Refining the Cultural Chronology of Rurutu (Austral Islands), Central East Polynesia: Recent Excavations, Radiocarbon Dating, and Bayesian Analysis

The Austral Islands are critical to developing a chronology for Southeast and Central East Polynesia, yet the archipelago remains one of the least studied in terms of archaeological research. The Austral Islands also have import for studying the internal dynamics of social change in Open Polynesian chiefdoms and whether such chiefdoms might have arisen in impoverished geographical settings. This article reports on a dating and redating program for seven sites and locales on Rurutu and revisits the island’s two-part cultural chronological sequence. The new corpus of dates provide evidence for use of Ana Eva rockshelter as a habitation and adze production locale from the mid-Archaic Period to European contact. The study provides the first evidence for when Rurutuans began constructing large, multi-terraced taro complexes in at least one of the island’s sociopolitical districts. The new dataset also demonstrates that the mid-cultural sequence saw the continued use of rockshelters for habitation, while the start of the Classic Period saw the first construction of marae (temple) sites. In addition to marae, varied sites with surface stone architecture, including habitation sites and specialized houses, are now dated to the Classic Period. A simple Bayesian model using Robert Bollt’s earliest calibrated date on wood charcoal from the Peva sand dune site as a terminus ante quem (TAQ) estimate to constrain one end of the model, with A.D. 1950 used as a terminus post quem (TPQ) (using the C_Date End command) to constrain the other end, suggests the Ana Eva rockshelter site was occupied as early as A.D. 1263 (2 σ), with construction and use of taro terraces as early as A.D. 1296 and marae construction as early as the fifteenth century.