Various colonial factors led to the Mariana Islands being one of the most economically isolated areas of the Pacific from the late 17th century until the late 18th century. This isolation is reflected in the dearth of artifacts of European and Asian…
The Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy administers the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976 and the National Historic Shipwrecks Program. This Program enables the Department to work with the States, the Northern…
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Japanese Imperial Navy readied their forces to secure the Pacific Theatre through one final blow to the US aircraft carrier fleet. The target of that attack was the US base at Midway Atoll,…
The Fiji Museum Archaeology Department, since 2015, has begun inventorying the different underwater and maritime sites in Fiji. Ratification of the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage and review of the…
The cultural vision and history of Taumako extends far beyond their Duff Islands, the SE Solomons region, or the western Pacific. According to the people of Taumako, their ancestor Lata, was the first person to build and sail a voyaging canoe.…
The story of the Bounty mutiny is one of the great sagas of Pacific history and has inspired a rich literature for more than two centuries. By contrast, our knowledge of the community founded by Fletcher Christian at Pitcairn Island has remained…
In 1819 the French Corvette L’ Uranie anchored off Apra Harbor on Guam where its captain Louis Claude de Freycinet was told of the former presence of stone fish weirs, no longer in use. Archaeological surveys of Apra Harbor tidal flats identified…