Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface and acknowledgements
- 1 Micronesian/macrofusion
- 2 Micronesians: the people in history and anthropology
- 3 Fluid boundaries: horizons of the local, colonial and disciplinary
- 4 Settling the seascape: fusing islands and people
- 5 Identifying difference: the Mariana Islands
- 6 A sea of islands: Palau, Yap and the Carolinian atolls
- 7 ‘How the past speaks here!’ – the eastern Caroline Islands
- 8 Islands and beaches: the atoll groups and outliers
- 9 The tropical north-west Pacific in context
- References
- Index
9 - The tropical north-west Pacific in context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface and acknowledgements
- 1 Micronesian/macrofusion
- 2 Micronesians: the people in history and anthropology
- 3 Fluid boundaries: horizons of the local, colonial and disciplinary
- 4 Settling the seascape: fusing islands and people
- 5 Identifying difference: the Mariana Islands
- 6 A sea of islands: Palau, Yap and the Carolinian atolls
- 7 ‘How the past speaks here!’ – the eastern Caroline Islands
- 8 Islands and beaches: the atoll groups and outliers
- 9 The tropical north-west Pacific in context
- References
- Index
Summary
In the first three chapters of this book I introduced the motifs of fusion and fluidity that have helped in the understanding and contextualization of the long-term human history of the tropical north-west Pacific. Emerging through the chapters has been a third motif, that of flux. This last motif is strongly linked to those of fusion and fluidity, and all three together highlight similarity and difference through time. In this chapter, although they can only be artificially separated, I will assess aspects of the region's history under the heading of each of them. In conclusion, I will draw these motifs back together and consider the future for the archaeological past in the region.
Fusion
In his 1832 publication, at a time when the region was still little known in the European literature, Dumont d'Urville in defining ‘Micronesia’ mentioned the likelihood of ‘fusion’ between the ‘races’ of Micronesia and Melanesia. Further, he proposed that the original people who inhabited the islands of the tropical north-west Pacific were derived from populations in the Philippines who had already ‘fused’ with Japanese or Chinese people who had landed there. Thus, the notion of fusion in regard to the region discussed in this volume is by no means a new concept. The question then might be asked as to why I have reintroduced it here.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Archaeology of Micronesia , pp. 245 - 254Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004