The research presented here investigates the evolution of material cultural diversity in the Yasawa Islands in the northwestern corner of the Fijian archipelago. This work builds upon several field seasons of basic research in the Yasawas, as well as other large-scale ceramic analyses in Fiji. This study constructs answers using an explanatory framework explicitly designed to account for the evolution of cultural diversity in prehistory. This explanatory framework combines the effects of cultural transmission, selection and other sorting processes, and innovation. Using this explanatory...

The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania presents the archaeology, linguistics, environment and human biology of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. First colonized 50,000 years ago, Oceania witnessed the independent invention of agriculture, the construction of Easter Island's statues, and the development of the word's last archaic states.