See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/324019795

Island Archaeology, Model Systems, the Anthropocene, and How the Past
Informs the Future

Article  in  The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology · March 2018

DOI: 10.1080/15564894.2018.1447051

CITATIONS READS

0 259

2 authors:

Scott M. Fitzpatrick Jon Erlandson

University of Oregon University of Oregon
143 PUBLICATIONS   1,579 CITATIONS    353 PUBLICATIONS   11,606 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Search for soot and/or nanodiamonds associated with impacts or extinctions View project

The impact of environmental variability on prehistoric Pacific colonization View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Scott M. Fitzpatrick on 25 April 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology

ISSN: 1556-4894 (Print) 1556-1828 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uica20

Island Archaeology, Model Systems, the

Anthropocene, and How the Past Informs the
Future

Scott M. Fitzpatrick & Jon M. Erlandson

To cite this article: Scott M. Fitzpatrick & Jon M. Erlandson (2018) Island Archaeology, Model
Systems, the Anthropocene, and How the Past Informs the Future, The Journal of Island and
Coastal Archaeology, 13:2, 283-299, DOI: 10.1080/15564894.2018.1447051

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15564894.2018.1447051

Published online: 26 Mar 2018.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 182

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=uica20
Journal of Island & Coastal Archaeology, 13:283–299, 2018
Copyright C 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1556-4894 print / 1556-1828 online

DOI: 10.1080/15564894.2018.1447051

Island Archaeology, Model Systems, the

Anthropocene, and How the Past Informs
the Future
Scott M. Fitzpatrick1,2 and Jon M. Erlandson1,2
1
Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA
2
Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon, Eugene,
Oregon, USA

ABSTRACT

The use of islands as ‘model systems’ has become particularly rele-

vant for examining a host of important issues in archaeology and
other disciplines. As papers in this special issue of the Journal of Is-
land and Coastal Archaeology demonstrate, islands can serve as critical
and ideal analytical platforms for observing human populations in
the past and their evolutionary histories within complex and insular
human ecodynamics. In this paper we address the issue of how islands
are also important models for future sustainability and as corollaries
for the survival of humans generally. In a sense, island cultures and
ecosystems can be seen as microcosms of the issues we have faced as
humans, and provide important insights for understanding the fate
of our species, particularly as it pertains to the exploration and colo-
nization of new worlds.

Keywords historical ecology, human impacts and ecodynamics, colonization, space

exploration

Since, in the long run, every practical reason imaginable: stay-

planetary civilization will be en-
dangered by impacts from space,
every surviving civilization is
obliged to become spacefaring—
not because of exploratory or ro-
mantic zeal, but for the most
ing alive …. If our long term sur-
vival is at stake, we have a ba-
sic responsibility to our species to
venture to other worlds.
— Carl Sagan (1994:371)

Received 27 January 2018; accepted 26 February 2018.

Address correspondence to Scott M. Fitzpatrick, Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon,
Eugene, OR 97408, USA. E-mail: smfitzpa@uoregon.edu
Color versions of one or more figures in the article can be found online at http://www.
tandfonline.com/uica

283
 Scott M. Fitzpatrick and Jon M. Erlandson
’A’ohe wa’a ho’ohoa 0 ka la ’ino
(“No canoe is defiant on a stormy
day.”)
— Hawaiian proverb (Mary
Kawena Pukui in 0lelo No‘eau:
Hawaiian Proverbs and Poetical
Sayings)—1983 (216).
INTRODUCTION
The Age of Exploration, sometimes re-
ferred to as the Age of Discovery, is of-
ten used by historians to describe a time
between the fifteenth and eighteenth cen-
turies during which Europeans began voy-
aging to many different parts of the world,
including Africa, Asia, Australia, and the
Americas, as well as numerous islands in
the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans.
This ultimately led to colonization ventures
that drastically transformed both European
cultures and the indigenous peoples with
whom they came into contact, effectively
creating the first truly globalized economy.
The arrival of Europeans dramatically trans-
formed numerous islands and archipelagos
around the world, culturally and ecologi-
cally (Braje et al. 2018; Leppard 2017; Rick
et al. 2013).
Despite the monumental calamities,
conflicts, transmittable diseases, and
changes that occurred thereafter, which
were disastrous for most native peoples
(e.g., see Crosby 2003), the fact is that this
was not the first real age of exploration
by sea, but one of many that had taken
place over millennia. Among others, these
included the dispersal of Homo sapiens
from Africa to Eurasia at least by 50 kya
and likely earlier (Petraglia et al. 2010;
Quintana-Murci et al. 1999), the coloniza-
tion of greater Australia ca. 55–65 kya
(Clarkson et al. 2017) and the Americas ca.
15 kya (Dillehay et al. 2015; Erlandson et al.
2007; Gilbert et al. 2008) the settlement
of the Caribbean islands that began in
the early to middle Holocene (Fitzpatrick
2015; Keegan and Hofman 2017), the
Austronesian/Polynesian diaspora across
284 VOLUME 13 • ISSUE 2 • 2018
millions of square kilometers of the Pacific
and Indian Oceans that commenced more
than 3,000 years ago (Kirch 2007), and the
Norse colonization of Iceland, Greenland,
and other parts of the North Atlantic in the
ninth and tenth centuries AD (McGovern
1990; McGovern et al. 2007).
These and other seafaring endeavors,
regardless of timescale or extent, were all
pivotal in changing the trajectory of hu-
man history, for they led to the discovery of
landmasses that had been isolated from hu-
mans for millennia up to perhaps a million
years ago. These pristine island ecologies
were dramatically disrupted by the arrival of
Homo sapiens, with well-documented de-
struction to native biota, although such im-
pacts were significantly amplified by the ar-
rival of Europeans during the colonial era
(e.g., Fitzpatrick and Keegan 2007; Kirch
2007; Rick and Erlandson 2008).
Because of their relative remoteness,
isolation, and boundedness, islands can
serve as model systems for examining not
only the impacts humans may have had on
novel landscapes, but also the degrees to
which they enhanced or managed differ-
ent resources (Kirch 2007; Vitousek 2002,
2004) as papers in this special issue illus-
trate. Our goal here is not to review the nu-
merous case studies that demonstrate the
devastating effects of human colonization of
islands around the world, or to identify in-
stances where humans implemented more
sustainable practices to manage resources
and population size. These are important
issues that archaeologists have explored
more intensively during the last 20 years. In-
stead, we are interested here in how islands,
and the modeling of highly variable island
systems, might also inform our understand-
ing of human exploration beyond the terra
firma that is our planet.
The comparison of island colonization
and human impacts to spaceflight and the
movement beyond our atmosphere to in-
habit other worlds may at first seem fan-
cifully futuristic. However, manned flights
to Mars—where abundant and relatively
accessible water sources have recently
been found (e.g., Martín-Torres et al. 2015;
Villanueva et al. 2015)—are planned within

