Book Reviews
historical contexts against which the discovery had to be assessed.
References to Darwin, Wallace and Dubois are de rigour, but
the time taken to acknowledge the vital contribution of Father
Theodor Verhoeven as the first (albeit amateur) archaeologist
to investigate Flores’ Pleistocene history is poignant. Morwood
introduces some of the historical figures involved in Dutch
palaeontology and geology during the 1960s, and the ways in
which they snubbed Verhoeven’s conclusions about the early
presence of Homo erectus in Southeast Asia, some 30 years prior
to the more recent discoveries in Flores. I initially wondered at
the reason why so much time would be spent on presenting such
a minor matter, but I believe that Morwood genuinely wanted to
amend the historical record in this regard and allow Verhoeven
to have his moment in the sun. From Morwood’s point of view, it
also helps to understand why it took so long for recent attention
to swing away from Africa and back to Asia as an important
source of new information about the human story.
As those of you who have heard Morwood speak on the
subject know, he is all about history as an essential context
for understanding the present, and for him the littlest detail
is important, even to the point of identifying by name the
Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of New England who
prevented Morwood from returning to Indonesia at a time when
tensions between the senior research partners were admittedly
high and there was a serious risk that the fossil remains would
be transferred out of the project team’s custody.
In fact, Morwood is big on naming names. His warts-andall, blow-by-blow description of the sequence of events that
saw a breakdown in his partnership with Raden Pandji Soejono,
and the temporary loss of the remains to Teuku Jacob and the
subsequent public stoush over the damage that they sustained, is
a little shocking. But then again, the whole sorry saga has left a
somewhat bitter aftertaste, played out as it was in the public arena,
and it is possible that Morwood felt it was important for him to
put forward his version of the story in a more comprehensive
and controlled setting. And it is these very features of the book
that make the story so appealing – it presents the players as
human, as people with foibles, and not as disembodied research
machines who take a back seat to their discoveries.
The authors devote quite a bit of space to educating the
reader about the principles of island biogeography, and the
evolutionary mechanisms that make big animals small and
vice versa. Their relevance to arguments about how such a
small-bodied, small-brained individual as LB1 could have
come to be is lucidly presented. What is not so well explained,
however, is the fact that according to archaeological evidence,
H. floresiensis co-exists with modern Homo sapiens in the
region for at least 38,000 years, until the demise of the former
at around 12,000 BP, without there being any evidence for
modern humans on Flores until after the other’s disappearance
from the fossil record. Their conclusion that modern humans
were responsible for the extinction of the little people is at odds
with their references to oral histories that indicate the possible
presence of ‘hairy little men’ until recent times. You can’t have
it both ways.
One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was
Morwood’s description of the various models the research
partners argued in order to develop a taxonomy for H. floresiensis.
This was a rare insight into the process, and helped to situate the
remains within a broader international perspective. Of course,
the debate still rages.
Morwood clearly respects local customs. He was not averse
to allowing chickens to be sacrificed and their entrails consulted
in order for work to able to proceed smoothly. In fact, Mowood
spends quite a bit of time describing the day-to-day working life
of a field archaeologist, which for many non-specialist readers
will be somewhat of a revelation. Despite the cheese factor
sometimes reaching dangerously high levels (the ‘unchewable
meat’ story on p.36 sounds like a ‘you had to be there’ kind of
moment), the general tone of the book is very engaging apart
from the occasional aside where some readers will wonder at
their relevance.
This is a great read, one that I would recommend wholeheartedly.
OCEANIC EXPLORATIONS: LAPITA AND
WESTERN PACIFIC SETTLEMENT
Stuart
Bedford,
Christophe
S.P. Connaughton (ed.)
Sand
&
Terra Australis 26, ANU E Press, Canberra, 2007, x+299pp, ISBN
9780975122907
Reviewed by Patrick V. Kirch
Departments of Anthropology and Integrative Biology,
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Over the past two decades, the field of Lapita studies has witnessed
a sustained period of intellectual growth that can be traced back
to the stimulus first generated by the Lapita Homeland Project
of the mid-1980s. This reflects the now widely-acknowledged
significance of Lapita as the archaeological signature of a critical
period of expansion of one branch of Austronesian-speaking
peoples into Near Oceania, and beyond into the previously
unoccupied archipelagoes of Remote Oceania. The dominance
of Lapita studies in Oceanic archaeology also stems from
continuing and sustained field projects in such areas as the
Bismarck Archipelago, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji and Tonga,
which have continued to provide new and sometimes startling
evidence with which to reassess our hypotheses and models
about what Lapita represents.
