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tion and speculations toward an adaptationist one. What I find poignant in this honest monograph is the author's evident struggle to reconcile finding no facts to support the currently popular idea that human populations (whether initially profligate or later growing too dense for their resources to sustain without damage) in the Pacific islands inevitably decreased environmental diversity through inappropriate farming methods, over-hunting of birds, and unrestrained marine resource procurement: ``That resource depression and extinctions were not more visible archaeologically may signal that human populations, albeit quite low in number, lived in a sustainable manner--a unique situation amongst many Pacific islands studied thus far'' ( p. 128). Weisler's solution to this self-inflicted dilemma, of having documented an actual case of Pacific islanders making a ``sustainable living'' for about two thousand years and counting, is the typical inductivist call for more data, using a ``comparative approach'' wherein ``we may come to understand the breadth of atoll adaptations-- technological, economic and social'' ( p. 128). With On the Margins as an example of the attention to detail in data collection and presentation required, a more economic approach would be for Pacific archaeologists to re-examine their alreadycollected ``data'' on allegedly humancaused environmental
Asian Perspectives – University of Hawai'I Press
Published: Mar 26, 2004
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