the next decade or two, and colonies on the
moon or nearby asteroids could also soon
become realities. Ultimately, the accelerat-
ing pace of technological change suggests
that ever more distant planets and stars
may be reached in the coming decades or
centuries.
ISLANDS AS MODEL SYSTEMS
In two influential publications, Vitousek
(2002, 2004) outlined four fields of re-
search in which islands are useful model
systems—-evolution and speciation, conser-
vation biology (especially involving species
on the brink of extinction), human–land
interactions, and ecosystem structure and
functioning. He noted that: “One of the
essential factors of model systems, be they
nematodes or plants or lakes, is that they
are an integrated, functional, persistent
example of the larger set of systems whose
functioning they are meant to illuminate”
(Vitousek 2002:574). This perspective be-
came a much-needed alternative to the
“cultural laboratory” concept which for
decades had been an exploratory, but not
entirely useful mechanism for archaeolo-
gists to explain why island cultures were
different (see further discussion below).
In addition to these biological perspec-
tives on island model systems, other schol-
ars have sought to study naturally occur-
ring phenomena such as volcanoes and how
eruption and formation processes on earth
can be used to infer what is happening
on other planets (e.g., Lopes and Gregg
2004). The reasoning behind these efforts is
in part to extrapolate from remote sensing
data (telescopes, satellites, space probes)
the geological histories of planetary bod-
ies and to some extent, infer whether they
are capable of supporting extraterrestrial
life based on atmospheric conditions, the
presence of water, and other criteria. The
Hawaiian archipelago has served as an ideal
case study in this regard given the nearly
25-year continual eruption of Kı̄lauea on
the island of Hawai‘i and its active volcan-
ism in historic times along this island arc
system (see Fagents et al. 2013; Lopes and
JOURNAL OF ISLAND & COASTAL ARCHAEOLOGY
How the Past Informs the Future
Gregg 2004). Results from decades of re-
search here and elsewhere on Earth have
provided substantial data on how volcan-
ism shapes landscapes, the chemical con-
stituents that form in the atmosphere as
a result, and their potential for predicting
human habitability. But why should this
matter?
The simple answer is that humans, in
an era of globalization and profound eco-
logical transformation can no longer conve-
niently compartmentalize the fragile ecosys-
tem that is Earth. There are both isolated in-
cidents (e.g., volcanic eruptions, nuclear ac-
cidents) and widespread, collective actions
(e.g., burning of fossil fuels, rising atmo-
spheric carbon levels, and global warming)
that affect us on a worldwide scale. Echoing
earlier statements by Carl Sagan and other
scholars, the theoretical physicist Stephen
Hawking (2010) remarked that:
If we can avoid disaster for the
next two centuries, our species
should be safe as we spread into
space. If we are the only intelligent
beings in the galaxy we should
make sure we survive and con-
tinue …. Our only chance of long-
term survival is not to remain in-
ward looking on planet Earth but
to spread out into space. We have
made remarkable progress in the
last hundred years. But if we want
to continue beyond the next hun-
dred years, our future is in space.
Hawking’s remarks might be consid-
ered a pragmatic commentary on the possi-
ble fate of humans given a number of ongo-
ing and impending crises: overpopulation,
climate change, accelerating extinctions
and declining biodiversity, and continual
conflicts between groups and nations that
threaten to destabilize global economies,
governments, and human communities. His
general perception that humans must leave
Earth over the next few centuries is a pes-
simistic, but probably realistic scenario in
which our species’ survival depends on a
movement beyond terra firma.
285
 Scott M. Fitzpatrick and Jon M. Erlandson
RELINQUENS TERRAM
A human diaspora beyond Earth has corol-
laries in the archaeology of islands as the an-
thropologist and experimental voyager Ben
Finney (1992; Finney and Jones 1992) dis-
cussed in several essays examining how
Polynesian seafarers were not unlike mod-
ern day astronauts.
Perhaps the most evocative phase
of humanity’s spread over Earth
for thinking about the future ex-
pansion into space is the explo-
ration of the sea and the foun-
dation of island and overseas
colonies. Like space today, the
ocean was once a vast unknown.
Just as we cannot definitely say
if any planets suitable for life or-
bit other stars, so our not-too-
distant ancestors did not really
know what lands lay over the
seas. Then, when those first in-
trepid voyagers took to the sea,
like the space pioneers of to-
day they had to develop a rev-
olutionary technology to pene-
trate an alien environment. And
those colonists who followed in
their wake had to uproot them-
selves from all that was familiar
and take their chances on foreign
shores. (Finney 1992:164)
Finney (1992), and to a certain ex-
tent, Smith and Davies (2012), focused on
highlighting the similarities between an-
cient seafaring and modern spacefaring—
and how humans have overcome drastic
changes in environment, dealt with the
psychological underpinnings that promote
voyaging, the social and economic effects
surrounding a voyage’s departure and sub-
sequent absence, and how translocated
plants and animals were and still would
be necessary for survival. In regards to the
latter, it is important to note that many
Polynesian islands would have been unin-
habitable without humans producing their
own food (e.g., Addison 2008). And even
with this capability, some settlements like
286 VOLUME 13 • ISSUE 2 • 2018
the ‘mystery islands’ were not sustainable
(Fitzpatrick and Anderson 2008), though
others like Rapa Nui (Easter Island) devel-
oped strategies such as lithic mulching of
gardens to significantly improve produc-
tivity in what was otherwise a marginal
and fairly harsh environment (Hunt and
Lipo 2013). These corollaries also have
important implications for how we can use
islands as model systems to examine the
impacts we may have on different environ-
ments. How for example, can archaeology
inform other scientific disciplines on the
probable effects of humans occupying new
environments for the first time? How might
islands serve as microcosms of what is
happening on Earth (vis-à-vis Kirch 1997).
And how might Earth as a whole serve as
a model system for other planets or moons
within or beyond our solar system?
When researchers began in earnest to
study islands anthropologically and archae-
ologically, they often sought to examine
the similarities and differences observed
between populations to help determine
where islanders originated from and what
processes (cultural and natural) may have
led to these perceived variances. Margaret
Mead’s (1928) work in Sāmoa was seminal
in this regard, leading to her notion that
islands were ideal “cultural laboratories”
because of their remoteness and aquatic
circumscription. Mead’s research, one of
the first substantive anthropological studies
of Pacific Islanders, was highly influential to
other scholars, so it was not surprising that
archaeologists borrowed this concept as an
explanatory mechanism in their research
(e.g., Burney 1997; Fitzhugh and Hunt
1997; Kirch 1980).
However, it became clear over time
that this perspective privileged isolation
as a major factor in why and how cultural
behaviors manifested themselves. Isolation
has influenced how many island societies
developed through time (Fitzpatrick and
Anderson 2008), but further research
demonstrated that it was not particularly
useful as a catchall explanation. For one,
humans in the Pacific and elsewhere had
the capability of voyaging long distances be-
tween islands for centuries using sophisti-
cated wayfinding techniques and watercraft

