| Abstract: |
Archaeological models for a pre-packaged subsistence economy associated with the prehistoric Lapita movement into Oceania are well established in Pacific archaeology (Green, 1976; Kirch, 1997; Spriggs, 1997). There is little doubt that early Oceanic colonists brought a select number of cultigens and commensal species with them, as native species and potential economic subsistence resources become less diverse or available following a West–East gradient. Based on previous research, the plants that were initially brought with people into Oceania are well established, at least those plants that survived until European contact, such as sweet potato, yam, taro and banana (e.g., Leach, 1984; Pollock, 1992; Whistler, 2009). When and where these cultigens were introduced is inferred under the portable economy model through multiple archaeological and historical methods of analysis, including linguistic evidence (Kirch, 1997), ethnobotany (Whistler, 2009), microfossils extracted from tools (e.g., Crowther, 2005; Lentfer et al., 2013), sedimentary microfossils (e.g., Lentfer and Green, 2004; Horrocks and Bedford, 2005) and stable isotope analyses of human and animal skeletal and dental material (e.g., Leach et al., 1998; Valentin et al., 2010; Kinaston et al., 2014b). However, none of these methods can directly identify specific domesticated plants that were transported and consumed as people expanded from Near into Remote Oceania. A new method of analysis has begun to be used in Oceania to aid in identifying dietary plants: microfossil extraction from dental calculus (Dudgeon and Tromp, 2012; Tromp, 2012; Horrocks et al., 2014; Tromp and Dudgeon, 2015).
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