| Summary: | The prehistory of Oceania begins with the occupation of New Guinea over 50,000 years ago, up to the settlement of Aotearoa/New Zealand in the last 700 years. The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania presents this history in regional overviews and debates by leading archaeologists and scholars of allied fields. The latest findings and future research directions on the New Guinea region and archipelagos from Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa in the western Pacific. Micronesia, East Polynesia, Hawaii, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and Easter Island are also discussed in individual chapters. Chapters on wider disciplinary issues summarise key points of method and theory in Oceanic archaeology, including the generation of explanations, building chronologies, linguistic prehistory, coastline evolution, settlement systems, and maritime migration
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