technologies (Finney 1977; Irwin 1994,
2008; Lewis 1994). Most island societies
were not truly isolated in the strict sense.
There are exceptions such as Rapa Nui
(Easter Island) (Fitzpatrick and Anderson
2008; Hunt and Lipo 2006), Palau (west-
ern Micronesia) at certain points in time
(Callaghan and Fitzpatrick 2007), and sev-
eral Caribbean islands such as the Caymans
and Bahamas that seem to have remained
undiscovered or were settled exceptionally
late compared to nearby islands (Fitzpatrick
2015). These and other case studies show
that the concept of “model systems” is more
appropriate than “cultural laboratories.” As
Vitousek (2002:573) noted, “[p]rocess
studies, experiments and models arrayed
on these gradients [can be] used to deter-
mine fundamental controls over ecosystem
processes, with a precision that cannot be
duplicated in continental ecosystems.”
If islands are different than their conti-
nental cousins and useful as model systems
(as papers in this special issue effectively ar-
gue), we can treat them comparatively and
seek corollaries to other situations. One ex-
ample is a recent debate about whether we
are now in a new geological epoch, the
Anthropocene, that is the direct result of
human domination of earth’s environmen-
tal systems on a global scale (see Crutzen
and Steffen 2003; Steffen et al. 2007;
Zalasiewicz et al. 2010). There is general
consensus among scientists that humans
have altered landscapes, the atmosphere,
hydrosphere, and climate on a global scale.
There has been vigorous debate across the
social and natural sciences about when the
Anthropocene began and the evidence that
should be used to establish that baseline
(Braje et al. 2014; Erlandson and Braje 2013;
Ruddiman 2003, 2005), but many scholars
are now leaning toward an AD 1950 bench-
mark when atomic testing and radioac-
tive pollution left global signatures. Such
a baseline ignores major and much earlier
changes that occur in human societies and
global ecosystems, however, especially after
the appearance and spread of agriculture
and animal domestication in virtually every
major world region over the last 10,000 to
1,000 years.
JOURNAL OF ISLAND & COASTAL ARCHAEOLOGY
How the Past Informs the Future
Many archaeologists who study humans
from a deep time perspective, however,
would argue that the beginning of the
Holocene initiated the Anthropocene (e.g.,
Braje and Erlandson 2013; Smith and Zeder
2013). This argument can be supported
with data from islands and archipelagos
around the world, where ancient humans
transformed ecosystems through the intro-
duction of exotic plants, animals, and mi-
crobes, landscape burning, vegetation clear-
ance, overfishing, and landscape modifica-
tion (Boivin et al. 2016; Braje et al. 2018;
Rick et al. 2013). As Kirch (1997) and oth-
ers (see papers in Rick and Erlandson 2008)
have demonstrated, the timing and scale of
such changes varied on different islands and
should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Nonetheless, the cumulative and accelerat-
ing scale of such changes has reached global
proportions, with serious consequences for
the loss of coral reefs, fisheries, extinctions,
biodiversity, and even the survival of some
smaller and low-lying islands in the face of
sea-level rise and marine erosion. In a grow-
ing number of cases, the human societies
that occupy such islands and archipelagos
are contemplating abandonment and reset-
tlement in new lands. On a global scale,
if humans cannot slow the acceleration of
such ecological devastation and catastro-
phes, is it unreasonable to assume that col-
onization of other worlds may be the key to
our long-term survival?
Those planning such missions have al-
ready learned at least one important lesson
from human history—a concern for con-
taminating other worlds with earthly mi-
crobes or other organisms that could devas-
tate life abroad or for importing alien biota
back to Earth with equally devastating con-
sequences. This lesson comes directly from
the deep histories of island and continen-
tal cultures and ecosystems that were more
or less isolated from external contacts for
centuries or even millennia. History is re-
plete with both the accidental (invasive)
and purposeful introduction of non-native
plants, animals, insects, and microbes that
have destroyed or severely disrupted island
ecologies, caused the extirpation or extinc-
tion of countless endemic species, and cre-
287
 Scott M. Fitzpatrick and Jon M. Erlandson
ated innumerable problems with managing
landscapes and the biota found within (e.g.,
Grayson 2001; Hofman and Rick 2017; Red-
man 1999; Rick and Erlandson 2008). While
the inadvertent or purposeful transfer of
extraterrestrial life to Earth will likely be
a major cause of worry in the future, the
inverse may not be as distressing. But as
the colonization of islands here on Earth
have shown, humans are not always aware
or concerned about the effects of their en-
counters, and this has led to some unfortu-
nate outcomes in places we have chosen to
settle.
Another lesson that might be learned
from the ancient colonization of islands
and archipelagos has to do with the op-
timal size and genetic diversity of viable
colonization populations on other worlds.
There are numerous cases in the archaeo-
logical records of islands of abandonment of
island colonies—from the Mystery Islands
of Southern Polynesia (Anderson 2001), to
the Norse colonies in Greenland, and sev-
eral islands located off the coast of Aus-
tralia (see Bowdler 2015; Flood 2000; Veth
et al. 2017). Some of these cases may be at-
tributed to environmental limitations or de-
terioration, but small and isolated human
populations with limited genetic diversity
may also have played a role in some cases
of failed colonization. Rapid advances in
genomics suggest that we will be able to es-
timate the size and genetic variation of is-
land colonizing populations much more ac-
curately in years to come.
Recent genomic research also suggests
another potential lesson for manned space
colonization mission planners: choosing a
high proportion of astronauts from among
people with a dopamine receptor gene
(DRD4 R7) linked to risk-taking. Chen et al.
(1999) found high frequencies of this and
related gene variants among human pop-
ulations that had undertaken long-distance
dispersals, including Native Americans (es-
pecially from South America), Austrone-
sians, and the Norse. Studies in mice have
also shown links between dopamine lev-
els and enhanced or inhibited exploratory
behavior. One can imagine that risk-taking
and exploratory behaviors in humans might
sometimes be detrimental to passing on
288 VOLUME 13 • ISSUE 2 • 2018
one’s genes, but among those willing to em-
bark on risky and exploratory voyages to
distant islands and archipelagos, successful
colonists might have seen strong positive se-
lection (and founder effects) for such genes,
fueling further exploration. Additional re-
search into such patterns among indige-
nous island populations may provide fur-
ther evidence of such phenomena and a
stronger case for genomic screening of po-
tential space colonists.
ACCELERATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL
INNOVATIONS
As many archaeologists have noted, the
course of human evolution and history is
marked by an acceleration of technological
change that continues to this day. From the
Oldowan and Acheulean traditions, which
each span roughly a million years, to the
Mousterian tradition which lasted several
hundred thousand years, there is only lim-
ited evidence for technological change (see
Erlandson and Braje 2013). With the appear-
ance of Homo sapiens, however, technolo-
gies change much more rapidly with nearly
continuous acceleration from the Middle
Stone Age to the Mesolithic and the Ne-
olithic to the Atomic and Space ages. Tech-
nological innovations are evident in many
realms of human culture—agriculture, hunt-
ing, fishing, transportation, warfare, etc.—
including the evolution of watercraft and
seafaring, atmospheric flight, space travel,
and exponential increases in the distances
traveled in exploratory voyages (Figure 1).
Interdisciplinary archaeological re-
search on islands around the world provides
a record for the chronology, geography, and
evolution of increasingly long-distance
human voyaging. Linking that record to his-
torical developments, in turn, reveals the
continuous nature of the acceleration of hu-
man technological change and exploratory
voyaging.
As we and others (e.g., Finney 1992;
Smith and Davies 2012) have argued, these
records have relevance not just on Earth,
but are applicable beyond terra firma. As
Finney (1992) emphasized:
 How the Past Informs the Future

400,000
D Apollo 11
moon landing
(1969)

Distance (km) First Spacecraft 8 years

Rutan Voyager
Soviet Vostok I
(1986)
Charles Lindbergh
(1927) (1961)
0
100 ya Time 0 ya

6000
C Charles Lindburgh
(1927)
New World D
Distance (km)

Columbus’ 1st voyage

(1492) Amelia Earhart
Honolulu to Oakland, CA
(1935) 24 years

First Aircraft
Wright Brothers
250 ya (1903)
Time

0
500 ya Time 0 ya

7000
B Madagascar New World
(Columbus)
C
Distance (km)

Hawaii
New Zealand
Marianas
Society Is.
Fiji
N. Caribbean Easter
Samoa
N. Caribbean (Saladoid)
Palau Iceland
Channel Islands (CA) 7.5 kya (Archaic) Tonga Greenland
0
15 kya 100 ya
Time
200 Manus
A
B
Distance (km)

Bismarck Arch.
Ryukyus
Solomons Kozu
Australia Crete
First Watercraft?
Flores Melos
500 kya
0
1 mya Time 500 ya

