Pacific History

Permanent link to open access version: http://hdl.handle.net/10523/10586

Materialising Ancestral Madang documents the emergence of pottery production processes and exchange networks along the northeast coast of New Guinea during the last millennium before the present. This dynamic period in the Pacific’s human past involved important fluctuations to people’s mobility, social interaction, and technological organisation. It therefore remains crucial to understanding and historicising the expansive maritime subsistence trading networks that famously characterised the coast in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This book investigates these transformations by exploring the archaeology of Madang District; the heart of the Madang exchange network that revolved around the production and distribution of distinctive red-slipped pots. Potsherds of this style have been previously found spanning a 200 km radius, reaching Karkar Island, the Bismarck Archipelago, and even the New Guinea Highlands. By combining archaeological survey, excavation, craft ethnography, and archaeometric analyses, the volume systematically delineates the production groups that were working within this broader community of practice. The study shows that pre-colonial potters made use of a range of local raw materials and were free to improvise with their forming and decorating techniques but learned and reproduced similar technological sequences over the past 500–600 years. It is likely that social restrictions permitted only potters from a small number of clans to produce ceramics and that the finished vessels were then distributed both informally within the local area and strategically during extensive trade voyages along the northeast coast of New Guinea. These results therefore cast light on an important but previously obscured aspect of Pacific culture history and provide a model for how craft production and exchange processes have manifested and co-modified across the generations

The conference at Gotland University assembled over 200 Pacific Islands scholars, scientists, students and enthusiasts in the island city of Visby in the middle of the Baltic Sea. Like its predecessors, this conference stimulated to new discussions on the Pacific past, present and future. The conference was co-chaired by Paul Wallin and Helene Martinsson-Wallin, Gotland University and Christopher Stevenson, The Easter Island Foundation. The VII International Conference on Easter Island and the Pacific was the first of its kind to be held in Europe and therefore the ideas of the world of the Pacific expands to a global scale.
This volume contains 6 chapters with 40 papers on updated Pacific research in the fields of archaeology and anthropology. Chapter 1-3 focus on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) research, Chapter  4 on Eastern Polynesia and the question on Pacific-American contacts, Chapter 5 on the Western Pacific and Chapter 6 include Miscellaneous Papers.  The main themes at the conference were migration, identity, and cultural heritage. The keynote speech by Professor John Flenley at the Geography Department of Massey University, New Zealand focused on these issues from a paleobotanical perspective that clearly showed how man changes the environment when arriving into untouched Island landscapes. With this as a starting point and background, the discussion continued into cultural complexity and questions on identity...
We hope this collection of papers prove to be a unique and useful contribution to future research in the Pacific area.

How did Spain rule over an immense global empire for more than three centuries given the absence of a standing army and the presence of stark inequalities? In this course students will learn how historians have answered this enduring question, and will analyze a range of primary sources such as wills, artworks, and petitions to develop theories of their own. We explore the experience of empire from the perspectives of diverse groups of people including free and enslaved Africans, indigenous men and women, mestizo soldiers, nuns, and colonial elites. By studying the writings of Andean intellectuals and the testimonies of slaves who took their masters to court or rose up in violent rebellions against the colonial order, students will develop a deeper understanding of the complexity of Spanish rule and its variations across time and place. We also consider the legacies of this global empire, and controversies about how we tell its history.
This course is chronologically and thematically organized. It begins in 1491, on the eve of the Iberian invasion of the Americas and the Caribbean, and ends in 1898, when Spain lost the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.  The semester is structured around four myths about the global Spanish empire that persist in historiography and popular culture: the myth of colonial rule by coercion; the ‘commercial revolution’ and the myth of mobility; and the myth of imperial collapse. Key themes include the development of racial ideologies in the Iberian world, and their impact on the evolution of racial slavery.

Straddling the genres of travelogue and critical essay, As We Used to Float explores Bikini Atoll as a space of fantasy and trauma. Situated in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean, between 1946 and 1958 its ‘paradise’ islands were subjected to twenty-three of the most powerful explosions in history—during Operation Crossroads, the U.S. nuclear testing program. Since then, their fate has been largely ignored. While toggling between a personal account of a sea journey, above and below water, and a critical investigation of postcolonial geography, As We Used to Float develops broader reflections on place and subjectivity. These spring from a series of narrative immersions, variously, taking on the psychological and aesthetic parameters of ultra-deep scuba diving, the abject poetics of sea craft, and the stakes of subaquatic image-making. Through its vivid account of concrete bunkers on white sand beaches, the decaying "Ghost Fleet" of World War II battleships, irradiated coconuts, and more, As We Used to Float is a sea-story for our times.

