James L. Flexner

Mapping local perspectives in the historical archaeology of vanuatu mission landscapes

The concept of place is a powerful theoretical tool in the social sciences and humanities, which can be especially useful in archaeological work that involves community-based collaboration. Using place as a starting point, archaeologists can beneficially use their skills to answer questions that are of relevance to the local communities with which we work while also advancing knowledge about the past. For historical archaeology, this often involves engaging in dialogue across multiple lines of evidence, including material remains from the past, written documents, and local oral traditions. Recent fieldwork on the islands of Erromango and Tanna, Vanuatu, exploring early landscapes relating to Christian conversion uses this kind of approach. A major part of preliminary survey work involves mapping features in the mission sites and surrounding areas. Archaeological cartographic techniques help build a sense of place that provides engaging research for a collaborative environment with local Melanesian communities, while also producing new perspectives on colonialism in the South Pacific. This approach is not limited to the recent past, being applicable to any collaborative, community-based archaeological research that incorporates the use of oral traditions.

Mission Sites as indigenous heritage in southern Vanuatu

Christian missions are often characterized as a physical expression of Western colonial power, institutions that were resisted by indigenous people in various ways. In Vanuatu, while there was indeed dramatic resistance to mission incursion, the success of Christianity in many places (for not everyone converted) developed from a series of complex entanglements between indigenous Melanesians and Christian missionaries. This is apparent in oral traditions and in the physical remains relating to mission encounters. Indigenous ni-Vanuatu see the archaeological remains of mission sites as an integral part of their heritage, rather than as relics of a foreign colonial past. This tendency relates to other aspects of missionary heritage as well, including museum collections and sacred texts. The historical archaeology of missions in Vanuatu and beyond can be best understood through the lens of colonial entanglement, destabilizing categorical oppositions such as colonizer–colonized, foreign–indigenous, and power–resistance.

Language continuity despite population replacement in Remote Oceania.

Recent genomic analyses show that the earliest peoples reaching Remote Oceania—associated with Austronesian-speaking Lapita culture—were almost completely East Asian, without detectable Papuan ancestry. However, Papuan-related genetic ancestry is found across present-day Pacific populations, indicating that peoples from Near Oceania have played a significant, but largely unknown, ancestral role. Here, new genome-wide data from 19 ancient South Pacific individuals provide direct evidence of a so-far undescribed Papuan expansion into Remote Oceania starting ~2,500 yr bp, far earlier than previously estimated and supporting a model from historical linguistics. New genome-wide data from 27 contemporary ni-Vanuatu demonstrate a subsequent and almost complete replacement of Lapita-Austronesian by Near Oceanian ancestry. Despite this massive demographic change, incoming Papuan languages did not replace Austronesian languages. Population replacement with language continuity is extremely rare—if not unprecedented—in human history. Our analyses show that rather than one large-scale event, the process was incremental and complex, with repeated migrations and sex-biased admixture with peoples from the Bismarck Archipelago.Genome-wide data from ancient and modern individuals in Remote Oceania indicate population replacement but language continuity over the past 2,500 years. Papuan migrations led to almost complete genetic replacement of in situ East Asian-derived populations, but not replacement of Austronesian languages.

Iarisi's Domain: Historical Archaeology of a Melanesian Village, Tanna Island, Vanuatu

ABSTRACT Archaeological data provide a critical perspective on the emergent relationships between Melanesians and Europeans during the mid-nineteenth century. Particularly important to the discussion are the native landscapes within which Europeans settled. As part of a larger exploration of early missionary settlement in southern Vanuatu, archaeologists working closely with local fieldworkers surveyed the native villages at Kwaraka and Anuikaraka, south Tanna Island. These archaeological settlements are notable for their well-preserved stone architecture, rare on Tanna, and their association with local oral traditions concerning inter-island exchange and early Melanesian engagements with Christianity. Archaeological research at Kwaraka has begun to explore the long-term settlement dynamics of these sites, as initial excavations have indicated features dating from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth century. While direct evidence of nineteenth-century habitation was limited, preliminary results suggest European goods were rare at these sites, while also revealing information about more prominent local exchange networks that persisted through the colonial era. Archaeological approaches that span precolonial and colonial periods can challenge orthodox models for the emergence of modernity, while also providing important long-term perspectives on local historical trajectories.

Ethnology collections as supplements and records: what museums contribute to historical archaeology of the New Hebrides (Vanuatu)

ABSTRACT Nineteenth-century ethnological collections can supplement what is found in archaeological assemblages because they include objects unlikely to appear on archaeological sites, which either don’t normally preserve, are extremely rare or were intentionally destroyed in the past. However, collections are not neutral samples of what existed in past societies. They are biased by what collectors chose to take, and what was offered by the makers of ethnological objects. Collections, then, also represent an important record of agency in colonial exchanges. An archaeological survey of nineteenth-century Presbyterian missions and the surrounding landscapes in the southern New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) included analysis of museum collections from the same era. These objects provide evidence of the active, mutually constitutive role of things and interpersonal relationships in shaping cross-cultural exchanges.

Beginning Historical Archaeology in Vanuatu: Recent Projects on the Archaeology of Spanish, French, and Anglophone Colonialism

Historical archaeology is an emerging field of research in Vanuatu, a small island nation in the southwest Pacific, which emphasizes the ways that Melanesian people experienced and adapted to colonialism. People in the New Hebrides (as Vanuatu was called before independence in 1980) adapted to a variety of colonial situations. First contact with Europeans took place in 1606 when the Portuguese explorer Quiros in the service of Spain arrived at Espiritu Santo. This was a brief moment, however, and the next major contacts with Europeans began in the late eighteenth century, with explorers such as Bougainville (1768), Cook (1774), and Golovnin (1809). Long-term colonial encounters including the establishment of permanent European settlements did not occur until the mid-nineteenth century when British and French settlers established missions and trading posts around the islands. Official colonial rule under a joint Anglo-French ‘condominium’ was not fully established until 1906. Recent projects on the archaeology of European encounters in Vanuatu illustrate some of the problems, as well as the immense potential for research that explores colonialism of variable scale and duration diachronically, integrating materials and perspectives from both Europeans and Melanesians.

Sherds of Paradise: Domestic Archaeology and Ceramic Artefacts from a Protestant Mission in the South Pacific

Postmedieval protestant missionaries working in exotic locations used objects both as a marker of their own ‘civilisation’ in contrast to that of the local populations and as a means of engaging these communities with Christianity. European things were displayed and conspicuously used to encourage a consumer mindset and interest in capitalism, thought to be crucial steps on the path to full conversion. Excavations at a Presbyterian mission house on Tanna Island, Vanuatu, recovered a remarkable assemblage of nineteenth-century British-made transfer-printed ceramics for such a remote location. These objects reflect multiple, complex meanings including performance of a ‘civilised’ British identity, romanticized ideals of pastoral landscapes, and conceptions of death and rebirth in the afterlife. These meanings were complicated by the context of cross-cultural interactions that were necessary to the missionary project.