Watercraft
Aircraft
Spacecraft

Figure 1. Selected voyages and the Euclidean distances involved through human history (in years
before AD 2000 to accommodate twentieth-century events) showing the expansion and
acceleration of voyaging capabilities in human history (see Table 1). As can be seen in
A and B, the distances slowly increase through time between 1 million years ago and
10,000 years ago, then accelerate quickly as navigational (wayfinding) techniques and
watercraft technologies improve. By 800 to 1,000 years ago, the most remote areas of
the Pacific (Hawai‘i, Rapa Nui, New Zealand) were settled by Polynesians. In AD 1492,
Columbus reached the New World, making this and the colonization of Madagascar
∼2000 BP, the longest voyages known without a stopover at around 6000 km (Magellan’s
voyage across the Pacific in 1520–1521 was 15,000 km, but passed through part of the
Tuamotus en route). In C, just 24 years elapse between the first airplane flight (∼36 m or.
036 km) by the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh’s historic non-stop Atlantic flight
(5800 km), and in 1986 (D), Dick Rutan and Jeana Yaeger co-piloted the Rutan Model

JOURNAL OF ISLAND & COASTAL ARCHAEOLOGY 289

 Scott M. Fitzpatrick and Jon M. Erlandson

…the global consequences of this
development [seafaring] … led di-
rectly to the bringing together of
the many scattered branches of
humanity into one global eco-
nomic system, in effect completing
the first, terrestrial, phase of hu-
man expansion, and setting the
stage for the second phase of ex-
pansion into space. (p. 109)
The Polynesian discovery and set-
tlement of the far-flung islands
of the mid-Pacific provides such
a case, for the adventure of ex-
ploring the unknown to establish
colonies on worlds never before
occupied or even visited makes
this oceanic migration relevant to
the one about to unfold in space.
Furthermore, the development of
new technology was as crucial to
expansion into the Pacific as it
will be for settling space. (p. 111)
In retrospect, it is astonishing to think
that the first island known to be colonized
by hominins was Flores, which occurred as
much as one million years ago (e.g., Corvi-
nus 2004; Morwood et al. 1998), probably
by Homo erectus. Because Flores was never
connected to Sunda, crossings of roughly
10–15 km of open-ocean signify the use
of watercraft, however simple (e.g., bam-
boo rafts; see Bednarik 2003) (Figure 1a).
Claims for a Lower or Middle Paleolithic oc-
cupation of Crete have also been advanced
(see Cherry and Leppard 2018; also Howitt-
Marshall and Runnells 2016; Runnells 2014;
Runnells et al. 2014), but these claims re-
main controversial and vigorously debated
(see Cherry and Leppard 2018; Leppard and
Runnels 2017).
With the appearance of anatomically
modern humans, evidence for hominin
coastal dispersals, seafaring, and island col-
onization expands tremendously and ac-
celerates through time (Erlandson 2017).
Sometime after ∼70,000 years ago, humans
moved through the islands of Wallacea,
eventually colonizing Australia via multi-
ple voyages across as much as ∼90 km of
ocean (Clarkson et al. 2017; Kealy et al.
2017; Norman et al. 2018). Between 35,000
and 10,000 years ago there was a dramatic
increase in the number of voyages and
the distances involved, particularly around
the circum–New Guinea Archipelago where
Manus (Admiralty Islands) and other islands
in the Bismarcks and Solomons (O’Connell
and Allen 2007) were colonized over dis-
tances between 50 and 200 km. Several is-
lands in Japan, including the Ryukyus and
Kozu were reached between ∼35,000 and
20,000 years ago across distances of ∼50 to
100 km, respectively (Kaifu et al. 2015). By
at least 13,000 and 10,000 years ago, Cali-
fornia’s Channel Islands and several islands
in the Mediterranean, including Melos and
Crete, were reached as evidenced by the ac-
quisition of obsidian in the former and a pre-
Neolithic phase on the latter (Cherry and
Leopard 2018; Douka et al. 2017; Erlandson
et al. 2011).

Figure 1. 76 Voyager to the first non-stop flight around the world, covering a certified 40,212 km.
Only 58 years after Lindbergh was the first manned spaceflight (D) by Yuri Gagarin in
the Soviet Vostok I, which orbited the Earth at maximum height of 327 km. Eight years
later on July 20, 1969, the first American Apollo 11 landed on the moon and traveled
385,000 km. Not shown here is the 1997 unmanned Sojourner space probe that landed
on Mars after voyaging more than 54.6 million km or the Voyager 1 spacecraft launched
in 1977 that is now nearly 19 billion km from earth. Given that some radiocarbon
dates and chronologies for the colonization of various islands are debated and that the
specific origin points for colonizers may be unknown, we have provided here generally
accepted dates and distances, which for the purpose of this model is suitable for drawing
comparisons between different regions and technologies.

290 VOLUME 13 • ISSUE 2 • 2018


In the middle Holocene, the first islands
in the Caribbean were settled when Archaic
groups reached Trinidad, Cuba, Hispaniola,
Puerto Rico, and several smaller islands in
the northern Antilles between 7,000 and
5,000 years ago, followed by another major
population dispersal (known as Saladoid)
that colonized much of the Lesser Antilles
and Puerto Rico ∼2500 cal BP (Fitzpatrick
2015; Keegan and Hofman 2017). Between
∼3,000 and 1,000 years ago, there was an
explosion of seafaring activity in the Indo-
Pacific as Austronesian-speaking groups be-
gan the first forays into Remote Oceania,
with the Mariana and Palau archipelagoes in
western Micronesia settled between about
3,300 and 3,000 years ago that covered
distances between ∼800 km and possibly
2000 km (Figure 1b) (Carson 2008, 2013;
Clark 2005; Fitzpatrick and Callaghan 2013;
Fitzpatrick and Jew 2018; Petchey et al.
2017; Rieth and Athens 2018). Essentially
contemporaneous was the Lapita expan-
sion through island Melanesia to West Poly-
nesia in which Vanuatu, New Caledonia,
Fiji, Tonga, Sāmoa, and many other inter-
vening islands were colonized for the first
time between ∼3,200 and 2,800 years ago
(Burley et al. 2015; Denham et al. 2012;
Nunn and Petchey 2013; Petchey et al.
2014; Sheppard et al. 2015) with voyages
between about 350 and 800 km. Around
2,000 years ago or slightly earlier, Madagas-
car was settled by Austronesian speakers,
probably originating somewhere along the
western periphery of Indonesia (Fitzpatrick
and Callaghan 2008). If these voyages were
direct, they would have entailed crossing an
astonishing 6000 km of open ocean (Fitz-
patrick and Callaghan 2008; Soares et al.
2011).
After a ‘long pause’ of roughly two
millennia, East Polynesia was rapidly set-
tled over what appears to be only a few
centuries as the nodes of the Polynesian
triangle—Hawai‘i, New Zealand, and Rapa
Nui—and many of the islands in between
were reached for the first time between
∼1,200 and 800 years ago (see Kirch
2017:184–212; Wilmshurst et al. 2011). The
extended temporal gap may have been re-
lated to a combination of increased El Niño
activity during the late Holocene and de-
JOURNAL OF ISLAND & COASTAL ARCHAEOLOGY
How the Past Informs the Future
velopment of the double-hulled canoe that
allowed Polynesians to carry more people,
provisions, and domesticated plants and ani-
mals farther and faster than ever before (An-
derson et al. 2006; Goodwin et al. 2014;
Montenegro et al. 2014, 2016), reaching
distances ranging from 2400 to 4100 km
(Figure 1b; Table 1). Around the same time,
the Norse colonized Iceland (670–1400 km)
and from there, Greenland another 300 km
away between AD 870 and 1000. Five cen-
turies later in AD 1492, Columbus reached
the New World after traveling more than
6000 km across the Atlantic from the
Canary Islands to the Caribbean.
While watercraft have been (and con-
tinue to be) an essential mode of trans-
portation, a major technological revolution
took place only a little more than four
centuries later when the Wright Brothers
took their first experimental flight at Kitty
Hawk, North Carolina (Figure 1c). Twenty-
four years later in 1927, Charles Lindbergh
was the first person to fly across the At-
lantic between New York and Paris, a dis-
tance of 5,800 km. Eight years after that his-
toric flight in 1935, Amelia Earhart was the
first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the
U.S. mainland, covering 3,900 km. Amaz-
ingly, it took only 58 years from the first air-
plane flight for humans to reach outer space
when Yuri Gagarin piloted the Soviet Vos-
tok 1 in orbit reaching a height of 327 km.
Eight years later the U.S. sent Apollo 1 to
the moon 385,000 km away where humans
first walked on the moon (Figure 1d).
What these cases clearly illustrate is
that if technological advances continue at
the current pace and sufficient investments
are made in space exploration, there will
be a time in the relatively near future
when humans will colonize and possibly
terraform other planets. Mars will likely
host the first human space colony—and
may or may not impact extraterrestrial life
given our current understanding of that
planet’s environment—but there will in-
evitably be others as well. The number of
‘Goldilocks’ planets—those that are roughly
the same size as Earth and reside within a
star’s habitable zone—that have been iden-
tified by scientists has grown significantly in
recent years (Tasker 2017). Dozens of can-
291
292
Table 1. The distances and years (pre-AD 2000) in which the discovery or rediscovery of different environments took place
(see Figure 1).

