No meat on that beautiful shore

The prehistoric abandonment of subtropical Polynesian islands

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4655975
AutoresA Anderson (0000-0002-7636-7306, Australian National University, autor correspondente)
Ano2001
Volume11
Fascículo1-2
Páginas14-23
Data de publicação2001-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInternational Journal of Osteoarchaeology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1047-482X • E-ISSN: 1099-1212
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/oa.542
OpenAlexW2050382413
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas23
Referências citadas13

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 (marine mammals, seabirds, inshore fish and invertebrates) and were also marginal to the full deployment of tropical agriculture. It is argued that vulnerability to significant faunal depletion by over-exploitation, without the ability to compensate by agricultural production provides an explanation of settlement discontinuation in the subtropical islands and potentially for the mystery islands as a whole. Copyright (c) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Archaeology · Biology · Fishery · Geography · Invertebrate · Prehistory · Shore · Subtropics · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Isotope Analysis in Ecology · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Ecology · Geology · Oceanography