Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T15:49:45.990Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A ‘tree’ is not a ‘train’: mistaken analogies in Pacific archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

John Edward Terrell*
Affiliation:
Field Museum of Natural History, Roosevelt Road & Lake Shore Drive, Chicago IL 60605, USA terrell@fmnh.org

Abstract

Archaeologists and anthropologists work alongside, but outside, conventional science, Quite often, as here, misunderstandings and misreadings of archaeological data and interpretation can distort the reading of our discipline!

Type
News and notes
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, A. & Clark, G.. 1999. The age of Lapita settlement in Fiji, Archaeology in Oceania 34: 319.Google Scholar
Austin, C.C. 1999. Lizards took express train to Polynesia, Nature 397: 11314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burley, D.V., Nelson, D.E. & Shutler, R., JR. 1999. A radiocarbon chronology for the Eastern Lapita frontier in Tonga, Archaeology in Oceania 34: 5970.Google Scholar
Clark, J.T. & Terrell, J.E.. 1978. Archaeology in Oceania, Annual Review of Anthropology 7: 293319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewar, R.E. 1995. Of nets and trees: untangling the reticulate and dendritic in Madagascar’s prehistory, World Archaeology 26: 30118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diamond, J.M. 1988. Express train to Polynesia, Nature 336: 3078.Google Scholar
Diamond, J.M. 1997. Guns, germs, and steel. New York (NY): W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Lum, K., Terrell, J.E. & Bellwood, P.. 1999. Lizard data do not support ‘express train’ model of Polynesian origins. Unpublished ms in the author’s possession.Google Scholar
Moore, J.H. 1994. Putting anthropology back together again: the ethnogenetic critique of cladistic theory, American Anthropologist 96: 92548.Google Scholar
Obeyesekere, G. 1992, The apotheosis of Captain Cook: European mythmakingin the Pacific. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ortner, S.B. 1973. On key symbols, American Anthropologist 75: 133846.Google Scholar
Platt, J.R. 1964. Strong inference, Science 146: 34753.Google Scholar
Pomponio, A. 1992. Seagulls don’t fly into the bush: cultural identity and development in Melanesia. Belmont (CA): Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Templeton, A.R. 1998. Human races: a genetic and evolutionary perspective, American Anthropologist 100: 63250.Google Scholar
Terrell, J.E. 1988. History as a family tree, history as an entangled bank: constructing images and interpretations of prehistory in the Pacific, Antiquity 62: 64257.Google Scholar