Refining Earliest Settlement in Remote Oceania: Renewed Archaeological Investigation at Unai Bapot, Saipan

Abstract

Renewed archaeological investigation at Unai Bapot inSaipan refines the documentation of chronological change during the earliest period of human occupation of the Mariana Islands. First site use was in the range of 1600 to 1420 BC, and site abandonment occurred shortly after AD 1670. In more than 2 m of continuous stratigraphy, abundant examples of pottery occur in stratigraphic order in seven distinct occupation layers with minor internal variations. Other artifacts include shell and coral pendants, polished chert and shell adzes, various types of flaked stones and shells, fishhooks, and other objects. Faunal materials are almost entirely shellfish remains, and changes in shellfish taxa reflect a drop in sea level and associated habitat transformation in the first millennium BC. The new data support a refined substantive evaluation of the role of early Marianas settlement as the first human colonization in Remote Oceania.

Using ancient DNA to study the origins and dispersal of ancestral Polynesian chickens across the Pacific

“…Such an early date is broadly consistent with archaeological evidence for human settlement of Saipan at 3,300-3,500 B.P. (36) and Palau at almost 4,000 B.P. (35), however few comparably early zoo-archaeological remains have been found in Micronesia to date (10,13,37).…”

Correlation of environmental and cultural chronology in New Caledonia

“…Moreover, a similar habitat change appears to correspond to the termination of early decorated ceramics and associated shore-oriented settlements in the Mariana Islands (in western Micronesia) in the first millennium B.C. (Amesbury, 2007;Amesbury, Moore, & Hunter-Anderson, 1996;Carson, 2008), expanding the scope of the present work beyond the regional bounds of the Lapita phenomenon. In all of these cases, the correlation of physical and cultural factors is intriguing, and further research may be developed to address the possibility of causal or other relations between these and other factors.…”

Radiocarbon Chronology with Marine Reservoir Correction for the Ritidian Archaeological Site, Northern Guam

“…A new radiocarbon chronology for the Ritidian archaeological site in Guam verifies earliest human presence around 1460-1300 cal BC, just slightly younger than the earliest known sites elsewhere in the Marianas region of the western Pacific around 1500 cal BC (Carson 2008). A series of 12 samples provides absolute dating of key points in the cultural sequence, matched with natural environmental change in sea level and coastal geomorphology.…”