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Archaeologists commonly use the onset of the construction of large burial monuments as a material indicator of a fundamental shift in authority in prehistoric human societies during the Holocene. High-quality direct evidence of this transition is rare. We report new interdisciplinary research at the archaeological site of Nan Madol that allows us to specify where and when people began to construct monumental architecture in the remote islands of the Pacific. Nan Madol is an ancient administrative and mortuary center and the former capital of the island of Pohnpei. It was constructed over 83 ha of lagoon with artificial islets and other architecture built using columnar basalt and coral. We employed geochemical sourcing of basalt used as architectural stone and high-precision uranium-thorium series dates (230Th/U) on coral from the tomb of the first chief of the entire island to identify the beginning of monument building at Nan Madol in AD 1180-1200. Over the next several centuries (AD 1300-1600) monument building began on other islands across Oceania. Future research should be aimed at resolving the causes of these social transformations through higher quality data on monument building.

A new archaeological field survey of the site of Nan Madol United Nation's World Heritage list (UNESCO) have failed in part due to the lack of an up-to-date map and an inventory of the islets.The purpose of the following report is to present the results of a recent GPS survey of Nan Madol's iconic artificial islets and breakwater walls to contribute to ongoing efforts to protect the site and foster research by clarifying some ambiguities that have accumulated over a century of previous research. The resulting GIS data derived from this survey was created based on current standards of archaeological applications of spatial technology and is available on the Digital Archaeological Record, (tDAR) website.

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