiocarbon ages for the same deposits on multiple samples of other materials, and in conjunction with previously reported data from Shag River Mouth show a consistent pattern of divergence between the results from two laboratories suggesting that pretreatment or other laboratory procedures may have influenced the re…
Archaeology (83 works) · Geography (78 works) · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies (78 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (54 works) · History (54 works) · Geology (34 works) · Prehistory (34 works) · Biology (30 works) · Radiocarbon dating (27 works) · History (24 works)