Long Term Development of Economic Landscapes in an Island Context

Agricultural development is a cumulative process that occurs within dynamic social and ecological contexts. Because agricultural practices modify the environment, the collective impact of development changes the contexts of production for the next generation of farmers. In the tropics, food-production strategies have transformed the environment to create a mosaic of economically important species and microenvironments, which have allowed populations to extend production and innovate new techniques. Such environmental changes reside within wider social relationships, often those that negotiate power. Social relations impact the course of agricultural development by influencing the nature of labor mobilization and the use of landscapes. Scholars have long made a compelling case that change in Polynesian economies was motivated by elite demands for surplus, often taking advantage of favorable but circumscribed ecological conditions, but the evidence to model such processes are lacking in small scale political entities. Archaeological investigations of agricultural development provide information on cultivation strategies used in different places and times, relevant for understanding the role of social and environmental factors. These data have considerable temporal depth to support an examination of the complex interplay of social, economic, and physiological processes over time.

Within this broader context, Dr. Seth Quintus and his co-investigators will undertake research to study the development of economic landscapes on Ta'u Island American Samoa. This research will be conducted by collecting data from a field and settlement system recently discovered in the interior uplands of the island. Traditional archaeological excavation and remote sensing methods will allow the team to understand the distribution of human activities, which will aid in identifying social differences within the population. The results of archaeological survey will be compared with an assessment of local variation in soil fertility and landscape evolution that might have affected the decisions of producers. Taxonomic analysis of wood charcoal assemblages will be used to investigate the role of tree-cropping in the production system, an important but not well understood component of Pacific production systems. These methods will provide an integrated examination of the coupled social and environmental processes that have created small island landscapes such as the one found on Ta'u. Socio-ecological dynamics helped to create the environments that we see today, which continue to be the focus of production for island residents. Understanding how these environments were created on isolated islands, which are considered ideal model systems, is fundamental to developing production strategies that can address concerns regarding food security and the promotion of food sovereignty today.