Geographic and Spatial Evaluation of Group and Territorial Decisions on Rapa, Austral Islands
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Date
2022-10-04
Authors
Lane, Brian
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
A myriad of local adaptations has been associated with the great human dispersal across the Pacific Ocean, occasionally expressing cultural change in dramatic ways. On the small and remote island of Rapa (Rapa Iti) in the South Pacific, a tradition of monumental ridgetop fortified settlements was established between AD 1300-1400, only a century after colonization. In the 300 years that followed, fortified settlements became entrenched as a visible extension of endemic intergroup competition on the island. However, the underlying reasons for the construction and specific role these constructions played in the associated territorial conflict is still not well understood. The striking nature of the forts has dominated the island’s archaeology for over a century, and although often used as an example of the endpoint of intense intergroup competition in Polynesia, Rapa’s history and explanations concerning the emergence of territorial strategies have only been partially explored. This dissertation explicitly applies a human behavioral ecology framework to provide hypotheses and explanations regarding the endemic competition through analysis of the island’s resource base and placement of fortified settlements. This is accomplished through a series of geospatial analyses and spatial statistical models that explore agricultural productivity and cost reductive strategies related to territorial defense. The results of this body of work point to the changing nature of competition in the past and the dynamic roles that the fortified settlements played within society. The human behavioral ecology models of the ideal free distribution and economic defendability provide the theoretical framework for a more nuanced explanation of past intergroup competition and its most visible features, the pare.
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Keywords
economic defendability, fortifications, human behavioral ecology, Pacific archaeology, total visibility