432 pp. July 2007
paper, ISBN 978-0-8248-3148-6, $37.00
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Keywords: |
Pacific
Polynesia
archaeology
anthropology
history
textbook |
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The Growth and Collapse of Pacific Island Societies: Archaeological and Demographic Perspectives
ed. by Patrick V. Kirch; Jean-Louis Rallu
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title
“This collection is a seminal contribution to the longstanding concern with demographic levels and change before and following European contacts with Pacific Island societies. . . . The essays represent exemplary interdisciplinary meshings and, in developing a new level of technique for this research, remind readers of the excellence of the earlier work as well. . . . Undoubtably, this will be a basic reference in Pacific Islands scholarship. Highly recommended.” —Choice (45:2, October 2007)
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. 71 illus.
Patrick V. Kirch is Class of 1954 Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Jean-Louis Rallu is affliated with the Institut National d’Etude Demographiques. Contributors: J. Stephen Athens, Jacques Bole, David V. Burley, Eric Conte, Ross Cordy, Michelle Figgs, Roger C. Green, Valerie J. Green, Michael Graves, Brenda K. Hamilton, Jennifer G. Kahn, Patrick V. Kirch, Thegn Ladefoged, Charlotte Lee, Tamara Maric, A. Ouetcho, Jean-Louis Rallu, Christophe Sand, Matthew Spriggs, Shripad Tuljapurkar.
Read Chapter 1 (PDF).
table of contents
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