Oceanic Explorations is the latest in a series of proceedings
derived from various conferences of Lapita investigators, in this
case the Nuku‘alofa gathering which was organised by David
Burley and convened in the Tongan capital on 1–7 August
2005. The volume contains an Introduction followed by 16
papers, subdivided by the editors into three themes: (1) ‘Lapita
Origins’ (two articles); (2) ‘Lapita Dispersal and Archaeological
Signatures’ (the largest section with nine articles); and (3) ‘Lapita
Ceramics’ (with five articles). The contributions vary widely in
scope and significance, ranging from masterly syntheses such as
Pawley’s treatment of the ‘testimony of historical linguistics’ and
Chiu’s insightful work on Lapita faces, to preliminary reports on
recent fieldwork (Felgate on New Georgia; Galipaud and Kelly on
Aore Island; Nunn on Rove, Fiji; and, Connaughton on Falevai).
Despite such unevenness, typical of this genre of conference
proceedings, Oceanic Explorations is a valuable addition to the
Lapita literature, one that will be essential reading for Oceanic
Number 68, June 2009
67
Book Reviews
archaeologists, although probably of less interest beyond this
regional sphere. I cannot here do justice to all articles, but will
touch on those that I consider to have the greatest import.
The introductory chapter, by Bedford and Sand, contextualises
the volume in terms of four main themes – origins, boundaries,
provinces and chronology – and addresses as well a number
of ‘persistent problems’ in Lapita archaeology. With respect
to origins, the authors suggest that ‘the debate … has largely
remained at a standstill’ (p.2) since Green introduced his ‘Triple
I’ model (standing for intrusion, innovation and integration).
Rather than a lack of progress, however, this may simply speak to
the enduring ability of Green’s model to accommodate new data.
While the geographical boundaries of Lapita are seen as having
remained ‘fairly much the same’ since Golson’s tentative review
in the 1970s, the number of documented Lapita sites continues to
rise year-by-year. Bedford and Sand contribute a table itemising
49 new sites, all reported since the last comprehensive inventory
of Lapita sites published in 2001. This brings the grand total of
known Lapita sites to 229. With respect to chronology, questions
persist regarding a Lapita ‘pause’ in the Bismarcks and Near
Oceania prior to the expansion of Lapita into Remote Oceania.
Bedford and Sand also suggest that it is ‘very unlikely that Lapita
dentate-stamping continues anywhere in the Western Pacific
beyond c. 2500 BP,’ an important clarification of chronology
(p.5). Among the persistent problems that they see continuing
to nag at Lapita archaeology, Bedford and Sand point to poor
preservation and taphonomic issues at many sites, the lack of
analysis and complete publication of many collections, and
continuing problems of radiocarbon dating and calibration in
the mid-second millennium BP.
For this reviewer, one of the highlights of the volume is the
second chapter, by foremost Pacific linguist Andrew Pawley,
addressing Lapita origins and the nature of Lapita society from
the perspective of historical linguistics. As many readers will
know, the promulgation of a multidisciplinary approach to
Pacific prehistory, especially one that incorporates the evidence
of historical linguistics, has not always been met with open arms;
indeed, there has been considerable resistance in some quarters to
the idea that linguists can tell prehistorians anything meaningful
about Lapita. Might the mere inclusion of this chapter in a
volume on Lapita archaeology then be taken as a sign that
linguistic prehistory is finally becoming more widely accepted?
I certainly hope so. In any event, Pawley provides a masterful
overview of the current subgrouping model for Austronesian
languages and the place of Proto Oceanic (regarded as the
language probably spoken by early Lapita communities in the
Bismarcks). This is followed by a review of the lexical evidence
for ‘selected cultural domains’, including canoes and sailing,
architecture and settlements, fishing, agriculture and domestic
animals, various kinds of material culture, kinship terms, and
some social categories. It is, of course, in the latter domains that
linguists such as Pawley have the most to offer, giving us insights
into aspects of Lapita life that will probably never be recoverable
through the archaeological record. Among these is the conclusion
that Lapita societies were matrilocal, an interesting suggestion in
respect of recent Y-chromosome data indicating that local males
were being recruited into Lapita communities.
