As Ngāi Tahu (southern Maori), we take issue with widespread reference in scholarly publication to Polynesian voyagers reaching the Antarctic, an idea that originated in the translation of Rarotongan traditions in the nineteenth century. Analysis of those indicates that they contain no plausible reference to Antarctic seafaring. Southern Māori interests have extended into the Subantarctic Islands for 800 years but there is no reference to Antarctica in our historical traditions. Our archaeology and history document a southern boundary to Māori occupation at Port Ross (Auckland Islands), despite habitable islands existing further south. We think it is very unlikely that Māori or other Polynesian voyaging reached the Antarctic.

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of deposits at the Lakaton'i Anja rockshelter site in Madagascar extends the chronology of human activity on the island back to 4500 BP. These results have roused archaeological and palaeoecological interest in the implications of mid Holocene human colonisation of remote islands in the Indian Ocean. There is, however, evidence of extensive bioturbation at the site, reflected in over-dispersion and other characteristics of the OSL data. It is argued here that OSL ages on minor sedimentary components indicate a much younger chronology consistent with radiocarbon dates for human activity no earlier than the first millennium AD.

Fifty years ago, Heyerdahl and Skjølsvold (1956, 1990) collected material from five archaeological sites in the Galápagos Islands. They retained earthenwares of possible precolumbian origin and discarded ceramic, metal, and glass artifacts postdating the arrival of the Spanish in A.D. 1535. Consequently, they argued that each site was formed as the results of a series of discard events from unrelated short-term occupations extending from the precolumbian to the historical era, and that the earthenwares represented occasional visits by fishermen from precolumbian Peru and Ecuador. In 2005, we re-excavated the sites and collected all the excavated materials. Our results show that each class of material, irrespective of age or origin, was distributed spatially and stratigraphically in the same pattern, contradicting the former assumption of multiple, unrelated occupations. We reject the palimpsest model in favor of the null hypothesis of single-phase site occupation. Analysis of putatively precolumbian pottery using optically-stimulated luminescence dating indicates that it is mostly of historical age. Radiocarbon dating confirms that the archaeological sites are younger than the sixteenth century. Research on sedimentary cores shows probable anthropogenic impacts as restricted to the last 500 years. We conclude that there was no human occupation in the Galápagos Islands until the historical era.

The first settlement of Australia over 40 000 years ago provides evidence of the maritime capabilities of early modern humans. Did they also take to the sea to fish? Recent analysis of fish remains from sites in Timor-Leste and on islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea have been held to include deep sea species that must have been obtained through pelagic fishing. Here Atholl Anderson takes issue with the evidence, arguing that inshore fishing is a more likely scenario, and that deep sea fishing was beyond the scope of Pleistocene communities. Despite the early settlement of Australia, advanced boat technology was developed only during the Holocene. His reassessment is followed by responses from Sue O'Connor and Rintaro Ono, Geoff Bailey and Jon Erlandson, and finally by Atholl Anderson's reply to those comments.

I thank the contributors for their comments. We all agree that the Jerimalai data provide an intriguing glimpse of maritime activity in the Wallacean Pleistocene by showing that Scombridae were unusually prominent amongst 15 families of fish that had been caught around 40 000 BP. In various ways, we also agree that the hypothesis interpreting these data in O'Connor et al. (2011) is far from robust. Its fundamental proposition was that the scombrids were oceanic tuna, but O'Connor and Ono (above) now concede that, 'as we did not speciate [sic] the scombrids at Jerimalai we cannot be certain that oceanic species were represented'. Their description of samples and methods, which confirms the inadequacy of the comparative collection and notes that scombrid bone from Jerimalai Square A also may not be from tuna, simply underlines the thrust of my critique. Some of the scombrids might be oceanic tuna but since no tuna were identified, either as a class or species, the marine zones involved in scombrid fishing cannot be inferred, and the empirical argument for offshore tuna fishing collapses.

This paper presents 31 new ΔR results of known-age, pre-AD 1950 shells from the South Pacific subtropical gyre region, spanning from the Tuamotu Archipelago in the east to New Caledonia in the west. This doubles the number of available ΔR values for the Oceania region. These values indicate that the regional offset (ΔR) from the modeled radiocarbon marine age has remained relatively constant over the last 100 yr prior to 1950. Variation from the norm can be attributed to various influences including localized upwelling around islands, the presence of a hardwater effect, direct ingestion of old carbon by the live shellfish, or enhanced exchange with atmospheric CO2 as a consequence of photosynthetic activity or increased aeration.

