On the road of the winds: an archaeological history of the Pacific islands before European contact.

BELLWOOD, PETER

PATRICK VINTON KIRCH. On the road of the winds: an archaeological history of the Pacific islands before European contact, xxii+426 pages, 177 figures, 13 tables. 2000. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press; 0-520-22347-0 $45 & 28.50 [pounds sterling].

It is always a pleasure to review a book with which one essentially agrees, almost wholeheartedly, especially when it reviews a major field of world archaeology. This is a positive book, straight to the point, no obfuscation; the past is knowable, albeit via multiple plots (p. xix-xx). It covers the prehistory of the Pacific islands, mainly from an archaeological viewpoint but with ample attention to aspects of the natural environment, together with linguistic and biological history. Kirch's perspective, as it should be in the new century, is based on environmental and historical contingency rather than a blunt determinism. After describing some aspects of Oceanic environments he states (p. 43-4):

`None of this is to state that the lifeways or culture of Pacific islanders, any more than that of other peoples, was "determined" by their natural environments. On the contrary, humans everywhere actively modify and shape their world, yet they do so within certain constraints -- and sometimes challenges -- posed by the environments they inhabit.'

This book is a grand synthesis, a successor, as Kirch states, to an original grand synthesis published by me in 1978 (Bellwood 1978). Kirch's book does not cover Southeast Asian prehistory as did mine and he only touches on this region insofar as it reflects on Oceanic origins. But, as he states in his preface, our knowledge base has increased greatly in the past two decades. Even to cover Oceania alone now demands the whole of this major work. Furthermore, it is interesting to note how archaeological research in the past two decades has swung towards Melanesia and Micronesia, away from a traditional centre of gravity in Polynesia. In 1978, I devoted 44 archaeological pages to Melanesia, 15 to Micronesia and 122 to Polynesia (including New Zealand). Kirch now devotes 101 pages (3 chapters) to Melanesia, 42 pages to Micronesia and 95 to Polynesia. Thus, the pace of Polynesian research has declined in real terms, while the other regions have progressed remarkably, especially in terms of the early phases from the initial Pleistocene colonization of Sahul over 35,000 years ago down to the remarkable Lapita dispersal at about 3000 BP.

Contents-wise, this book has a basic geographical and chronological structure, with successive chapters on research history, environments, Pleistocene archaeology of Near Oceania, regional prehistories from Lapita onwards (4 chapters), and finally two highly readable chapters on the Polynesian chiefdoms and an aptly-named `Big structures and large processes in Oceanic prehistory'. In the latter, Kirch gives his opinions on topics as diverse as voyaging history, linguistic and biological correlations with culture, demographic change, subsistence intensification, and the evolution of the political landscape.

As with all books which offer positive ideas about the way things happened, I do have a few minor disagreements. For instance, I favour a younger chronology for the settlement of Eastern Polynesia than does Kirch. He suggests that first settlements beyond Samoa must have predated AD 600, unless we have resort to `an amazing rate of fertility and population increase' Cp. 232). But the archaeological evidence for a pre-600 date is not comforting and I suspect Kirch is here underestimating the human ability to procreate rapidly in pristine disease-free environments. Indeed, on pp. 309-10 it appears that he also might be having second thoughts when he discusses rapid logistic: growth models for population trajectories.

The book also has a few small errors which seem to reflect casual slips and typos rather than serious heresy. Footnote 30 on p. 330 states that the former Department of Prehistory at the Australian National University was closed down in 1997. Staff losses and a name change did occur (it is now called Archaeology and Natural History), but life at ANU goes on and future expansion is expected. There are other minor errors, all too trivial to tarnish an otherwise exemplary piece of work.

Where I agree very strongly with Kirch is in his emphasis on the value of controlled comparison -- he actually ends his text on this theme -- and by extension on the importance of what he terms (p. 215)

`... a "triangulation" method, in which independent lines of evidence from historical linguistics, comparative ethnology, archaeology, and biological anthropology are applied to the reconstruction of an ancestral stage in the history of a group of related cultures' [in this case, Ancestral Polynesian Culture, which for Kirch, as for me, had a one-time real-world existence].

This approach is one which allows a holistic reconstruction of Pacific prehistory, in which real people occupy real cultural space, both differentiating and interacting through time. For me this is immensely more satisfying, at least for recent millennia, than the usual archaeological focus on itself as the sole means of understanding. There is a powerful agenda here, one which archaeologists cannot ignore if the discipline is to grow and maintain public interest in the 21st century. Kirch has done Pacific archaeology proud with this book.

Reference

BELLWOOD, P. 1978. Man's conquest of the Pacific. Auckland: Collins.

PETER BELLWOOD
Department of Archaeology & Anthropology
Australian National University
[email protected]