Dans le dossier Leenhardt conservé aux archives de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, on trouve quelques pages détachées d’un journal intime, accompagnées d’une lettre signée : Marius Archambault – l’un des premiers archéologues amateurs de Nouvelle-Calédonie et du Pacifique. En explorant la raison justifiant la présence de ces notes au sein des archives Leenhardt, ce qui peut apparaître comme une anecdote s’avère comme le fil conducteur qui révèle la trame complexe des relations personnelles, intellectuelles et institutionnelles tissées entre le pasteur et la discipline archéologique alors naissante en Calédonie et dans la région. Le rôle de Jeanne Leenhardt, son épouse, à travers sa propre histoire personnelle, s’y montre fondamental. Les connections entre le couple Leenhardt et le développement de l’archéologie dans le Pacifique s’étendent au-delà du monde francophone et de la Calédonie, de la fin du XIXe siècle aux années 1950. Dans cette contribution, je m’attarderai sur les circonstances de la rencontre entre Marius Archambault et le couple Leenhardt au tout début du XXe siècle, ainsi que sur le soutien essentiel qu’ils offrirent à ses travaux. Le contexte intellectuel sera exposé, mais aussi l’importance des histoires biographiques des protagonistes. De plus, j’explorerai la continuité de l’intérêt porté par Maurice Leenhardt aux questions d’archéologie en Nouvelle-Calédonie et dans le Pacifique, tout autant que le rôle actif qu’il pris dans la réalisation d’une archéologie professionnelle océaniste.

(Maurice - and Jeanne - Leenhardt and the archaeology of New Caledonia: connecting the dots) In the Leenhardt file that is kept by the Archives of New Caledonia, one can find a few pages detached from a diary, accompanied by a letter signed: Marius Archambault - one of the early amateur archaeologists active in New Caledonia and the Pacific. An exploration of the reasons justifying the presence of these notes within the Leenhardt’s archives reveals the complex web of personal, intellectual and institutional relationships woven between the pastor and the archaeological discipline then emerging in New Caledonia and the region. The role of Jeanne Leenhardt, his wife, through her own personal history, is fundamental. The connections between the Leenhardts and the development of archaeology in the Pacific extend beyond the French-speaking world and New Caledonia, from the end of the 19th century to the 1950s. In this contribution, I focus on the circumstances of the encounter between Marius Archambault and the Leenhardts at the very beginning of the 20th century, as well as the essential support they offered to his work. The intellectual background is exposed, but also the importance of the biographical histories of the protagonists. In addition, I explore the continuity of Maurice Leenhardt's interest in archaeological issues throughout New Caledonia and the Pacific, as well as the active role he took in the development of professional archaeology in Oceania.

This article retraces the role of sub-imperialism in the formation of the Australian state as a subject of international law. The discourse of sub-imperialism developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a means of characterising the British self-governing Dominions’ uncertain status in the international order, and drew explicitly on the United States Monroe Doctrine. The article revisits the significance of sub-imperialist posturing at two critical junctures in the historical formation of the Commonwealth of Australia. The first is the formalisation in the early 1880s of the movement toward federation of the Australasian colonies as a response to perceived British acquiescence to German imperialism in the Western Pacific. The second is the Commonwealth government’s attempt during the Versailles negotiations of 1919 to annex to its territory the occupied German Pacific territories of New Guinea and Nauru. The principal argument made in this article is that attempts to establish an Australian sub-empire in the Western Pacific were fundamental both to the federation movement and the recognition of Australian sovereignty in international law. The article concludes that Australian sub-imperialism warrants greater attention both in accounts of the history of Australia’s transition from self-governing Dominion to sovereign status in international law, and in accounts of contemporary Australian foreign policy in the Pacific region.