Distance Origin (established

Island/Landmass Years BP Involved archaeologically or nearest
Vessel Type Arrival Point (pre-AD 2000) (km) potential landmass)

Watercraft Flores ∼1,000,000 15 Sunda

Watercraft Australia 68,000–55,000 90 Sunda
Watercraft Bismarck Archipelago 35,000 140 Sunda
Watercraft Solomon Islands 34,000 50 Bismarck Archipelago
Watercraft Ryukyu Islands 35,000 100 Asia
Watercraft Kozushima (Japan) 30–20,000 50 Japan mainland
Watercraft Melos (Greece) 13,000 24 Greece mainland
Watercraft Channel Islands (CA) 13,000 6–8 California mainland
Watercraft Admirality Islands 12,000 200 New Guinea?
(Manus)

VOLUME 13 • ISSUE 2 • 2018

Watercraft Crete 10,000 40 Rhodes, Karpathos/Kythera,
Antikythera
Watercraft Fiji 3000 800 Vanuatu
Watercraft Samoa 3000 750 Fiji
Watercraft Tonga 3000 350 Fiji
Watercraft Palau 3000 800 Philippines/Moluccas?
Watercraft Marianas 3200 1,800–2,000 Philippines/Moluccas?
Watercraft Northern Caribbean 2500 800 South American mainland
Islands
 Watercraft Madagascar 2000 6,000 Indonesia
Watercraft Iceland 1080 1,000 Norway
Watercraft Society Islands 1000 2,400 Samoa
Watercraft Hawaii 1000 4,100 Society Islands
Watercraft Easter Island 800 2,600 Mangareva?
Watercraft New Zealand 700 3,000 Southern East Polynesia
Watercraft Greenland 965 320 Iceland
Watercraft New World 458 6,000 Canary Islands
Aircraft — 97 0.0061 Kitty Hawk, NC
Aircraft (Spirit of St. Louis) Paris, France 73 5,800 Long Island, NY
Aircraft (Lockheed 5 C Vega) Oakland, CA 65 3,900 Oakland, CA
Aircraft (Rutan Voyager) Mojave Desert, CA 24 40,212 Mojave Desert, CA
Spacecraft (Soviet Vostok 1) Outer Space 39 327 Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakhstan)

JOURNAL OF ISLAND & COASTAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Spacecraft (Apollo 11) Moon 31 385,000 Kennedy Space Center (Florida)
Spacecraft (Sojourner probe) Mars 3 54,600,000 Earth

