Resumo de On The Road Of The Winds - PATRICK VINTRON KIRCH

On the Road of the Winds is a history of the
Pacific islands that combines a big picture overview with a feel for the dirt
of actual excavations. It is both a historical synthesis and, in so far as is
possible in the space, an archaeological survey. Kirch integrates the
diachronic evidence of archaeology with the synchronic evidence of linguistics,
ethnography, and biology to describe the human settlement of the Pacific and
its history down to European conquest. And along the way he summarizes the
archaeological record, with details from key excavations.

Kirch writes for specialists, but for such a broad range of specialists that
the informed lay reader won''t miss much ? and unwanted detail about excavations
and artifacts is easily glanced over. With an effective selection of halftones,
figures, and maps complementing clear and incisive prose, in elegant and
attractive physical packaging, On the Road of the Winds is an
all-round outstanding volume.

Pacific archaeology has an intriguing history of its own, from voyages of
exploration and missionaries to modern academic research and cultural resource
management. Earlier thinking was bedeviled by now antiquated racial typologies
and a stress on the ethnographic present that in some cases amounted to
outright denial of history and time-depth. The power of archaeology to uncover
depth in Pacific prehistory is now unquestioned, but much remains unknown and
work in Melanesia and New
Guinea is really only beginning.

The Pacific islands are a unique and diverse environment, offering unique
challenges to human settlement. In twenty pages Kirch gives a rapid overview of
the geological origins and development of the different islands, their climate,
their biogeography and ecosystems, and the considerable impacts of indigenous
Pacific peoples on the latter. He also touches on the often neglected
microbiotic world, explaining how the concentration and persistence of
disease-causing microorganisms in Near Oceania had serious consequences for
long-term human history Human settlement of Sahul in the Pleistocene almost
certainly involved repeated, purposeful water crossings of some distance. It is
perhaps no surprise, therefore, that people had crossed the Vitiaz Strait
to the Bismarck and Solomon Islands by 35 000 years
ago; scattered evidence reveals tantalising glimpses of their lives. The early
Holocene saw changes in settlement and foraging patterns: in the New Guinea
Highlands there is evidence for very early agriculture, while the lowlands and
islands saw innovations in arboriculture and shell-working. Malaria may have
played a key role in limiting population growth in the region.

One of the central events of Pacific history is the spread of Austronesian
speaking peoples from Taiwan.
Some groups travelled along the north cost of New
Guinea and interacted, starting around 1500 BC, with the
indigenous occupants of the Bismarcks
to create the Lapita cultural complex. Around 1200 BC this jumped across the
gap between the southeast extremity of the Solomons and the Santa Cruz Islands,
then rapidly expanded, reaching to Fiji,
Tonga, and Samoa
by around 1000 BC. This reconstruction rests on a combination of ethnographic,
linguistic, and biological evidence.

Micronesia was settled from several directions: the Marianas and Palau were
settled by Western Malayo-Polynesian speakers, probably from the Philippines;
the Caroline, Marshall, and Kiribati archipelagoes were settled by speakers of
the Nuclear Melanesian branch of Proto-Oceanic, probably from the Solomons or
Vanuatu; Yap is something of an anomaly, possibly reached directly from the
Bismarcks in the second millennium BC; and then there are Polynesian Outliers
such as Kapingamarangi. Kirch surveys the archaeological record of the region,
covering the Caroline high islands, limestone columns in the Marianas, terraces
on Palau,
the Yapese Empire, and so on.

Culturally and linguistically monophyletic, Polynesia
is a unique opportunity for studying cultural and linguistic change. Historical
linguistics and ethnography provide a fairly clear picture of Polynesian
origins and dispersals, starting with the Ancestral Polynesian region around Tonga and Samoa and then expanding first to the
Society and Marquesas islands and thence to Hawaii,
Easter Island, and New
Zealand. Many of the details are still
debated: the exact sequence and timing of settlements in Eastern Polynesia, the
nature of Polynesian exploration and voyaging, and whether there was a long
pause between the initial Lapita occupation of Western
Polynesia and expansion eastwards. Kirch outlines the
archaeological sequences in Western Polynesia and the earliest settlements in Eastern Polynesia, with details from key excavations.

A second chapter on Polynesia looks at its
subsequent history, at the evolution of chiefdoms. Here Kirch uses a
Traditional/Open/Stratified typology, but only heuristically ? he argues that
there was no standard progression and that the various islands are best seen as
a series of sometimes parallel or convergent, sometimes divergent, historical
trajectories, all ultimately springing from the common basis of Ancestral
Polynesia Culture. He presents case studies from Mangaia, the Marquesas, Rapa Nui , New Zealand,
Tahiti and the Society Islands, and Hawaii,
illustrating the contexts, constraints, and processes behind sociopolitical
transformation.

The final chapter of On the Road of the Winds looks at big
structures and large processes in Oceanic prehistory: correlations between
language, biology, and culture; the role of demographic change and
controversies about pre-colonial populations; the environmental impact of human
settlement; the political economy of changing landscapes; intensification and
economic specialization; and transformations of status and power.

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