The Arabic language is associated with Islam and is the language of the Holy Qur’an, which Muslims believe to be God’s words. Due to religious,
educational, socio-cultural, and geographic factors, Qur’anic Arabic is
revered by many Muslims in the Asian Pacific countries, who use the
language to perform religious rituals. Those Muslims use the language as an Islamic lingua franca to communicate with each other. This paper discusses the historical relationship between Islam and Arabic, how this relationship strengthens both of them, and how they both spread across the world, especially to the Asian Pacific countries that have the majority of the world’s non-Arab Muslims. It also sheds light upon the ways in which Islam preserves the Arabic language and converts it into a universal language that is used in all of these countries. This leads the discussion of how learning Arabic in Asian Pacific communities strengthens communication not only among Muslims but also within each Muslim to conduct his/her religious deeds, prayers, and behaviors. The paper also attempts to explore the possibility of learning Arabic as a foreign language by some Non-Muslims in those communities.

En este artículo se analiza el origen y desarrollo de La Paz como puerto comercial a partir de su designación como capital del territorio de la Baja Calfiornia en 1830 y hasta las primeras décadas del siglo XX, periodo durante el cual se consolidaron los principales rasgos mercantiles del sur peninsular.

This book is a tribute to the remarkable architectural heritage of present-day New Caledonia. With more than 200 pages and 400 photogaphs, it features the successive architectural styles which have spanned the first century of French colonial rule over the archipelago, through their diversity, mutual influences, aesthetics and design.
Obviously, the study of architecture relies on embracing the artistic and technical context. In New Caledonia, strong similarities exist between local 19th century buildings and their counterparts in the rest of the former French colonial empire. More recently, the international decorative principles of the Art deco aesthetic and those, specifically French, of the regionalist trend, have been applied extensively. Therefore, the aim of this volume was to place these constructions into a both stylistic and historical perspective, and to show what this small country’s heritage can bring to a more globalized knowledge.
Heritage is more and more perceived on universal grounds: this book can thus bring new, localized, elements to the art history of the South Pacific islands, and more broadly to the study of colonial architecture, whose interest is nowadays internationally recognized.

In marine geology, a guyot (also known as a tablemount) is an isolated underwater table mountain (seamount) with a flat top more than 200 m (660 ft) below the surface of the sea. The diameters of these flat summits can exceed 10 km (6.2 mi).
Guyots are most commonly found in the Pacific Ocean, but they have been identified in all the oceans except the Arctic Ocean.
Guyots show evidence of having once been above the surface, with gradual subsidence through stages from fringed reefed mountain, coral atoll, and finally a flat-topped submerged mountain.

Published as: Christine Winter, ‘Chapter Two: The Occupation of German New Guinea’, in Barry Craig, Ron Vanderwal and Christine Winter, War Trophies or Curios? The War Museum Collection in Museum Victoria 1915-1920, Melbourne Museum, 2015, pp. 14-41.

This chapter is a historical examination of collecting and entangled encounters in German New Guinea and ex-German New Guinea during WWI. It explores the cultural and political context of collecting of New Guinean artefacts as curios, objects for trade and national pride. Do get the published book: the illustrations and images are lavish, and offer many more insights.

The idea that certain iTaukei (formerly ‘Fijian’) clans are descended from the Jews, particularly through a Lost Tribe of Israel, is very strong among some contemporary clans and church groups in Fiji. The importance of the Lost Tribes was reinforced in the 1987 coups, when it formed part of the political rhetoric of the coup leader, Sitiveni Rabuka, who was also a lay preacher of the Methodist Church. In order to understand such claims, I review the historical record from 1835 to Cession in 1874 to evaluate when the idea of the Lost Tribes began to be used and, more broadly, the extent to which Christianity was the language for engagement and/or resistance between missionaries and Fijians. At the same time, I explore the developing missionary discourses and their relationship with newly emerging ideas about the science of origins. The evidence indicates that, as certain ideas became routinised around the time of Cession, Christianity and science together provided a grammar that enabled many Fijians to strongly identify with the Old Testament.

