Late Holocene landscape evolution and land-use expansion in Tutuila, American Samoa
Pearl FB. 2006. Late Holocene landscape evolution and land-use expansion in Tutuila, American Samoa. Asian Perspectives: The Journal of Archaeology for Asia and the Pacific. 45(I):48-68
In order to determine the extent to which changes in the late Holocene geological record correlate with climate and ecological changes over the same period, geoarchaeological explorations were undertaken in A'asu on the remote northern shores of Tutuila Island, American Samoa As the geochronology became known, it was apparent that the sedimentary record had been highly irregular in the late Holocene, particularly after A.D. 1300. Explaining the causes of that dynamism became the focus of research over the next several years. In this article, geoarchaeological data from A'asu are compared with similar data from coastal settings and combined with recent research on the establishment of mountain settlements to show that changrs in climate, settlement patterns, and landscape evoluation converged, beginning in the fourteenth century A.D., a time when social complexity was on the rise in Samoa.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Pearl, Frederic
- Units
- NPSA , PACN
- Keywords
- American Samoa, geoarchaeological, Landscape, Late Holocene