In their accounts of exploration, early European voyagers in the Pacific   frequently described the teeming populations they encountered on island   after island. Yet missionary censuses and later nineteenth-century records   often indicate much smaller populations on Pacific Islands, leading many   scholars to debunk the explorers' figures as romantic exaggerations.   Recently, the debate over the indigenous populations of the Pacific has   intensified, and this book addresses the problem from new perspectives.   Were there major population collapses on Pacific Islands following first   contact with the West? If so, what were the actual population numbers for   islands such as Hawai`i, Tahiti, or New Caledonia? Is it possible to   develop new methods for tracking the long-term histories of island   populations? These and related questions are at the heart of this new book,   which draws together cutting-edge research by archaeologists,   ethnographers, and demographers.Rather than rehash old data and   arguments about the validity of explorers' or missionaries' accounts, the   contributors to this volume offer a series of case studies grounded in new   empirical data derived from original archaeological fieldwork and from   archival historical research. Various methods are advanced for estimating   local and regional population sizes as well as tracing the long-term   trajectories of population change in island societies. These approaches   include the application of precontact household and settlement archaeology   and estimates of agricultural production. Case studies are presented for   the Hawaiian Islands, Mo`orea, the Marquesas, Tonga, Samoa, the Tokelau   Islands, New Caledonia, Aneityum (Vanuatu), and Kosrae. They show the   capacity of island populations to grow rapidly in the environmental   conditions of Remote Oceania and to achieve high population densities. Such   levels were closely associated with social, political, and economic   transformations. Following contact with the West and the introduction of   diseases for which island populations typically had little or no   resistance, populations often collapsed, with major consequences for their   societies.As the contributors demonstrate, the long-term demographic   histories of Pacific Islands are of fundamental importance for   understanding how island societies grew, developed, came into equilibrium   or disequilibrium with their environments, and ultimately responded to the   new challenges of contact with the West. This volume offers a fresh look at   a critical topic in Pacific studies. It will be of interest to scholars in   the fields of anthropology, archaeology, history, ethnic studies,   demography, and sociology.

The Growth and Collapse of Pacific Island Societies: Archaeological and Demographic Perspectives PDF

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