The Archaeology Of The Aru Islands, Eastern Indonesia

This volume describes the results of the first archaeological survey and excavations carried out in the fascinating and remote Aru Islands, Eastern Indonesia between 1995 and 1997. The naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who stopped here in search of the Birds of Paradise on his voyage through the Indo-Malay Archipelago in the 1850s, was the first to draw attention to the group. The results reveal a complex and fascinating history covering the last 30,000 years from its early settlement by hunter-gatherers, the late Holocene arrival of ceramic producing agriculturalists, later associations with the Bird of Paradise trade and the colonial expansion of the Dutch trading empires.

Peter Veth is Director of Research at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Matthew Spriggs was appointed Professor of Archaeology in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at ANU in 1997. Sue O'Connor is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Natural History at The Australian National University.