Between c. AD 1400–1900, Yapese islanders in western Micronesia travelled to the Palauan archipelago to carve large circular or ovoid-shaped disks. Often referred to as ‘stone money’, they were made from a speleothem flowstone variety of limestone that formed by calcite precipitation along cave walls. These disks were an engineering marvel, and their transport to Yap by watercraft, more than 400 km away, makes them the heaviest objects ever moved over open-ocean by traditional Pacific Islanders. Thousands of pieces were brought to Yap pre- and post-European contact, and were (and still are) highly prized as important exchange valuables and symbols of cultural tradition. One of the most fundamental questions regarding stone money is how and where it originated, given that Yap has no native sources of limestone. Palau and Yap are part of an intra-oceanic island-arc-trench system that separates the Pacific and Philippine plates. Yap is unusual in that it is mainly composed of metamorphic, not volcanic rocks. Yap also lacks uplifted limestone terrains common in the neighbouring archipelagos (e.g. Palau and the Marianas). To address these questions, we examined the occurrence of rare, small, and lichen-covered outcrops of calcitic marble (metamorphosed limestone) on Yap. While there are no definitive records of Yapese stone money being produced from marble, this study documents an attempt to carve a disk from this material. We suggest that the white colour, crystalline texture, and shiny lustre of marble may have initially inspired the Yapese to seek similar material elsewhere. The discovery of abundant flowstone with similar composition and appearance on Palau, may have been the impetus for why this exchange system began. Even though the surface of most stone money on Yap is now darkened due to weathering, this would not have diminished its overall value, which is based on numerous other variables such as its pedigree, and not on visual appearance.

Book chapter in WORK, SOCIETY, AND THE ETHICAL SELF
Chimeras of Freedom in the Neoliberal Era, available from Berghahn Books https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HannWork

Rather than accept formal commodity-like contractual definitions of ‘free’ labor, this chapter reflects on the ambivalence in Mauss’s concept of “prestations totales” (‘total services’) to reconsider the ‘voluntary character’ of work. It discusses Vanuatu’s colonial and unfree labor history, as well as the impact of overseas labor migration on attitudes to work in contemporary Vanuatu. It shows how the meaning and value of ‘free work’, both in terms of working without payment, or working autonomously, depends on the worker’s standpoint within their social and political relations, and how they confront their social obligations.

During the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, countless slaves from culturally diverse communities in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia journeyed to Mexico on the ships of the Manila Galleon. Upon arrival in Mexico, they were grouped together and categorized as chinos. Their experience illustrates the interconnectedness of Spain's colonies and the reach of the crown, which brought people together from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe in a historically unprecedented way. In time, chinos in Mexico came to be treated under the law as Indians, becoming indigenous vassals of the Spanish crown after 1672. The implications of this legal change were enormous: as Indians, rather than chinos, they could no longer be held as slaves. Tatiana Seijas tracks chinos’ complex journey from the slave market in Manila to the streets of Mexico City, and from bondage to liberty. In doing so, she challenges commonly held assumptions about the uniformity of the slave experience in the Americas.

This is a paper about indigenous methods of recording and doing history and how western education often marginalises indigenous sources of knowledge and wisdom. Intended to provoke discussion and debate about how to reconcile indigenous ways of knowing with western academic research, this paper raises important questions that challenges conventional thinking about academia.

This chapter is an exploration of Weimar and Nazi German colonialism focusing on the Pacific Mandates. It is published as: (Un-)mixing in the Mandate: purity and persistence of ‘German-time’ in New Guinea, Norig Neveu, Philippe Bourmaud and Chantal Verdeil (Eds), Experts et expertise dans les mandats de la Société des Nations : figures, champs et outils, [The Expert in the Mandate], Inalco Presses, 2020.

“Unmixing” is a central term in the debates to bring stability and peace after WWI by ethnically homogenising regions and new nations: “… to unmix tlie (sic) populations of the Near East will tend to secure the true pacification of the Near East…” (Fritzhof Nansen, Lausanne Conference, Quoted by Sadia Abbas, Unmixing, Politicalconcepts, 2012.) So how did the nations with aspirations to ‘rule’ New Guinea deal with what could not be ‘un-mixed’: people of mixed descent, and what did this mean for German-New Guineans?
            This chapter is an exploration of Weimar and Nazi German colonialism focusing on the Pacific Mandates. It focuses on leagacies of German colonialism after the end of the formal German colonial empire. The crisis of the League of Nations destabilized the legitimacy of Mandate rule in the Pacific during the mid-1930s. Purity and persistence of Germanness became a theme for both the Mandate Administration and the Third Reich. In this chapter I explore the role and function of Germans of ambiguous racial belonging, namely mixed-race German Pacific Islanders, in a wider contest of expert advice and policy development. Racial scientists, German missionaries and ex-colonial officials all had a stake in the future of the Mandated Territories, and its mixed-race German population. Depending on the argument and on their place of residency – Germany or the Pacific – mixed-race German-Pacific Islanders were used as fellow Germans or as ‘natives’ to legitimize German claims.
This is an open book edition: https://books.openedition.org/pressesinalco/37738

