Pacific Islands Archaeology

National Taiwan University
Department of Anthropology Fall 2007
課　 號：105E41760
流水號：95244
時 間：一34@
教 室：人類205

Instructor: Professor William S. Ayres
email - wsayres@uoregon.edu
web page - http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~wsayres/
Office Hours:
Class Meetings:

Texts/Reading:
Text: Kirch, P., On the Road of the Winds. 2000.
Packet: Ayres, Pacific Islands Archaeology: Selected Readings
Supplemental Readings: Materials on reserve or Blackboard (see attached bibliography):
See also: Bellwood, P., The Polynesians: Prehistory of an Island People. Revised Edition, 1987. (out of print)

Content:
The primary aim of this class is exploration of the prehistoric colonization of the Pacific islands that began more than 50,000 years ago. This includes study of the subsequent cultural patterns of adaptation to life on remote islands as revealed through archaeological evidence. A regional frame-work will be formulated for discussing the migrations and cultural adaptations made by peoples moving into the Pacific and for clarifying their relationship to complex cultures in mainland Asia. In particular, the area of SE Asia and the Southwest Pacific provides an early cultural foundation, and out of this, a broad, later dispersal pattern of eastern Pacific islands settlement follows. Changing Pacific Island cultures are examined from the time of the earliest human settlement through the stages of complex society existing at the time of early Western contact.
Cultural resource management, ethnology, linguistics, oral history, are all areas of study related to cultural history and conceptions held by islanders and by researchers of the human past in the Pacific Islands. Of interest is the use of culture history developed by archaeologists to reconstruct