Defining Early-Period Marianas Settlement

Abstract

When people first settled in the remote Mariana Islands by 1500 B.C., they made the longest ocean-crossing of their time in human history. No other human beings yet had lived in the distant and small islands of Remote Oceania. In far western Micronesia, this extraordinary event took place earlier and over a longer ocean-crossing distance than previously has been accepted in orthodox views of Asia–Pacific archaeology that focused instead on slightly later-dated events in Island Melanesia and West Polynesia. The hard archaeological evidence of early Marianas settlement is just now gaining clarity in terms of precise and reliable dating, environment and social context, and definition of the artifacts and material culture.