The Carolines form a string of islands paralleling and approximately 7 to 9 degrees to the north of the Equator (Fig. 6.1). Covering two time zones, they straddle the Andesite Line, stretching from 132 to 164 degrees longitude. The 3000 kilometres between the Palau Archipelago in the west and the high igneous peaks of Kosrae in the east are broken for the most part by small islets on atoll reefs, and the occasional ‘high’ island. In fact, most of the Palau group and the island of Kosrae at either end are high islands and, with Pohnpei and those within Chuuk Lagoon, constitute all of the high islands of the group. In this chapter, I will review the archaeology of the western Caroline Islands of the Palau Archipelago, the Southwest Islands (also part of the Republic of Belau), Yap and the atolls of the Caroline chain as a whole.

Palau (Belau)

As noted in chapter, linguistically Palau (or Belau) appears to have a distinct history of settlement when compared to elsewhere in Micronesia. In earlier models this history was assumed to be one of the oldest, as a necessary staging point in the ‘stepping stone’ colonization of the region. As I have mentioned in chapters 4 and 5, this model envisaged the settlement of western Micronesia as a series of moves from the Celebes or Bird's Head of New Guinea areas north through Palau, Yap and finally the Marianas.