In a second chapter grouped under the ‘origins’ theme, Jim
Specht re-examines the role and significance of small islands
68
(islets, or even sand cays, in many cases) in the formative period
of Lapita in the Bismarcks. Drawing in part on data from the
early Eloaua Island sites, Specht hypothesises that some offshore
or small islet localities might have been special purpose localities,
rather than simply residential locales. As he writes: ‘The linking
of face designs and some vessel forms with deities or ancestors,
and the possible use of cylinder stands as sound-producing
instruments open opportunities for viewing at least some Lapita
spaces as focal points of ceremonial or religious activity that
required close association with the sea and comparative isolation
from land’ (p.62) (I agree with his idea of ceramic percussion
instruments, and Specht will be interested to know that the ECB
ceramics include more than one example of ceramic drums, as
yet unpublished). Specht’s chapter, while primarily a ‘thoughtpiece’, deserves serious consideration.
Most of the chapters in the long middle section of the volume
present new data on Lapita sites, their geomorphological settings,
and their chronology, based on recent and continuing fieldwork.
I found the chapter by Specht and Torrence on the Willaumez
Peninsula of New Britain especially noteworthy, as they have
taken advantage of landscape-scale commercial plantation
development to look at the distribution of pottery-bearing
deposits over a substantial inland area previously under jungle
and not amenable to archaeological survey. Their test excavations
revealed numerous localities with dentate-stamped and other
ceramics situated on a palaeosol developed on the W-K2 volcanic
ash, and hence documenting quite rapid recolonisation of this
landscape following the massive eruption around 3480–3200
BP. Felgate’s chapter (left curiously unfinished …) offers a view
of a quite different kind of Lapita landscape, the littoral fringe
of New Georgia, where late Lapita ceramics have been found
in thoroughly subtidal geomorphological contexts. Thus from
both the inland terrain of the Willaumez to the reef flats of the
Roviana Lagoon, it is evident that survey and excavation of Lapita
sites must confront a diversity of challenging archaeological
environments. For Tongatapu, Dickinson demonstrates how
careful palaeoenvironmental reconstruction is essential to
understanding the distribution of Lapita sites in the early first
millennium BC. As Dickinson rightly points out, this kind of
work ‘underscores the value of coordinated archaeological and
geological investigations in Pacific Oceania’ (p.184). Farther
north in the Tongan archipelago, Burley reports on his efforts to
locate Lapita and later Polynesian Plainware sites in Vava‘u. The
relatively low density of sites, in spite of systematic efforts to find
them, leads Burley to the tentative conclusion that Vava‘u may
have been a ‘frontier periphery’ of the Lapita world, a concept he
hints may also apply to Samoa (p.196).
A final set of chapters deals primarily with Lapita ceramics.
Wal Ambrose follows up on his earlier research into the nature of
dentate stamping to argue (contra Simon Best) that a roulette was
not used for the quick application of designs. This reinforces the
idea that Lapita pottery decoration was highly labour intensive,
and hence an ‘important social investment’ (p.220). Following
the line of investigation of the social meanings of Lapita pottery,
Scarlett Chiu puts forward a detailed analysis of Lapita face
motifs from the Reef-Santa Cruz and New Caledonia Site 13A
contexts, showing that differences in face motifs between sites are
real (i.e. reflecting choices made by potters) and not artefacts of
sampling strategy. She then continues to advance her compelling
Number 68, June 2009
Book Reviews
argument that face motifs signified particular house-based social
groups. As Chiu writes, ‘by using these highly regarded symbols,
with firm control over image innovation and reproduction,
Lapita peoples were generating social hierarchy across their social
and economic networks, while at the same time transforming
themselves and the symbolic system’ (p.260).
To conclude, Oceanic Explorations nicely encapsulates
the ongoing state of play in Lapita studies. Space limits have
precluded me from discussing every chapter in the volume, and
I have touched only on those I found the most interesting or
innovative. This volume demonstrates that even as active field
projects continue to provide new data, investigators are also
continually reassessing the significance of well-known sites and
collections to push the boundaries of our understanding of this
remarkable archaeological phenomenon we call Lapita. The
editors are to be congratulated in bringing out the proceedings
of this latest Lapita conference in a timely manner.
