This dissertation explores the emergence and consequences of competitive and cooperative strategies in Fijian prehistory. The Sigatoka Valley, located in southwestern Viti Levu, is the subject of a series of geographical, environmental, and archaeological analyses. Using GIS-based analyses, the effects of environmental fluctuations on agricultural productivity (i.e., the EI Nino Southern Oscillation [ENSO], and also the transition between the Little Climatic Optimum [LCO] and Little Ice Age [LIA]) are reconstructed and used to predict zones of low-yields and episodic shortfalls. These results indicate that the Sigatoka Valley was both spatially and temporally variable in terms of agricultural productivity and predictability. In the context of an evolutionary ecology-based model of competition and cooperation, this environment encouraged the development of conflict and defensive habitation strategies between human groups. The results of environmental analyses are also compared to the archaeological record, and used to determine the presence of three modes of habitation/subsistence: territorial strongholds, remote refuges, and agricultural production sites. Archaeological testing of these classes in tandem with GIS-based environmental research indicate that the Sigatoka Valley was initially occupied between Cal BC 20 - Cal AD 80, in association with dense and predictable resources. Fortifications that utilized natural topography, and also remote refuges, were established ca. AD 700, and remained in use throughout the prehistoric period. Environmental refuges associated with the effects of the LCO/LIA transition were established ca. AD 1300-1500. Constructed fortifications that utilized an annular ditch, and which were located in the valley bottom, appeared ca. AD 1700 - 1850. The chronology of habitation/subsistence strategies is also compared to landtenure and archaeological data (e.g., land-holdings of yavusa, and also evidence for unique artifacts and valley-wide exchange). These data suggest particular historical trajectories in the Sigatoka delta and highlands, and also varying frequencies of competition and cooperation in prehistory. In sum, this dissertation identifies interaction between humans and their environment as the fundamental relationship that conditioned change in prehistoric Fiji.

No description available.

In my thesis I investigate the impact the conceptual domestication and material technical transformation of space and movement has had on the behaviour of the human organism and the way it relates to its environment. In doing so l will examine the formation and structure of three non-identical yet interrelated forms of human space; rational-geometrical space, lived space, and technologically mediated space, I combine a phenomenological approach, which allows for an analysis of the horizontal relation between embodied organism and environment, with an archaeological perspective that traces the genealogy of specific symbolic and technological formations viewed in their nexus with lived, embodied behaviour. I argue that both the process of the conceptual domestication of space, particulady in the form of what Husserl refers to as the tendency of rationalisation and technisation, as well as the concrete technological transformation of the spatial environment, come into being and develop in a comparable way, While both initially directly or indirectly presuppose the perceptual' and motor activity of the embodied human organism, their subsequent development is tendentiously characterised by a relative departure from the human body in lieu of an extra-somatic organisation and materialisation of sense and behaviour. The implications for the behaviour of the individual human organism are ambivalent. On the one hand, the increasing uncoupling of technology and conceptual systems from human embodiment, has allowed for a rapid development of the human's overall technical and symbolic capacities, The result is an expansive material and symbolic 'humanisation' (Leroi-Gourhan) of the organism's behavioural and geographical environment. On the other hand, the very same process entails a behavioural regression with regard to the human organism's sensorimotor activity. I argue, by way of the former, that this may entail a constriction of the human organism's cognitive and imaginative capacities, potentially threatening its individuality.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, December 1975. / Available in PDF. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Sydney, 2000. / Title from title screen (viewed Apr. 21, 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science to the Division of Geography, School of Geosciences. Degree awarded 2000; thesis submitted 1999. Includes bibliography. Also available in print form.

Originally presented as the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Bordeaux, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2007. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Nov. 5, 2008). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Texas State University-San Marcos, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-180).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-154).

Thesis (M.S.)--Northwest Missouri State University, 2009. / The full text of the thesis is included in the pdf file. Title from title screen of full text.pdf file (viewed on July 17, 2009) Includes bibliographical references.