Bulletin

Issue: March/April 2008

Research

Lessons from the Pacific

Archaeologist Anita Smith puts Pacific issues on the international agenda

Dr Smith, left, in Samoa: 'The Pacific is the most under-represented region on the World Heritage List'

People in the Pacific, she says, have traditional knowledge about handling the effects of global warming that can contribute to international discussions on climate change. A member of Australia's new delegation to the World Heritage Committee, Dr Smith recently joined La Trobe University's Archaeology Program as a Charles La Trobe Research Fellow.

As a Pacific archaeologist, she is keen to give a greater voice to what she sees as an under-represented region in international affairs.

She says people of the Pacific could make valuable contributions to discussion on the impacts of global warming on cultural and natural heritage because their islands have experienced the impact of rising oceans, major storms and tsunami.

'Ocean levels have not been static in the past, and traditional Pacific cultures have learned how to deal with these changes,' she says.

In 1998, for example, when a tsunami destroyed farms and villages along the north coast of Papua New Guinea, traditional kinship systems enabled people to move inland, to live with groups in the hills until the coast recovered.

This strategy is underpinned by a system of land ownership which still exists through ninety percent of land in the Pacific Islands.

'In Polynesia many islands are traditionally divided like slices of a cake so that each kinship group gains access to resources on the hill, coast and reef. This influences the way indigenous culture continues in the Pacific and creates the region's cultural landscapes.'

Dr Smith – who holds a PhD from La Trobe and formerly taught at Deakin University – has just completed a report on cultural landscapes of the Pacific for the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the advisory body to the World Heritage Committee. She is one of three Australian delegates appointed to the Committee. The others are Dr Greg Terrill of the Commonwealth Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, and Jon Day of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

The team will develop Australia's response to forty or more nominations for World Heritage listing that come before the Committee each year and help highlight important cultural and natural heritage issues.

This year two nominations for cultural sites in Pacific Island states will come before the World Heritage Committee – a traditional cultural landscape in Vanuatu and an early agricultural site in PNG.

Chief Roi Mata's Domain in Vanuatu is a cultural landscape which includes ancestral villages of Roi Mata, a significant peace-maker in the island's history. The Kuk archaeological sites in PNG are important early agricultural sites demonstrating that agriculture developed in this region independently from that of the Middle East.

'The great advantage of World Heritage listing for a site is that it recognises shared global responsibility for heritage conservation and throws attention on it. It becomes a flagship of best practice and this can flow on to other sites.'

The Pacific, says Dr Smith, is the most under-represented region on the World Heritage List, which now includes more than 750 sites. Cultural landscapes in the region are layered with stories of human existence and have great potential for World Heritage nomination.

Taputapuatea in Tahiti is one such place. It is known to Polynesians as a marae site. These are special sacred places, important for meetings and ceremonies. Many Polynesians consider Taputapuatea to be their spiritual homeland.

The site is also important in European stories of the Pacific. When Captain Cook arrived there, he found a large sea-faring centre where people came to learn about navigation and boat-building. The double-hulled ocean-going canoes constructed there were almost as big as Cook's own ship.

Cook's descriptions are vivid and inspiring, Dr Smith says, but they are just part of the evidence needed to gain the site World Heritage listing for sites like Taputapuatea.

'Through archaeological, and ethnohistoric research we are trying to develop a chronology. How old is the site? At what stage was it an important centre? What oral traditions are associated with the site? How does it connect to other marae sites? What is its settlement history of the place?'

Dr Smith calls this multi-layered approach 'mapping'. She will combine oral history with modern geographic information systems; stories with visual representations of resources.

'Traditional stories are still very strong. People have a way of seeing the landscape with respect to their ancestors. We want to layer our archaeological evidence with these oral traditions.'

Dr Smith finds the strength of traditional ties inspiring. 'People in Tahiti are sophisticated in a Western sense, but if you scratch the surface there are a lot of layers underneath. People have Polynesian ways of seeing the world. I am surprised, and pleased, that their cultural knowledge is so strong.'