Substantive Evidence of Initial Habitation in the Remote Pacific: Archaeological Discoveries at Unai Bapot in Saipan, Mariana Islands

At the Unai Bapot Site of the Mariana Islands, new excavation has clarified the oldest known instance of a residential habitation prior to 1500 B.C. in the Remote Pacific, previously difficult to document in deeply buried layers that originally had comprised near-tidal to shallow subtidal zones. The initial habitation at this site, as well as at others in the Mariana Islands, pre-dated the next Remote Oceanic archaeological evidence by about four centuries and in an entirely different part of the Pacific than previously had been claimed. The newest excavation at Unai Bapot in 2016 has revealed the precise location of an ancient seashore habitation, containing dense red-slipped pottery, other artefacts, food midden, and arrangements of hearths, pits, and post moulds in three distinguishable archaeological layers all pre-dating 1100 B.C. and extending just prior to 1500 B.C. The new discoveries are presented here in detail, as a substantive basis for learning about a rarely preserved event of the initial cultural inhabitation of a region, in this case in the Remote Oceanic environment of the world with its own set of unique challenges.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Unai Bapot and Earliest Remote Oceanic Settlement

Chapter 2 Project Context and Questions

Chapter 3 Investigative Procedures

Chapter 4 New Findings: Stratigraphy and Dating

Chapter 5 New Findings: Overall Archaeological Contents

Chapter 6 New Findings: Traces of Structural Features

Chapter 7 New Findings: Pottery Artefacts

Chapter 8 New Findings: Non-Pottery Artefacts

Chapter 9 New Findings: Midden of Animal Food Remains

Chapter 10 Answering the Initial Research Questions

Chapter 11 Larger Research Implications

References