293
 Scott M. Fitzpatrick and Jon M. Erlandson
didates have already been found within our
galaxy and there are potentially millions or
even billions that might be found that fulfill
the necessary criteria for human habitation
based on the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog
(HEC) and data from the NASA Exoplanet
Archive (Akeson et al. 2013).
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
For decades, earth-bound archaeologists,
biologists, geologists, and other scientists
have studied islands as discrete entities be-
cause they serve as ideal model systems for
examining the interplay between humans,
their technologies, and the environment.
For reasons that have been explored in this
special issue (Anderson 2018; Cherry and
Leppard 2018; DiNapoli et al. 2018; Gio-
vas 2018; Harris and Weisler 2018; Pilaar
Birch 2018; Ramis 2018) and elsewhere (see
Braje et al. 2014; Erlandson and Fitzpatrick
2006; Fitzpatrick et al. 2015; Rick and
Erlandson 2008; Rick et al. 2013), islands
have qualities that are highly amenable
to these types of studies. As papers here
demonstrate, there are many environmental
and social reasons why islands may (or may
not) have been colonized in the past (An-
derson 2018) and why humans adapted to
insular landscapes to varying degrees and in
different ways through space and time (Di-
Napoli et al. 2018). In the Mediterranean,
issues of environmental productivity and at-
tractiveness greatly influenced subsistence
strategies (Cherry and Leppard 2018; Ramis
2018) and various islands differed from one
another as well as from nearby mainland ar-
eas (Pilaar Birch 2018). In the Caribbean,
changes in marine resource use may have
been climatically driven (Giovas 2018). And
in the Marshall Islands and elsewhere, ar-
chaeologists studying human harvesting of
marine resources (in this case, mollusks),
must consider the analysis of large assem-
blages and the potential for climatic shifts
to affect the availability of various species,
lest we misinterpret them for evidence for
overharvesting (Harris and Weisler 2018).
In addition, as we have discussed in
this paper, it is particularly interesting to ex-
294 VOLUME 13 • ISSUE 2 • 2018
amine the pathways humans took to settle
the Indo-Pacific (see Bednarik 2003; Finney
1992; Finney and Jones 1992; Smith and
Davies 2012:179–202), for they are ideal
analogues to show how these experiences
have shaped our world. But there are many
other cases of seafaring and ideologically
driven voyaging across the world’s seas and
oceans that are equally useful and appli-
cable to our understanding of the human
condition and how watercraft technologies
and wayfinding techniques have evolved
over tens or even hundreds of thousands
of years. Regardless, all of these histori-
cal cases, when connected to more mod-
ern events where air and space travel have
become commonplace and exponentially
more sophisticated, they demonstrate what
is probably an inevitable scenario—that of
human colonization of space. Whenever hu-
mans colonize space—by necessity, curios-
ity, economic, or other reasons—there are
important issues to consider that islands as
model systems can help address.
What scholars have generally ignored
when using ancient seafaring and the pre-
historic settlement of islands as analogues
for human exploration beyond Earth are the
ways in which humans would affect novel
extraterrestrial environments and how we
might respond to those actions based on
past collective experiences. If we conceive
of Earth as an island, and that one of the
primary motivators (or necessary reasons)
to leave our planet is the result of human
agency (e.g., overpopulation, pollution, cli-
mate change, sociopolitical instability, war,
etc.), then we must be cognizant of not re-
peating the problems that caused our de-
parture in the first place. The Norse set-
tlers of Iceland, fleeing civil wars created
by rival kings, for instance, intentionally cre-
ated a monarch-less parliamentary society
on a remote island in the North Atlantic
(Byock 2001). As archaeologists working
on islands around the world have shown,
they are microcosms of how humans can
create new societies and affect pristine
ecologies, whether destructive or sustain-
able. These are valuable lessons for a hu-
man future that may arrive sooner than we
think.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank Robert DiNapoli and Thomas
Leppard for inviting us to contribute to
their special issue and providing useful
comments. Thanks also go to co-editor
Todd Braje for handling the external re-
view and Torben Rick and Victor Thomp-
son who gave constructive comments that
helped us improve on an earlier draft of
the paper.
REFERENCES
Addison, D. J. 2008. The changing role of ir-
rigated Colocasia esculenta (taro) on Nuku
Hiva, Marquesas Islands: From an essential el-
ement of colonization to an important risk-
reduction strategy. Asian Perspectives 47:
139–155.
Akeson, R. L., X. Chen, D. Ciardi, M. Crane,
J. Good, M. Harbut, E. Jackson, et al. 2013. The
NASA exoplanet archive: Data and tools for ex-
oplanet research. Publications of the Astro-
nomical Society of the Pacific 125(930):989–
999.
Anderson, A. 2001. No meat on that beauti-
ful shore: The prehistoric abandonment of
subtropical Polynesian islands. International
Journal of Osteoarchaeology 11:14–23.
Anderson, A. 2018. Ecological contingency ac-
counts for earliest seagoing in the Western Pa-
cific Ocean. Journal of Island and Coastal Ar-
chaeology 13(2):224–234.
Anderson, A., J. Chappell, M. Gagan, and R.
Grove. 2006. Prehistoric maritime migration
in the Pacific islands: An hypothesis of ENSO
forcing. The Holocene 16(1):1–6.
Bednarik, R. G. 2003. Seafaring in the Pleis-
tocene. Cambridge Archaeological Journal
13(1):41–6.
Boivin, N., M. A. Zeder, D. Fuller, A. Crowther,
G. Larson, J. M. Erlandson, T. Denham, and
M. Petraglia. 2016. Ecological consequences
of human niche construction: Examining
long-term anthropogenic shaping of global
species distributions. Proceedings of the Na-
tional Academy of Sciences USA 113(23):
6388–6396.
Bowdler, S. 2015. The Bass Strait Islands revis-
ited. Quaternary International 385:206–218.
Braje, T. J., and J. M. Erlandson. 2013. Human
acceleration of animal and plant extinctions:
A Late Pleistocene, Holocene, and Anthro-
pocene continuum. Anthropocene 4:14–23.
JOURNAL OF ISLAND & COASTAL ARCHAEOLOGY
How the Past Informs the Future
Braje, T. J., J. M. Erlandson, C. M. Aikens,
T. Beach, S.M. Fitzpatrick, S. Gonzalez, D. J.
Kennett, et al. 2014. An Anthropocene with-
out archaeology—should we care? SAA Ar-
chaeological Record 14(1):26–29.
Braje, T. J., T. Leppard, S. Fitzpatrick, and J. M.
Erlandson. 2018. Archaeology, historical ecol-
ogy, and the construction of anthropogenic
island ecosystems. Environmental Conserva-
tion 44(3):286–297.
Burley, D., K. Edinborough, M. Weisler, and
J. X. Zhao. 2015. Bayesian modeling and
chronological precision for Polynesian settle-
ment of Tonga. PLOS ONE 10(3):p.e0120795.
Burney, D. A. 1997. Tropical islands as pale-
oecological laboratories: Gauging the conse-
quences of human arrival. Human Ecology
25(3):437–457.
Byock, J. L. 2001. Viking Age Iceland. London:
Penguin Books.
Callaghan, R., and S. M. Fitzpatrick. 2007. On the
relative isolation of a Micronesian archipelago
during the Historic Period: The Palau Case-
Study. International Journal of Nautical Ar-
chaeology 36(2):353–364.
Carson, M. T. 2008. Refining earliest settlement
in Remote Oceania: Renewed archaeological
investigation at Unai Bapot, Saipan. Journal
of Island and Coastal Archaeology 3(1):
115–139.
Carson, M. T. 2013. First Settlement of Re-
mote Oceania: Earliest Sites in the Mariana
Islands (Vol. 1). New York: Springer Science
& Business Media.
Chen, C., M. Burton, E. Greenberger, and J. Dmi-
tieva. 1999. Population migration and the vari-
ation of dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) allele
frequencies around the globe. Evolution and
Human Behavior 20:309–324.
