Cochrane, E.E.; (2005) Human cultural diversity in prehistoric Fiji. Archaeology International , 2005/2 pp. 32-35.

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Abstract

The Fiji islands (Fig. 1) were first inhabited approximately 900 B.C. by populations sailing eastward from Island Melanesia 1. Like all the founding populations of western Remote Oceania—from Vanuatu and New Caledonia, to Fiji, Tonga and Samoa—the first Fijians were part of a related group of colonising peoples sharing aspects of language, biology and material culture, including the famous intricately decorated Lapita pottery. Many archaeologists, anthropologists and other scholars suggest that over the last three millennia, these once similar populations diverged from their common origins 2. Our current research in Fiji has focused on the generation of cultural difference over some three thousand years of human occupation. Specifically, how do we explain the contemporary cultural diversity across Fiji and Remote Oceania? Is cultural divergence the most appropriate model?3

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