A Pattern of Islands: Ethnography, Remote Sensing, and Community Archaeology in Kosrae and Pohnpei, Micronesia

FAIN: RFW-279332-21

University of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI 96822-2216)
John A. Peterson (Project Director: September 2020 to present)

Investigation of the settlement pattern in Pohnpei and Kosrae in Micronesia using modern technology (drones), and by comparing the findings with oral tales collected from the community.

We propose to connect archaeological data in Pohnpei and Kosrae in Micronesia with village ethnography and active participation of villagers in the archaeological survey of their own communities. We propose to use drone-mounted lidar that can produce very highly detailed images and that can eliminate vegetation and modern construction from the view. These will help to visualize homescapes and coastal terrain in new ways of viewing the landscape. Villagers will meet in ethnographic sessions to apply their cultural knowledge of their island’s settlement and migration throughout the region. Archaeological knowledge will complement community knowledge. The project will contribute to current scholarship on indigenous knowledge in the face of western and colonial interpretation, and will provide a forum for islanders and western scholars to compare and contrast archaeological and ethnographic data as a space within which to co-produce knowledge of their migration history in the region.