Sāmoan artefact provenance reveals limited artefact transfer within and beyond the archipelago

Abstract

The distribution of artefacts relative to the geological provenance of their raw materials is often investigated to identify interaction or contacts between populations in Oceania. In Fiji-West Polynesia patterns of population contact in time and space have been outlined, but questions remain about the relative amount of contact between archipelagos and, for Sāmoa, about intra-archipelago contact. We summarise previous provenance research of Sāmoan lithic and ceramic artefacts, noting the timing and relative frequency of artefact transfers. Our summary suggests few intra- and extra-archipelago artefact transfers for the first two millennia, but that these modestly increased in the last 800 years of the prehistoric sequence. The late distribution of Sāmoan basalt around the Pacific was spatially expansive, but proportionally small. These results have implications for explaining both the development of Polynesian society, and basalt artefact exchange.