Papers by Marshall Weisler
Oxford University Press eBooks, Feb 22, 2024
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Archaeology in Oceania, Jan 9, 2024
In 1976, Yosihiko H. Sinoto conducted extensive archaeological survey and excavations on Reao Ato... more In 1976, Yosihiko H. Sinoto conducted extensive archaeological survey and excavations on Reao Atoll, Tuamotu Archipelago as part of a Japanese, multidisciplinary expedition led by Prof. Sachiko Hatanaka. Primarily excavating three marae and four habitation sites totalling ∼180 m 2 , more than 25000 vertebrate remains were recovered. We report the identification and analysis of the fauna and contrast the inventories from secular and sacred contexts inferring the ritual use of pig, dog, turtle and tuna (Scombridae), as well as identifying relatively larger parrotfish (Scaridae), groupers (Serranidae), snappers (Lutjanidae), the Humphead wrasse (Cheilinus undulatus) and sharks/rays (Elasmobranchii) on marae. With a suite of 11 new AMS age determinations, we report the first directly dated precontact records for pig and dog and anchor the marae chronology possibly beginning in the thirteenth century. The 800 calBP dates imply that at least one of the Tuamotu atolls may have emerged nearly two centuries prior to the hypothesised 'cross-over' date of 600 BP. Consequently, the earliest chronology of atoll emergence along the 1000 km length of the Tuamotus might vary, thus providing landscapes for human colonisation at slightly different times which has implications for the speed and tempo of colonisation.
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Asian Perspectives, 2004
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Prehistoric East Polynesia was never part of the truly global community, but many of the processe... more Prehistoric East Polynesia was never part of the truly global community, but many of the processes that underpin and drive globalization were incorporated into the region’s social fabric from the beginning. These processes are concerned with connectedness, as globalization has been dened simply as a form of connectivity (Robertson 2014; see also Feinman this volume, Jennings this volume, Knappett this volume). Connectedness is about the establishment and maintenance of social and economic ties between communities and, in most parts of the world, it is described as emerging out of social, demographic and technological processes. East Polynesia is fundamentally dierent, as connectivity was introduced in nished form by the rst settlers. This distinction is important because the East Polynesian case highlights the pivotal role of connectivity as a colonization strategy, as a condition of geography and as a process contributing to long-term sustainability. Furthermore, determining the spatial, temporal and diverse nature of connectedness between island societies at the scale of island, archipelago and broader region is essential for understanding prehistoric East Polynesian culture change. Indeed, the hallmark of East Polynesian societies was the expansive and diverse nature of community inter-connections, a trait inherited from Austronesian forebears.
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Economic Botany, Apr 1, 1991
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The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, Oct 27, 2008
... Similar stones, encased in tree roots, have washed ashore on Caroline Atoll in the southern L... more ... Similar stones, encased in tree roots, have washed ashore on Caroline Atoll in the southern Line Islands (M. Weisler, personal observation 2008). ... Both specimens were analyzed for oxides and trace elements (see Fankhauser 20027. Fankhauser, B. 2002. ...
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The well known Polynesian ethnographer and archaeologist, Kenneth Pike Emory, surveyed the island... more The well known Polynesian ethnographer and archaeologist, Kenneth Pike Emory, surveyed the island of Lana'i, Hawai'ian Islands, in 1921 and conducted one of the first extensive seuJement pattern studies in Polynesia. More than 65 years after he visited the largest adze quarry on the island al Kapohaku, this important adze production cenire was relocated, and a surface collection of flakes, adze blanks and preforms was made. The assemblage is described and a reduction sequence is proposed for the production of adzes from flakes. Technological comparisons with other adze quarries in Polynesia suggest Polynesian-wide similarities in the production of flake adzes. Peirographic descriptions and geochemical characterisation of quarry rock are presented.
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Asian Perspectives, 1993
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Australian Archaeology, Dec 1, 2006
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New Zealand Archaeological Association eBooks, 1997
ABSTRACT Prehistoric Long-Distance Interaction in Oceania: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Marshal... more ABSTRACT Prehistoric Long-Distance Interaction in Oceania: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Marshall I. Weisler. ed. Monograph 21. Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Archaeological Association, 1997. 238 pp.
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Radiocarbon, 1989
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Asian Perspectives, 2005
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The 86th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, 2021
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The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, 2015
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The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, Apr 14, 2016
ABSTRACT Prehistoric molluscan assemblages provide insights into long-term patterns of human land... more ABSTRACT Prehistoric molluscan assemblages provide insights into long-term patterns of human landscape use, environmental change, and human impacts to marine resources. The investigation of forager decision-making regarding the selection of certain mollusc taxa and/or the exploitation of particular habitats is fundamental to understanding human-environment interactions in the past, and is relevant for understanding trajectories of human impacts to the intertidal zone in coastal settings. We document variability in the collection of molluscs at two archaeological sites on Ebon Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands: one on a windward, intermittently occupied islet, and the other on a permanently inhabited leeward islet. All molluscan taxa were assigned to a range of habitats within a hierarchical classification scheme for intertidal marine environments. The relative abundance of taxa from each habitat was used as a proxy for forager decision-making. We report a generalized, non-selective, foraging strategy focused on gastropod taxa from the high intertidal and supratidal. These results indicate that rather than focusing intensively on select taxa, intertidal foragers targeted particular marine habitats, taking advantage of the predictable behaviors of the molluscs that inhabit them.