Cherry, J. F., and T. P. Leppard. 2018. Patterning
and its causation in the pre-Neolithic coloniza-
tion of the Mediterranean islands (Late Pleis-
tocene to Early Holocene). Journal of Island
and Coastal Archaeology 13(2):191–205.
Clark, G. R. 2005. A 3000-year culture sequence
from Palau, western Micronesia. Asian Per-
spectives 44(2):349–380.
Clarkson, C., Z. Jacobs, B. Marwick, R. Fullagar,
L. Wallis, M. Smith, R. G. Roberts, et al. 2017.
Human occupation of northern Australia by
65,000 years ago. Nature 547(7663):306–310.
Corvinus, G. 2004. Homo erectus in East and
Southeast Asia, and the questions of the age of
the species and its association with stone ar-
tifacts, with special attention to handaxe-like
tools. Quaternary International 117(1):141–
151.
295
 Scott M. Fitzpatrick and Jon M. Erlandson
Crosby, A. W. 2003. The Columbian Exchange:
Biological and Cultural Consequences of
1492 (Vol. 2). Westport, CT: Greenwood Pub-
lishing Group.
Crutzen, P. J., and W. Steffen. 2003. How long
have we been in the Anthropocene era? Cli-
matic Change 61:251–257.
Denham, T., C. B. Ramsey, and J. Specht. 2012.
Dating the appearance of Lapita pottery in
the Bismarck Archipelago and its dispersal
to Remote Oceania. Archaeology in Oceania
47(1):39–46.
Dillehay, T. D., C. Ocampo, J. Saavedra, A. O.
Sawakuchi, R. M. Vega, M. Pino, M. B. Collins,
et al. 2015. New archaeological evidence for
an early human presence at Monte Verde,
Chile. PLOS ONE 10(11):p.e0141923.
DiNapoli, R. J., A. E. Morrison, C. P. Lipo, T.
L. Hunt, and B. G. Lane. 2018. East Polyne-
sian islands as models of cultural divergence:
The case of Rapa Nui and Rapa Iti. Journal
of Island and Coastal Archaeology 13(2):
206–223.
Douka, K., N. Efstratiou, M. M. Hald Henriksen,
and A. Karetsou. 2017. Dating Knossos and the
arrival of the earliest Neolithic in the southern
Aegean. Antiquity 91(356):304–321.
Erlandson, J. M. 2017. Coastlines, marine ecol-
ogy and maritime dispersals in human his-
tory. In Human Dispersal and Species Move-
ment: From Prehistory to Present (N. Boivin,
R. Crassard, and M. Petraglia, eds.):147–163.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Erlandson, J. M., and T. J. Braje. 2013. Archeology
and the Anthropocene. Anthropocene 4:1–7.
Erlandson, J. M. and S. M. Fitzpatrick. 2006.
Oceans, islands, and coasts: Current perspec-
tives on the role of the sea in human prehis-
tory. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeol-
ogy 1(1):5–32.
Erlandson, J. M., M. H. Graham, B. J. Bourque, D.
Corbett, J. A. Estes, and R. S. Steneck. 2007.
The kelp highway hypothesis: Marine ecol-
ogy, the coastal migration theory, and the peo-
pling of the Americas. Journal of Island and
Coastal Archaeology 2(2):161–174.
Erlandson, J. M., T. C. Rick, T. J. Braje, M. Casper-
son, B. Culleton, B. Fulfrost, T. Garcia, et al.
2011. Paleoindian seafaring, maritime tech-
nologies, and coastal foraging on California’s
Channel Islands. Science 441:1181–1185.
Fagents, S. A., T. K. Gregg, R. M. Lopes
(eds.). 2013. Modeling Volcanic Processes:
The Physics and Mathematics of Volcanism.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Finney, B. R. 1977. Voyaging canoes and
the settlement of Polynesia. Science
196(4296):1277–1285.
296 VOLUME 13 • ISSUE 2 • 2018
Finney, B. R. 1992. From Sea to Space (The
Macmillan Brown Lectures 1989). Palmerston
North: Massey University.
Finney, B. R., E. M. Jones (eds.). 1992. Interstel-
lar Migration and the Human Experience.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Fitzhugh, B., and T. L. Hunt. 1997. Introduc-
tion: Islands as laboratories: Archaeological re-
search in comparative perspective. Human
Ecology 25(3):379–383.
Fitzpatrick, S. M. 2015. The Pre-Columbian
Caribbean: Colonization, population disper-
sal, and island adaptations. PaleoAmerica
1(4):305–331.
Fitzpatrick, S. M., and A. Anderson. 2008. Is-
lands of isolation: Archaeology and the power
of aquatic perimeters. Journal of Island and
Coastal Archaeology 3(1):4–16.
Fitzpatrick, S. M., and R. T. Callaghan. 2008. Sea-
faring simulations and the origin of prehis-
toric settlers to Madagascar. In Islands of In-
quiry: Papers in Honour of Atholl Anderson
(G. Clark and S. O’Connor, eds.):55–66. Terra
Australis 29. Canberra: Australian National Uni-
versity Press.
Fitzpatrick, S. M., and R. T. Callaghan. 2013.
Estimating trajectories of colonisation to the
Mariana Islands, western Pacific. Antiquity
87(337):840–853.
Fitzpatrick, S. M., and N. Jew. 2018. Radiocar-
bon dating and Bayesian modeling of one of
Remote Oceania’s oldest cemeteries at Ch-
elechol ra Orrak, Palau. Antiquity 92(361):
149–164.
Fitzpatrick, S. M., and W. F. Keegan. 2007. Hu-
man impacts and adaptations in the Caribbean
Islands: An historical ecology approach. Earth
and Environmental Science Transactions of
the Royal Society of Edinburgh 98(1):29–45.
Fitzpatrick, S. M., T. C. Rick, and J. M. Erland-
son. 2015. Recent progress, trends, and de-
velopments in island and coastal archaeology.
Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology
10(1):3–27.
Flood, J. 2000. Archaeology of the Dreamtime.
Sydney: Angus & Robertson.
Gilbert, M. T. P., D. L. Jenkins, A. Götherstrom,
N. Naveran, J. J. Sanchez, M. Hofreiter, P. F.
Thomsen, et al. 2008. DNA from pre-Clovis hu-
man coprolites in Oregon, North America. Sci-
ence 320(5877):786–789.
Giovas, C. M. 2018. Pre-Columbian Amerindian
lifeways at the Sabazan site, Carriacou, West
Indies. Journal of Island and Coastal Archae-
ology 13(2):161–190.
Goodwin, I. D., S. A. Browning, and A. J. An-
derson. 2014. Climate windows for Polynesian
voyaging to New Zealand and Easter Island.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci-
ences, USA 111:14716–14721.
Grayson, D. K. 2001. The archaeological record
of human impacts on animal populations.
Journal of World Prehistory 15(1):1–68.
Harris, M., and M. Weisler. 2018. Prehistoric hu-
man impacts to marine mollusks and inter-
tidal ecosystems in the Pacific Islands. Jour-
nal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 13(2):
235–255.
Hawking, S. 2010. Interview with Andrew Der-
mont on the website ‘Big Think’ (August 6,
2010).
Hofman, C. A., and T. C. Rick. 2017. Ancient bio-
logical invasions and island ecosystems: Track-
ing translocations of wild plants and animals.
Journal of Archaeological Research. 1–51.
doi.org/10.1007/s10814-017-9105-3.
Howitt-Marshall, D., and C. Runnels. 2016. Mid-
dle Pleistocene sea-crossings in the eastern
Mediterranean? Journal of Anthropological
Archaeology 42:140–153.
Hunt, T. L., and C. P. Lipo. 2006. Late colo-
nization of Easter Island. Science 311(5767):
1603–1606.
Hunt, T. L., and C. P. Lipo. 2013. The human
transformation of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Pa-
cific Ocean). In Biodiversity and Societies in
the Pacific Islands (S. Larrue, ed.):167–184.
Marseille: Presses Universitaires de Provence.
Irwin, G. 1994. The Prehistoric Exploration and
Colonisation of the Pacific. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Irwin, G. 2008. Pacific seascapes, canoe perfor-
mance, and a review of Lapita voyaging with
regard to theories of migration. Asian Perspec-
tives 47(1):12–27.
Kaifu, Y., M. Fujita, M. Yoneda, and S. Yamasaki.
2015. Pleistocene seafaring and colonization
of the Ryukyu Islands, Southwestern Japan. In
Emergence and Diversity of Modern Human
Behavior in Paleolithic Asia (Y. Kaifu, M.
Izuho, T. Goebel, H. Sato, A. Ono, eds.):345–
361. College Station: Texas A&M University
Press.
Kealy, S., J. Louys, and S. O’Connor. 2017. Re-
constructing palaeogeography and inter-island
visibility in the Wallacean archipelago dur-
ing the likely period of Sahul colonization,
65–45 000 years ago. Archaeological Prospec-
tion 24(3):259–272.
Keegan, W. F., and C. L. Hofman. 2017. The
Caribbean before Columbus. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Kirch, P. V. 1980. Polynesian prehistory: Cul-
tural adaptation in island ecosystems: Oceanic
islands serve as archaeological laboratories