Cultural tourism is heralded in development circles as the potential economic saviour of many developing countries.  Such is the case in the Kingdom of Tonga, which is too small to support an extensive export market, with locals surviving largely from subsistence agriculture and remittances from family overseas.
Tonga is the only Pacific island nation to remain uncolonised, as well as being the Pacific region’s only monarchy.  With a rich archaeological and cultural heritage, the island kingdom welcomes over 50,000 visitors a year, nevertheless the development of heritage sites remains rudimentary at best.  For the past decades, there has been an increasing push from aid donor countries to develop the cultural tourism sector in Tonga.  Various funding and volunteer programs have been initiated, reports written, and recommendations made, which are then left on a shelf while the next consultant is sent to Tonga.  This cycle has been repeated and throughout the years very little changes.  Why is this?

Page proofs of a chapter from the forthcoming book 'Cook Islands Art and Architecture' (University of the South Pacific Press).
One of the larger islands of the southern Cook group, Mangaia has a distinctive history of material culture and performance. At the turn of the nineteenth century there emerged a new and highly idiosyncratic form of performance costume featuring masks known as pare ’eva and katu tūpāpaku. These were used in tarekareka (glossed as ‘entertainments’), in which peu tupuna (ancestral activities) were recounted. It seems that by 1930 the masks were no longer being made. In this chapter I describe the masks and explore their cultural origins, context and possible reasons for their disappearance.

The establishment of the Presbyterian Church of the New Hebrides in 1948 as an independent church was viewed by some participants as a step towards the independence of the nation, which occurred some 32 years later. This paper argues that the church was slow to promote an anticolonial perspective through the 1950s, though, as Indigenous clergy took on more senior roles in the church, there was a corresponding increase in political consciousness. The trans-colonial experiences of many young clergy – for education around the region or for meetings in the newly formed Pacific Conference of Churches in the 1960s – exposed participants to anticolonial theologies and the decolonising Pacific. When Indigenous clergy gained full control over the Presbyterian Church in 1973, they simultaneously demanded the end to the Condominium.

As an early modern enterprise, the Society of Jesus established networks that relayed in formation from far-flung missionaries back to superiors in metropolitan centers. At the same time, Jesuits linked to colleagues serving in other locales by sharing letters, maps, and devotional objects that helped forge a worldwide, imagined community. Through these informal means, Jesuits in New Spain developed particularly strong ties to Asia as the colonization of the Philippines and establishment of the Manila Galleons turned their viceroyalty into a transpacific contact zone. Beginning with a sixteenth-century debate over forceful conversion, this chapter traces confrontations and comparisons engendered by this communication. It tracks religious devotion to Japanese martyrs in the Americas to better understand the function of hagiography in colonial contexts. Martyrs also fac tored into transpacific competition and cooperation, leading Jesuits in Mexico, China, and Spain to connect their personal sacrifices to the larger effort to convert the Pacific. A Trans-Pacific Network AS an early modern global enterprise, the Society of Jesus famously established networks that relayed information vertically from far-flung missionaries up to superiors in metro politan centers. At the same time, Jesuits linked horizontally to colleagues serving in oth er continents by sharing letters, histories, maps, and devotional objects that helped forge a worldwide imagined community. Through these less formal means, missionaries in New Spain and Asia developed particularly strong ties, reinforced by a shared history of colo nization, trade, and inevitable competition for resources. Accounts focused on direct rela tions between discrete peripheries and hierarchical centers have sometimes missed the extent to which intercolonial communication influenced historical developments across fields. Yet the viceroyalty of New Spain was a trans-oceanic contact zone for European, Asian, and indigenous cultures, in which Jesuit networks gathered information, fostered

... 14 Sahlins, Historical Metaphors, 40-1. 15 Horst Cain, 'The sacred child and the origin of spirits in Samoa', Anthropos, 66 (1971), 171-81. 16 Penelope Schoeffel, 'Sisters and Wives: The dual status of women in Samoa', MA qualifying thesis, ...

"EVENTS in recent years in the South Pacific have dispelled hitherto widely held perceptions of the region as a peacefully modernising backwater of traditional societies. In particular, the 1987 coups in Fiji galvanised the attention of politicians and academics. But in truth, this was just one of a series of crises besetting South Pacific island states.

