The complexity of an archaeological site in Samoa The past in the present

Abstract

This paper discusses post-colonial perspectives on archaeology and studies of materiality in the Pacific. It uses the Pulemelei investigations at Letolo plantation on Savai’i Island in Samoa as a case study, including events and activities that have taken place after the completion of archaeological research (Martinsson-Wallin 2007). These investigations shed light on the entanglement of values and actions in the performance of past and present power relations. Archaeology is a relatively young science in the Pacific, developed mainly in the 20th century. Extensive archaeological excavations were not initiated until the 1940s–1950s (Gifford 1951; Gifford and Shutler 1956; Emory et al. 1959; Heyerdahl and Ferdon 1961; Emory and Sinoto 1965), but initial ethnological, anthropological and linguistic studies were made in the 18th and 19th centuries. Before these approaches, traditional history and mythology provided the primary explanation for the origin, migration and structure of contemporary societies in Oceania. The traditional history of Pacific Islanders does not separate the past from the present, as does much archaeological research, and the ‘past’ is seen as living within contemporary culture. There is therefore a divide between a classical evolutionary and a contextual way of looking at culture and the ‘past’