JOURNAL OF ISLAND & COASTAL ARCHAEOLOGY
How the Past Informs the Future
for studying the complex dialectic between
human populations and their environments.
American Scientist 68(1):39–48.
Kirch, P. V. 1997. Microcosmic histories: Island
perspectives on” global” change. American
Anthropologist 99(1):30–42.
Kirch, P. V. 2007. Hawaii as a model system for
human ecodynamics. American Anthropolo-
gist 109(1):8–26.
Kirch, P. V. 2017. On the road of the winds: An
archaeological history of the Pacific Islands
before European contact. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Leppard, T. P. 2017. The biophysical effects of
Neolithic island colonization: General dynam-
ics and sociocultural implications. Human
Ecology 45:555–568.
Leppard, T. P., and C. Runnels. 2017. Maritime
hominin dispersals in the Pleistocene: Advanc-
ing the debate. Antiquity 91(356):510–519.
Lewis, D. 1994. We, the Navigators: The Ancient
Art of Landfinding in the Pacific. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press.
Lopes, R. M., and T. K. Gregg. 2004. Volcanic
Worlds: Exploring the Solar System’s Volca-
noes. Springer Science & Business Media.
Martín-Torres, F. J., M. P. Zorzano, P. Valentín-
Serrano, A. M. Harri, M. Genzer, O. Kemp-
pinen, E. G. Rivera-Valentin, et al. 2015.
Transient liquid water and water activity at
Gale crater on Mars. Nature Geoscience 8(5):
357–361.
McGovern, T. H. 1990. The archeology of the
Norse North Atlantic. Annual Review of An-
thropology 19(1):331–351.
McGovern, T. H., O. Vésteinsson, A. Friđriksson,
M. Church, I. Lawson, I. A. Simpson, A.
Einarsson, et al. 2007. Landscapes of settle-
ment in northern Iceland: Historical ecology
of human impact and climate fluctuation on
the millennial scale. American Anthropologist
109(1):27–51.
Mead, M. 1928. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psy-
chological Study of Primitive Youth for West-
ern Civilization. New York: William Morrow
& Co.
Montenegro, Á., R. T. Callaghan, and S. M. Fitz-
patrick. 2014. From west to east: Environmen-
tal influences on the rate and pathways of
Polynesian colonization. The Holocene 24(2):
242–256.
Montenegro, Á., R. T. Callaghan, and S. M. Fitz-
patrick. 2016. Using seafaring simulations and
shortest-hop trajectories to model the prehis-
toric colonization of Remote Oceania. Pro-
ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
113(45):12685–12690.
297
 Scott M. Fitzpatrick and Jon M. Erlandson
Morwood, M. J., P. B. O’Sullivan, F. Aziz, and
A. Raza. 1998. Fission-track ages of stone tools
and fossils on the east Indonesian island of Flo-
res. Nature 392(6672):173–176.
Norman, K., J. Inglis, C. Clarkson, J. T. Faith,
J. Shulmeister, and D. Harris. 2018. An early
colonisation pathway into northwest Australia
70-60,000 years ago. Quaternary Science Re-
views 180:229–239.
Nunn, P. D., and F. Petchey. 2013. Bayesian re-
evaluation of Lapita settlement in Fiji: Radio-
carbon analysis of the Lapita occupation at
Bourewa and nearby sites on the Rove Penin-
sula, Viti Levu Island. Journal of Pacific Ar-
chaeology 4(2):21–34.
O’Connell, J., and J. Allen. 2007. Pre-LGM Sahul
(Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea) and the ar-
chaeology of early modern humans. In Re-
thinking the Human Revolution (P. Mellars,
K. Boyle, O. Bar-Yosef, and C. B. Stringer,
eds.):395–410. Cambridge: McDonald Insti-
tute for Archaeological Research.
Petchey, F., G. Clark, O. Winter, P. O’Day, and
M. Litster. 2017. Colonisation of Remote Ocea-
nia: New dates for the Bapot-1 site in the
Mariana Islands. Archaeology in Oceania
52(2):108–126.
Petchey, F., M. Spriggs, S. Bedford, F. Valentin,
and H. Buckley. 2014. Radiocarbon dating
of burials from the Teouma Lapita cemetery,
Efate, Vanuatu. Journal of Archaeological Sci-
ence 50:227–242.
Petraglia, M. D., M. Haslam, D. Q. Fuller,
N. Boivin, and C. Clarkson. 2010. Out of
Africa: New hypotheses and evidence for the
dispersal of Homo sapiens along the Indian
Ocean rim. Annals of Human Biology 37(3):
288–311.
Pilaar Birch, S. E. 2018. From the Aegean to the
Adriatic: Exploring the earliest Neolithic is-
land fauna. Journal of Island and Coastal Ar-
chaeology 13(2):256–268.
Quintana-Murci, L., O. Semino, H. J. Bandelt, G.
Passarino, K. McElreavey, and A. S. Santachiara-
Benerecetti. 1999. Genetic evidence of an
early exit of Homo sapiens sapiens from
Africa through eastern Africa. Nature Genet-
ics 23(4):437–441.
Ramis, D. 2018. Animal exploitation in the early
prehistory of the Balearic Islands. Journal
of Island and Coastal Archaeology 13(2):
269–282.
Redman, C. L. 1999. Human Impact on Ancient
Environments. Tucson: University of Arizona
Press.
Rick, T. C., J. M. Erlandson (eds.). 2008. Hu-
man Impacts on Ancient Marine Ecosystems:
298 VOLUME 13 • ISSUE 2 • 2018
A Global Perspective. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Rick, T. C., P. V. Kirch, J. M. Erlandson, and
S. M. Fitzpatrick. 2013. Archeology, deep his-
tory, and the human transformation of island
ecosystems. Anthropocene 4:33–45.
Rieth, T. M., and J. S. Athens. 2018. Late
Holocene human expansion into Near and
Remote Oceania: A Bayesian model of
the chronologies of the Mariana Islands
and Bismarck Archipelago. Journal of Is-
land and Coastal Archaeology (in press).
doi:10.1080/15564894.2017.1331939.
Ruddiman, W. F. 2003. The anthropogenic green-
house era began thousands of years ago. Cli-
matic Change 61:261–293.
Ruddiman, W. F. 2005. The early anthropogenic
hypothesis a year later. Climatic Change
69:427–434.
Runnels, C. 2014. Early Palaeolithic on the Greek
islands? Journal of Mediterranean Archaeol-
ogy 27(2):211–230.
Runnels, C., C. DiGregorio, K. W. Wegmann,
S. F. Gallen, T. F. Strasser, and E. Panagopoulou.
2014. Lower Palaeolithic artifacts from Plakias,
Crete: Implications for hominin dispersals.
Eurasian Prehistory 11(1-2):129–152.
Sagan, C. 1997. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the
Human Future in Space. New York: Random
House.
Sheppard, P. J., S. Chiu, and R. Walter. 2015.
Re-dating Lapita movement into remote Ocea-
nia. Journal of Pacific Archaeology 6(1):
26–36.
Smith, B. D., and M. A. Zeder. 2013. The onset of
the Anthropocene. Anthropocene 4:8–13.
Smith, C. M. and E. T. Davies. 2012. Emigrat-
ing Beyond Earth: Human Adaptation and
Space Colonization. New York: Springer.
Soares, P., T. Rito, J. Trejaut, M. Mormina,
C. Hill, E. Tinkler-Hundal, M. Braid, et al.
2011. Ancient voyaging and Polynesian ori-
gins. The American Journal of Human Ge-
netics 88(2):239–247.
Steffen, W., P. J. Crutzen, and J. R. McNeill.
2007. The Anthropocene: Are humans now
overwhelming the great forces of nature? AM-
BIO: A Journal of the Human Environment
36:614–621.
Tasker, E. 2017. The Planet Factory: Exoplanets
and the Search for a Second Earth. New York:
Bloomsbury Publishing.
Veth, P., I. Ward, T. Manne, S. Ulm, K. Ditchfield,
J. Dortch, F. Hook, et al. 2017. Early human oc-
cupation of a maritime desert, Barrow Island,
North-West Australia. Quaternary Science Re-
views 168:19–29.

Villanueva, G. L., M. J. Mumma, R. E. No-
vak, H. U. Käufl, P. Hartogh, T. Encrenaz,
A. Tokunaga, A. Khayat, and M. D. Smith.
2015. Strong water isotopic anomalies in
the Martian atmosphere: Probing current
and ancient reservoirs. Science 348(6231):
218–221.
Vitousek, P. M. 2002. Oceanic islands as model
systems for ecological studies. Journal of Bio-
geography 29(5-6):573–582.
Vitousek, P. M. 2004. Nutrient Cycling
and Limitation: Hawai’i as a Model
JOURNAL OF ISLAND & COASTAL ARCHAEOLOGY
View publication stats
How the Past Informs the Future
System. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Wilmshurst, J. M., T. L. Hunt, C. P. Lipo, and
A. J. Anderson. 2011. High-precision radiocar-
bon dating shows recent and rapid initial hu-
man colonization of East Polynesia. Proceed-
ings of the National Academy of Sciences,
USA 108:1815–1820.
Zalasiewicz, J., M. Williams, W. Steffen, and
P. Crutzen. 2010. The new world of the
Anthropocene. Environmental Science and
Technology 44:2228–2231.
299