"David Robie's Blood on their Banner goes beyond the many accounts focusing on the Fiji coups to link together a range of events under the rubric of responses to colonialism and the emergence of Pacific nationalism. His credentials for doing this are excellent.

":Robie, who earlier wrote the only insider's book on the French bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, has worked as a journalist in the region for a number of years, winning the New Zealand Media Peace Prize in 1985 and Qantas Press Awards in 1987 and 1988 for his Pacific coverage. His personal experiences and political engagement give the book vitality and coherence.

"Blood on their Banner ranges over a number of post colonial crises in the Pacific from the recolonisation of East Timor and West Papua to the various, sometimes comic opera, on-going colonial excursions of the French -- very timely with this reissue of this book in view of the recent Moruroa upheaval.

"In this account of might triumphing over right the Indonesians and the French emerge as particularly culpable, but the sometimes dismal exercises in realpolitik by Australia and New Zealand in response to these episodes is also rightly condemned.

"Robie is at his best when he deals with matters he has followed closely as a journalist. His discussion of the Pacific news media, Kanak struggle and the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior is particularly engaging.

"The long section on the Fiji coups differs from the other episodes discussed in the book in having no obvious colonial villain. Yet Robie sees the events in Fiji as a culminating act of forces resisting nationalist reconstruction in the South Pacific." - Excerpt of review by Alan Robson

Behind the leis and smiles http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/1607 - Review by Robin Osborne in Green-Left Weekly (Sydney)

http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/8530/v3n2-448-449-bookrev.pdf?sequence=1
- Review by Professor Stewart Firth in The Contemporary Pacific

Introduction journal de bord tenu par un passager anonyme du navire "Le Calvados", un texte d'ambition modeste, consignant les « faits saillants » intervenus durant 5 mois de mer,, et qui s'interrompt d'ailleurs le jour même où l'auteur pose le pied en Nouvelle-Calédonie le 18 janvier 1875.
L'intégralité de la transcription de ce carnet peut être lue à l'adresse suivante :
https://ea3400.unistra.fr/publications/sources-arts-civilisation-et-histoire-de-leurope/#c70527

Cette présentation vise surtout à éclairer les différents points d'intérêt de ce document : d'une part l'écriture de la navigation et du navire, d'autre part le caractère exceptionnel d'une traversée sur un navire convoyant au bagne de Nouméa (ou bien à l'île des Pins) différents déportés, condamnés de la Commune de Paris pour les uns, chefs de la révolte Kabyle de 1871 pour les autres.

This article examines anti-Chinese attitudes in the three Pacific port cities of Vladivostok, Singapore and San Francisco from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. The translocal approach aims to identify similarities and differences in discrimination strategies against the Chinese diaspora. Focusing on housing conditions, hygiene and diseases, which were some of the most prevalent issues stirring Sinophobic sentiments in urban contexts, it analyzes anti-Chinese debates across the different localities on the Pacific coast. It will be argued that, despite striking similarities, forms of stigmatization were also heterogeneous.

Angle-hafted bone tattoo combs are found on many Pacific islands
occupied by people speaking languages of the Oceanic sub-group of
the Austronesian linguistic family, with the most elaborate bone tattoo
tools restricted to Polynesia. A critical problem in understanding
the development of an Oceanic tattooing tradition based on hafted
bone combs is their conspicuous absence from nearly all early sites
in the region. Did tattooing with bone combs arrive in the Pacific
with early Neolithic dispersals around 3,000 years ago, or was it an
innovation that developed in West Polynesia that was later diffused
to other parts of the Pacific? AMS dating and traceological examination
of four bone combs from a site in Tonga indicate they are the
oldest multi-toothed tattooing implements in the Pacific and confirm
the existence of the angle-hafted bone comb technology in Polynesia

2,700 years ago. The basic tattooing toolkit represented by narrow
bone combs from the TO.1 site appear to have been remarkably stable
over millennia and we suggest that the angle-hafted bone comb
probably dispersed from West Polynesia to other parts of Oceania.

Paper given at Pacific History Association Annual Meeting 2016 in Guam. #PHA2016 . Examines the history of the Papua New Guinea Law Reform Commission and Bernard Narokobi's role in through an analysis of their suggested legislation on adultery and enticement. Argues Narokobi has a much more concrete conception of the specifics of the Melanesian Way than is sometimes thought to be the case.