Bonjour à tous,

A l'occasion de son passage en métropole, nous aurons le plaisir d'accueillir le Dr. Stuart Bedford pour une conférence qui se tiendra à l'Institut Michelet (3, rue Michelet, Paris 6e) le mardi 11 décembre de 12h30 à 15h30, en salle 106. Cette conférence s'inscrira dans le cadre du séminaire de préhistoire de l'Océanie de Paris I.

Three Thousand Years of History across the Islands of Ash and Coral: The Archaeology of the Republic of Vanuatu

Modern archaeology began in the islands of the tropical Pacific only in the late 1940s. It was characterised then by small numbers of researchers carrying out preliminary surveys and excavations on a limited number of archipelagos. Huge advances have been made over 60 years. We now know that initial human colonisation began in the far western Pacific during the Pleistocene and was ultimately followed much later by a series of late Holocene expansions right across to the most easterly regions then to the north and then finally to the deep south. While a broad chronological outline of human colonisation has been established across the Pacific and certain time periods and cultures are now well known there remains great gaps in our knowledge with whole islands and
periods yet to be investigated in any detail. It is an exciting period in Pacific archaeology where new discoveries and new technologies are providing whole new perspectives on the human and environmental history of the region. This paper focuses on the archaeology of Vanuatu to both highlight the developments in that archipelago alone over a 50 years period and to emphasise
the opportunities for researchers of the future.

Guillaume