Farmers, fishers and whalemen: the colonisation landscapes of Lord Howe Island, Tasman Sea, Australia

Owens, Kimberley Ann

Abstract

A small dot of land in the middle of the Tasman Sea, Lord Howe Island presents an interesting and unique opportunity to examine several archaeological and historical questions relating to the colonization of islands, settlement landscapes, and the development of isolated communities. Through a combination of historical research and archaeological investigation, this project seeks to investigate the processes of development and change that were operating in the LHI settlement landscape and to arrive at an understanding of how these processes may or may not have significance for the understanding of other island colonization events, particularly prehistoric ones. Extensive background historic research utilizing various published and unpublished sources; community consultation and gathering of local knowledge; surveys of six historically known sites and excavation of four; and the synthesis of the historic and archaeological data in the creation of settlement landscape maps and identifications of resource use over time were employed as mechanisms of understanding the processes of colonization on a Pacific island, and allowed an assessment of its usefulness as an analogue for similar historic and prehistoric scenarios. The consequential thesis that is presented here outlines these research tasks and results and culminates in the general conclusion that Lord Howe Island is both a useful example and comparative case for other studies while paradoxically being subject to its own unique historic context, and is therefore limited to useful generalities rather than specifics.

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311

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