Wangka

Author: Edwin Doran, Jr.
Publisher: Texas A & M University Press
ISBN: 9781585440863
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 112

Book Description
Were the Austronesians hapless travelers on fragile craft, drifted at the mercy of the waves to the far-flung islands of the Pacific? Or were they intrepid seafarers whose exploratory voyages covered much of the great ocean on seaworthy canoes capable of being sailed against the wind? This book addresses these questions in one of the most thorough discussions of Austronesian sailing canoes ever attempted. The canoes themselves are described in detail, and similarities and differences in hull configuration, sails, and sailing techniques are noted. A review of earlier writings on the canoes repeats the earlier understanding of their origins: that the earliest canoes were the double-outrigger type and that single-outrigger canoes came later, followed by the double canoes in which the great voyages from Central Polynesia to such extremities as Hawaii and New Zealand were made. Another chapter summarizes the great advances of recent years in anthropological and archaeological studies of the Pacific. At the heart of the book is a thorough examination of canoe seaworthiness. Doran’s conclusions are that Austronesian canoes were amply seaworthy and fully capable of intentional voyages of discovery, and that previous views on the ages of canoe types are just the opposite of the probable sequence. Double canoes seem to be the oldest type; single-outrigger canoes probably were devised somewhat later; and much later, possibly only about 2,500 years ago, double outriggers were developed. Maps showing the distribution of canoe types, sail types, sailing techniques, and the like, illustrate these ideas.

Spirits and Ships

Author: Andrea Acri
Publisher: Flipside Digital Content Company Inc.
ISBN: 9814762768
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Book Description
This volume seeks to foreground a borderless history and geography of South, Southeast, and East Asian littoral zones that would be maritime-focused, and thereby explore the ancient connections and dynamics of interaction that favoured the encounters among the cultures found throughout the region stretching from the Indian Ocean littorals to the Western Pacific, from the early historical period to the present. Transcending the artificial boundaries of macro-regions and nation-states, and trying to bridge the arbitrary divide between (inherently cosmopolitan) high cultures (e.g. Sanskritic, Sinitic, or Islamicate) and local or indigenous cultures, this multidisciplinary volume explores the metaphor of Monsoon Asia as a vast geo-environmental area inhabited by speakers of numerous language phyla, which for millennia has formed an integrated system of littorals where crops, goods, ideas, cosmologies, and ritual practices circulated on the sea-routes governed by the seasonal monsoon winds. The collective body of work presented in the volume describes Monsoon Asia as an ideal theatre for circulatory dynamics of cultural transfer, interaction, acceptance, selection, and avoidance, and argues that, despite the rich ethnic, linguistic and sociocultural diversity, a shared pattern of values, norms, and cultural models is discernible throughout the region.

A Shark Going Inland Is My Chief

Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520303415
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
Tracing the origins of the Hawaiians and other Polynesians back to the shores of the South China Sea, archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch follows their voyages of discovery across the Pacific in this fascinating history of Hawaiian culture from about one thousand years ago. Combining more than four decades of his own research with Native Hawaiian oral traditions and the evidence of archaeology, Kirch puts a human face on the gradual rise to power of the Hawaiian god-kings, who by the late eighteenth century were locked in a series of wars for ultimate control of the entire archipelago. This lively, accessible chronicle works back from Captain James Cook’s encounter with the pristine kingdom in 1778, when the British explorers encountered an island civilization governed by rulers who could not be gazed upon by common people. Interweaving anecdotes from his own widespread travel and extensive archaeological investigations into the broader historical narrative, Kirch shows how the early Polynesian settlers of Hawai'i adapted to this new island landscape and created highly productive agricultural systems.

Austronesian Diaspora and the Ethnogeneses of People in Indonesian Archipelago

Author: Truman Simanjuntak
Publisher: Yayasan Obor Indonesia
ISBN: 9789792624366
Category : Antiquities, Prehistoric
Languages : en
Pages : 462

Book Description

Wangka

Author: Edwin B. Doran
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 120

The Archaeology of Vernacular Watercraft

Author: Amanda M. Evans
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1493935631
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
This volume presents multiple idiographic, archaeological studies of vernacular watercraft from North America and the Caribbean. Rather than attempt to synthesize all vernacular types, this volume focuses on ship construction data recovered through archaeological investigations that has been used to make inferences about culture. This collection of case studies, including many examples from cultural resource management and graduate student theses, presents a thematic exploration of cultural adaptation as expressed through ship construction.

