Files
Abstract
This research uses the perspective of historical ecology to investigate human-environmental interaction on the atolls of Manihiki and Rakahanga in the Northern Cook Islands of East Polynesia. Oral traditions and ethnohistoric documents describe a dual-chiefdom political system, where two chiefs each held power over sacred and secular aspects of life. These sources suggest that the people managed their ecological resources through a cyclical mass-migration system called the Tûmutu. Using archaeological, ethnographic, ethnohistoric, chronometric, and zooarchaeological methods and data, I investigated the dynamics of long-term human-environmental interaction on Manihiki and Rakahanga to identify, contextualize, and temporally anchor, the cultural developments and environmental transformations that resulted in long-term socioecological sustainability on the atolls. I then used extant literature and new dating protocols to trace one indicator of environmental change, the introduction and extirpation of the domestic dog, across 35 Pacific island groups. My findings suggest that small-island sustainability is aided through the development and adaptation of flexible social structures that encourage cooperation.
The results of my analysis suggest that the inhabitants Manihiki and Rakahanga first arrived between AD 1200 and 1400. Over the following centuries the population grew, and the people transformed the landscape by digging horticultural pits, planting tree crops, introducing and extirpating plants and animals, and building coral fish traps. They experimented with aggregated and dispersed settlement before the formalizing the dual-chiefdom and the Tûmutu institutions. Both of these appear to be local elaborations on ancestral Polynesian practices that promote polity-wide cooperation, extend the local resource base, and allow for sub-group autonomy. The people of Manihiki and Rakahanga introduced, managed, and eventually extirpated the domestic dog. Comparison of dog introduction and extirpation across the Pacific reveals commonalities in resource management on many atolls as dog introductions were common and loss was nearly universal. As lifeways shifted, and socioecological circumstances changed, atoll dwelling groups, including those on Manihiki and Rakahanga, altered their landscape and their social structures to meet continually changing needs. Low-island environments appear to influence these processes by discouraging the maintenance of domesticates and encouraging the development of flexible, location-specific, cultural institutions.
The results of my analysis suggest that the inhabitants Manihiki and Rakahanga first arrived between AD 1200 and 1400. Over the following centuries the population grew, and the people transformed the landscape by digging horticultural pits, planting tree crops, introducing and extirpating plants and animals, and building coral fish traps. They experimented with aggregated and dispersed settlement before the formalizing the dual-chiefdom and the Tûmutu institutions. Both of these appear to be local elaborations on ancestral Polynesian practices that promote polity-wide cooperation, extend the local resource base, and allow for sub-group autonomy. The people of Manihiki and Rakahanga introduced, managed, and eventually extirpated the domestic dog. Comparison of dog introduction and extirpation across the Pacific reveals commonalities in resource management on many atolls as dog introductions were common and loss was nearly universal. As lifeways shifted, and socioecological circumstances changed, atoll dwelling groups, including those on Manihiki and Rakahanga, altered their landscape and their social structures to meet continually changing needs. Low-island environments appear to influence these processes by discouraging the maintenance of domesticates and encouraging the development of flexible, location-specific, cultural institutions.