SALVAGE EXCAVATION OF HUMAN
SKELETAL REMAINS AT OCEAN AND
OCTAVIA STREETS, NARRABEEN, SITE
#45-6-2747
Jo McDonald Cultural Heritage Management
Pty Ltd
Australian Archaeological Consultancy Monograph Series 2,
Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists Inc., St
Lucia, 2008, 59pp, ISBN 9780959031027
Reviewed by Judith Littleton
Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, University of
Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland Mail Centre, Auckland
1142, New Zealand
This monograph is the second in a series by the Australian
Association of Consulting Archaeologists Inc. and reports on
the excavation of a male skeleton found partly under a bus
shelter in Narrabeen, New South Wales. The AACAI monograph
series is designed for consultant archaeologists as examples of
best practice and so, as is evident here, the format follows the
consultancy report with appendices of the relevant information.
This format is no doubt very valuable for consultants as a
model to follow. In some respects, it does not work so well for
a monograph.
The monograph starts with a summary which is repeated
in Chapter 1. This chapter deals with the background to the
investigation, followed by a discussion of the environmental
context (Chapter 2) which includes a very interesting description
of the environment as it would have been. However, there is an
anomaly between the estimated date of the soil based on its
formation characteristics and the date of the skeleton. It would
have been good to see some resolution or discussion of this in
the text.
The regional archaeological context is presented in Chapter 3.
This begins with ethnohistoric evidence. There is no introduction
to this explaining why particular pieces of information
are included, so it feels like a slightly random collection of
information: the sex division of fishing, use of shell artefacts,
clan organisation and ceremonies. There is also a more extensive
and informative discussion on spears where it would have been
good to have illustrations of the types discussed. However,
this is the difference between the constraints of a consultancy
report and a monograph. Ceremonies are also described with a
particular focus on tooth avulsion, although, as the authors point
out, the evidence is inconclusive. Absence of avulsion might
be significant or merely indicative that the practice was not as
widespread as suggested or more temporally defined. It is hard
to rely on ethnohistoric sources in these respects. What is being
noted is potentially the unusual given an emphasis in early years
of European observations to discern ‘rules’ and hence variability
is often downplayed. As Meehan’s (1971) thesis indicates, while
there is inter-regional variation this is often swamped by intraregional variability.
The fieldwork is clearly and fully described in Chapter 4. The
circumstances were not that straightforward because of the built
infrastructure, the initial disturbance, and the location of the
remains partly under a bus shelter.
The human remains are described in Chapter 5 and this
represents a good technical description of human remains using
standardised techniques by Denise Donlon. It would have been
good to see the inventory tabled or a diagram showing the degree
of preservation. The authors note the missing right femur, but it
is hard to work out the significance of this when it is not clear
how much of the innominate is also missing. The missing femur
is a mystery because judging by the position of the upper body it
looks like the body was rolled onto its right side so that the bone
was more likely to be underneath than above (where it could
have been more easily removed post-death).
The burial position as presented in Figure 2 is difficult to
interpret (vertical levels would have helped). The left scapula is
moved relative to the left humerus, the right clavicle is displaced
to the left of the body. The authors argue that burning brush
was placed on the burial as it was flung down and, given the
extent of movement, it is quite possible that the body was not
buried for some time after that. The range of displacement of the
head and upper girdle is not consistent with the remains being
surrounded by soil at the time of initial interment (Duday 2006).
More consideration of this would possibly support the argument
for this being an unceremonious death.
The lack of reconstructive illustrations also makes it hard for
the reader to interpret the very careful written descriptions of
trauma and backed artefacts.
What is to be commended is the presentation of the results in
such detail including the stable isotope analysis of the bone. It is
not explained how the change came about in the Metropolitan
Aboriginal Land Council from initially not allowing dating (as
seen in the initial research design, Appendix A) and the final
decision to do so.
The monograph is fascinating and presents the background to
the description of the remains reported in Antiquity (McDonald
et al. 2007). My only wish would have been that more diagrams
had been included and the actual measurements undertaken. I
think this could have helped in the interpretation.
The monograph does raise two issues. Here the human
remains are published because of their uniqueness, but how
are these individual osteobiographies going to address broader
archaeological research questions? The other issue that the report
illustrates is the lack of archaeological research undertaken
Number 68, June 2009
69