Connecting Continents

Author: Krish Seetah
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821446401
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 486

Book Description
In recent decades, the vast and culturally diverse Indian Ocean region has increasingly attracted the attention of anthropologists, historians, political scientists, sociologists, and other researchers. Largely missing from this growing body of scholarship, however, are significant contributions by archaeologists and consciously interdisciplinary approaches to studying the region’s past and present. Connecting Continents addresses two important issues: how best to promote collaborative research on the Indian Ocean world, and how to shape the research agenda for a region that has only recently begun to attract serious interest from historical archaeologists. The archaeologists, historians, and other scholars who have contributed to this volume tackle important topics such as the nature and dynamics of migration, colonization, and cultural syncretism that are central to understanding the human experience in the Indian Ocean basin. This groundbreaking work also deepens our understanding of topics of increasing scholarly and popular interest, such as the ways in which people construct and understand their heritage and can make use of exciting new technologies like DNA and environmental analysis. Because it adopts such an explicitly comparative approach to the Indian Ocean, Connecting Continents provides a compelling model for multidisciplinary approaches to studying other parts of the globe. Contributors: Richard B. Allen, Edward A. Alpers, Atholl Anderson, Nicole Boivin, Diego Calaon, Aaron Camens, Saša Čaval, Geoffrey Clark, Alison Crowther, Corinne Forest, Simon Haberle, Diana Heise, Mark Horton, Paul Lane, Martin Mhando, and Alistair Patterson.

A History of the Pacific Islands

Author: Deryck Scarr
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136837965
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Book Description
A book about the past and present Pacific Islands, wide-ranging in time and space spanning the centuries from the first settlement of the islands until the present day.

The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific

Author: Geoffrey Irwin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521476515
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
The exploration and colonisation of the Pacific is a remarkable episode of human prehistory. Early sea-going explorers had no prior knowledge of Pacific geography, no documents to record their route, no metal, no instruments for measuring time and none for exploration. Forty years of modern archaeology, experimental voyages in rafts, and computer simulations of voyages have produced an enormous range of literature on this controversial and mysterious subject. This book represents a major advance in knowledge of the settlement of the Pacific by suggesting that exploration was rapid and purposeful, undertaken systematically, and that navigation methods progressively improved. Using an innovative model to establish a detailed theory of navigation, Geoffrey Irwin claims that rather than sailing randomly downwind in search of the unknown, Pacific Islanders expanded settlement by the cautious strategy of exploring upwind, so as to ease their safe return. The author has tested this hypothesis against the chronological data from archaeological investigation, with a computer simulation of demographic and exploration patterns and by sailing throughout the region himself.

Ancient Ocean Crossings

Author: Stephen C. Jett
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817319395
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529

Book Description
Paints a compelling picture of impressive pre-Columbian cultures and Old World civilizations that, contrary to many prevailing notions, were not isolated from one another In Ancient Ocean Crossings: Reconsidering the Case for Contacts with the Pre-Columbian Americas, Stephen Jett encourages readers to reevaluate the common belief that there was no significant interchange between the chiefdoms and civilizations of Eurasia and Africa and peoples who occupied the alleged terra incognita beyond the great oceans. More than a hundred centuries separate the time that Ice Age hunters are conventionally thought to have crossed a land bridge from Asia into North America and the arrival of Columbus in the Bahamas in 1492. Traditional belief has long held that earth’s two hemispheres were essentially cut off from one another as a result of the post-Pleistocene meltwater-fed rising oceans that covered that bridge. The oceans, along with arctic climates and daunting terrestrial distances, formed impermeable barriers to interhemispheric communication. This viewpoint implies that the cultures of the Old World and those of the Americas developed independently. Drawing on abundant and concrete evidence to support his theory for significant pre-Columbian contacts, Jett suggests that many ancient peoples had both the seafaring capabilities and the motives to cross the oceans and, in fact, did so repeatedly and with great impact. His deep and broad work synthesizes information and ideas from archaeology, geography, linguistics, climatology, oceanography, ethnobotany, genetics, medicine, and the history of navigation and seafaring, making an innovative and persuasive multidisciplinary case for a new understanding of human societies and their diffuse but interconnected development.