The hypothesis presented by Jones and Klar (2005) that elements of prehistoric Chumash technology and language arrived from East Polynesia is considered. Trans-oceanic diffusion in general should not be rejected out of hand, but in this case it is improbable that it involved East Polynesia. There are substantial differences in the sewn-plank canoes at issue and the compound hooks are of a general form that is not confined to Polynesia. The chronology of East Polynesian colonization is probably too late for diffusion to southern California before A.D. 700. East Polynesian seafaring may have been inadequate to reach the Californian coast. If the explanation is diffusionary, then a source in East Asia is more plausible.

New excavations and survey on the island of Rapa have shown that a rockshelter was occupied by early settlers around AD 1200 and the first hill forts were erected about 300 years later. Refortification occurred up to the contact period and proliferated around AD 1700. Taro cultivation in terraced pond-fields kept pace with the construction of forts. The authors make a connection between fort-building and making pond-fields, demonstrating that the pressure on resources provoked both the intensification of agriculture and hostility between the communities of the small island.

Archaeological research in the Auckland Islands, south of New Zealand, has disclosed earth ovens, middens and flaked stone tools dating to the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries AD. This is the first site of prehistoric settlement in the outlying islands of the Subantarctic. Polynesians and their dogs survived on seals and seabirds for at least one summer. The new data complete a survey of colonisation in the outlying archipelagos of South Polynesia and show that it occurred contemporaneously, rapidly and in all directions from mainland New Zealand.

It is difficult to construct archaeological chronologies for Babeldaob, the main island of Palau (western Micronesia), because the saprolitic clays of the dominant terraced-hill sites and associated ceramic sherds often contain old carbon that originated in lignites. This has implications, as well, for chronologies of sedimentary sequences. Comparative analysis of the dating problem using lignite, pottery, and charcoal samples indicates that, in fact, there are both old and young sources of potential contamination. It is concluded that radiocarbon samples from Babeldaob need to be tested for appropriate carbon content rather than relying solely upon material identification.

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) determinations of rat bones from natural and cultural sites in New Zealand have produced ages at odds with the accepted date for early human settlement by over 1000 yr. Since rats are a human commensal, this implies either an earlier visitation by people or problems with the reliability of the AMS determinations. One explanation for the extreme ages is dietary variation involving movement of depleted radiocarbon through dietary food chains to rats. To investigate this, we 14C dated fauna from the previously well-dated site of Shag River Mouth. The faunal remains were of species that consumed carbon derived from a variety of environments within the orbit of the site, including the estuary, river, land, and sea. The 14C results showed a wide range in age among estuarine and freshwater species. Terrestrial and marine organisms produced ages within expectations. We also found differences between bone dated using the Oxford ultrafiltration method and those treated using the filtered gelatin method. This implies that contamination could also be of greater importance than previously thought.

The first colonization of New Zealand is a much debated issue. The lack of appropriate absolute dating has meant chronology has been poorly understood. New 14C dating of materials from archaic Polynesian graves and occupation levels provides important precision and understanding of early exploitation on New Zealand.

More on whether evidence of prehistoric environment on the Pacific island of Mangaia does or does not demonstrate an early human presence there.

In a recent ANTIQUITY article (65: 767–95) Atholl Anderson presented a detailed analysis of radiocarbon dates to show that the settlement of New Zealand occurred later than previously thought. In this paper Anderson teams up with another proponent of ‘chronometric hygiene’, Matthew Spriggs (see ANTIQUITY 63: 587–613), to examine the dates for the colonization of the rest of East Polynesia. Once again the generally accepted dates for initial settlement are found wanting and a later chronology is suggested.

New Zealand was the last substantial landmass to be colonized by prehistoric people. Even within Oceania, where there are much smaller and more remote islands, such as Pitcairn and Easter Island, New Zealand stands out as the last-settled archipelago. Its prehistory promises, therefore, better archaeological evidence concerning prehistoric colonization of pristine land-masses than is the case anywhere else, as is apparent in the extinction of megafauna (Anderson 1989a). But much depends on the precise antiquity of human colonization and this, following a long period of consensus, is now a matter of sharp debate.