The Mariana Islands
People, History and Archaeology
Edited by: Jolie Liston, Geoffrey Clark
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Description
The Mariana Islands: People, History and Archaeology brings together new research about the history of the Mariana Islands through community perspectives, archaeological investigations, and anthropological and historical studies. The colonisation and growth of societies in the Mariana Islands, and of those elsewhere in Micronesia, are often seen as peripheral compared with those of Melanesia and Polynesia that tend to dominate scholarly and public views of Pacific history. The Marianas were the first remote archipelago to be recorded by Europeans with the arrival of Magellan in 1521, and the islands have a long and complicated history with colonial ‘great powers’, which during World War II involved the establishment of the remote Pacific’s sole concentration camp. Initial colonisation over 3,000 years ago was by migrants from East Asia who were related to, but genetically different from, Lapita groups who extended human occupation as far east as Tonga and Samoa. Later population movements to the Marianas, some involving Papuan people, point to a mobile Pacific that was connected to insular Asia, New Guinea and other parts of Oceania. Migration and local development contributed to the formation of a unique and vibrant CHamoru culture. The volume is dedicated to two pioneer archaeologists, Darlene Moore and Roz Hunter-Anderson, who established modern archaeological practice in the Marianas through projects involving community members and elders in the preservation of cultural heritage sites and the creation of new land use histories.
‘The Mariana Islands: People, History and Archaeology brings archaeology into conversation with CHamoru memory, oral history and cultural practice to reconnect with the lives of i Manaotåomo’na, The People of Before. Through diverse topics and approaches, the book illuminates the complexities of ancestral and recent histories, offering a richer understanding of the Mariana Islands and its people.’
—Kelly Marsh-Taitano, Curator of Archaeological Collections, Guam Cultural Repository
Details
- ISBN (print):
- 9781760467395
- ISBN (online):
- 9781760467401
- Publication date:
- Sep 2026
- Note:
- Terra Australis 59
- Imprint:
- ANU Press
- DOI:
- http://doi.org/10.22459/TA59.2026
- Series:
- Terra Australis
- Disciplines:
- Arts & Humanities: Archaeology, History
- Countries:
- Pacific: Micronesia
PDF Chapters
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- Preliminary pages (PDF, 116 KB)
- List of figures (PDF, 170 KB)
- List of tables (PDF, 101 KB)
- Prologue (PDF, 1.1 MB) – Jolie Liston and Geoffrey Clark
- Community-based archaeology on Guam (PDF, 1.1 MB) – Joe Quinata and Anthony Alvarez doi
- Cultural memory: Guåhan’s Manenggon Concentration Camp, 1944 (PDF, 3.2 MB) – Jolie Liston, Joe Quinata and H. David Tuggle doi
- Reframing population history and origins in Remote Oceania: The Marianas ancient DNA project (PDF, 1.6 MB) – Joanne Eakin doi
- Ancestral sea nomads and Achugao Incised pottery: Archaeological evidence of early occupations in San Roque, Saipan (PDF, 1.4 MB) – Boyd Dixon and Nina Peck doi
- A Latte Period workshop on Rota: Implications for the contents and configuration of Latte villages (PDF, 1.2 MB) – John L. Craib and Theresa Bonhomme doi
- A distinctive ceramic surface treatment at two sites in northern Guam: Evidence of ceramic exchange and redistribution (PDF, 2.1 MB) – David DeFant and Boyd Dixon doi
- People everywhere: Anthropomorphs as the dominant motif in the rock art of Guam (PDF, 5.4 MB) – Andrea Jalandoni, Aja Reyes, Nina Peck, Boyd Dixon, Maria Kottermair and Victor Torres doi
- Indigenous use of a not-so-marginal environment on Guåhan: Latte Period land use at Sabånan Fadang (PDF, 2.5 MB) – Cacilie Craft doi
- Archaeologies of colonialism and everyday life in the Manislan Mariånas (PDF, 1 MB) – Enrique Moral de Eusebio, Verónica Peña Filiu, Matilde Carbajo, Yvonne R. Ramírez Corredor and Sandra Montón-Subías doi
- Digging in the garden: Archaeological investigations of life in nineteenth-century Spanish colonial Hagåtña (PDF, 5.9 MB) – David J. Welch and Judith R. McNeill doi
- The effects of colonisation and smallpox: Health in skeletons from Malesso’, Guåhan, c. 1856 (PDF, 2.5 MB) – Rona Michi Ikehara-Quebral, Michele Toomay Douglas, Michael Pietrusewsky, Sandra Lee Yee and L.J. Moana Lee doi
- Frontier settlements and war: The landscape of Japanese sugarcane cultivation on Tinian and Saipan, Northern Marianas Islands (PDF, 6.3 MB) – H. David Tuggle and Myra J. Tomonari-Tuggle doi
- Darlene Moore and Roz Hunter-Anderson: In their own words (PDF, 2 MB) – Rlene Santos Steffy doi
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