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Papers by Marshall Weisler
deposition as early as the 14th century CE—perhaps two centuries after colonisation of the archipelago. It is only with consideration of the ethnohistoric literature, coupled with archaeology, that the significance of this pit is revealed.
largest on O‘ahu and aside from the Mauna Kea adze quarry complex on Hawai‘i island and the Haleakalā source on
Maui, is one of the major quarries in the archipelago. We defined the approximate limits of the quarry complex, located
the in situ geological source of the fine-grained basalt used for adze manufacture, report the petrographic and
geochemical variability of the source rock, and describe the adze reduction strategies from analysis of adze blanks and
preforms, as well as hammerstones and debitage. The geochemical variation of the nine source rocks and artefacts were
defined by a comprehensive array of 10 fully quantitative major element concentrations, 43 trace element abundances,
and high-precision Sr-Nd-Pb isotopic ratios obtained using the state-of-the-art Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometry
(TIMS, for Sr isotopes), Multi-Collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS, for Nd-Pb
isotopes), quadrupole ICP-MS (for trace elements) and Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry
(ICP-OES, for major elements), respectively. A piece of branch coral was recovered from the surface of a rockshelter that
provided a U-series date of possible quarry use in the mid-13th century. It is advocated that a comprehensive range of
major and trace element concentrations and Sr-Nd-Pb isotopic ratios are required for geochemically characterising
adze quarries to facilitate the long-term viability of sourcing studies.
Keywords: Hawaiian Islands, basalt adze quarries, sourcing, adze technology, geochemistry
"been a centre of controversy for many years. Easter Island is the easternmost outpost of Polynesia and one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth. The 160.5km2 island is located 3600km west of the coast of southern Peru/northern Chile, 2600km east of Mangareva and 1500km east of Henderson Island, Pitcairn group. The prehistoric Easter Islanders are culturally, linguistically and biologically Eastern Polynesian (Chapman 1997, 1998; Green 1998; Stefan 2000), yet they appear to have diverged extremely early from that core group and for many generations the population increased and developed its culture in relative isolation. Because of Henderson Island's geographic position between Easter Island and the rest of Eastern Polynesia, any artefactual and skeletal remains of prehistoric Henderson Islanders could provide critical and enlightening information on the colonisation of Easter Island and its isolation from or interaction with neighbouring island groups."
"Du Feu and Fischer (1993) and Fischer (1993) have demonstrated that the Easter Island language displays many"
"linguistic features lost or replaced in all other Eastern Polynesian languages and represents an isolate indicative of an extremely early divergence (Fischer 2001). The archaeological evidence also suggests that the Rapa Nui were materially and culturally Eastern Polynesian. Easter Island stone adzes, fishhooks, and other items support a general picture of an “Archaic” East Polynesian assemblage being brought to the island before further developments occurred throughout other regions of East Polynesia (Green 1998,2000). Bioanthropological research of the Easter Islanders has been primarily osteological in nature, i.e., analysis of cranial metric and non-metric data (Chapman 1996, 1997). Osteological studies have suggested that the prehistoric Easter Islanders are basically East Polynesians, quite similar to Mangarevans or Tuamotuans (Chapman 1998, 2001; Shapiro 1940; Stefan 2000, 2001a)."
We suggest that the most parsimonious explanation for the material, linguistic, biological, mythological, nautical, chronological, and physical anthropological evidence summarized in chapters 1–13 is that Polynesians made pre-Columbian landfalls in the New World. Further, based on this evidence, we identify three likely locations of contact: southern Chile, the Gulf of Guayaquil in South America, and the Santa Barbara Channel in North America. All of these contacts we argue occurred during the late Holocene between approximately cal A.D. 700 and 1350. None of them altered the course of prehistory in these regions in the extreme ways suggested by hyperdiffusionists (i.e., they did not cause the emergence of New World civilizations); nonetheless, local populations in both Polynesia and the Americas were the recipients of new technologies and domesticates that affected their subsistence practices and lives. Cultures changed. This conclusion is not based on any single piece of evidence but rather on the totality. The possibility that Polynesians made such contacts has been discussed and debated for nearly two centuries. Both theoretical resistance to the notion of transoceanic diffusion and lingering ethnocentrism among American scholars have contributed to stubborn dismissal of this idea, especially in the United States. Previously, it was also possible to raise enough doubts about certain empirical patterns that archaeologists had in some cases justification for rejecting transoceanic contacts even in the face of archaeologically, ethnographically, and experimentally demonstrated Polynesian seafaring capabilities. Some of the early counter-arguments, however, were also convoluted and far from parsimonious. Findings from new methods and more rigorous analyses of previously cited and new evidence now make direct cultural contact the simplest possible explanation for the co-occurrence of various cultural and biological traits in Polynesia and the Americas. In our view, convergence, coincidence, and independent adaptive innovation simply do not offer credible alternative explanations for the patterns described in this volume and summarized more briefly below. The archaeological evidence also clearly shows that these patterns are not the result of transference into and through the Pacific by Europeans in postcontact times.