Pacific island communities formed “cities” long before European influence and far earlier than previously thought.
New research by the Australian National University (ANU) used aerial laser scanning to map archaeological sites on the island of Tongatapu in Tonga.
Lead author PhD scholar Phillip Parton said the scanning helped create a better understanding of the development of early Pacific societies.
“Urbanisation is not an area that had been investigated much until now,” he said.
“When people think of early cities they usually think of traditional old European cities with compact housing and windy cobblestone streets. This is a very different kind of city.”
Mr Parton said the research, published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, showed structures were constructed in Tongatapu around AD 300, 700 years earlier than previously thought.
Based on this, the Pacific islands could make a significant contribution to “urban science”, with clues that Tongatapu’s influence spread across the southwest Pacific Ocean between the 13th and 19th centuries.
“As settlements grew, they had to come up with new ways of supporting that growing population,” Mr Parton said.
“This kind of set-up – what we call low density urbanisation – sets in motion huge social and economic change. People are interacting more and doing different kinds of work.”
Mr Parton said traditionally, studying urbanisation in the Pacific has been difficult because of challenges collecting data, but new technology had changed that.
He said the collapse of this kind of low-density urbanisation in Tonga was largely due to the arrival of Europeans.
“It didn’t collapse because the system was flawed; it was more to do with the arrival of Europeans and introduced diseases,” he said.
