In December 2003 in the company of my long-time collaborators, Sepeti Matararaba and Roselyn Kumar (Mata and Rosie to most people), I discovered an extraordinary archaeological site in Fiji. A place named Bourewa on the southwest coast of Viti Levu, the largest island in the Fiji group. Bourewa was apparently established about 3100 years ago (that is, 1150 BC) on what was then a smallish island off the coast of Viti Levu.
The first people there had probably travelled across at least 950 kilometres of open ocean from the islands of what we now call Vanuatu – an ocean crossing of almost unprecedented distance for the time. Attracted to Bourewa by its massive and pristine fringing coral reef, the people built stilt platforms across the inner reef and lived there for a few hundred years before the sea level fell and the amount of food obtainable from this reef declined.
Mata and Rosie and I spent six years excavating the Bourewa site. In December 2008, thanks to a grant from the Government of France, we prepared with our students and colleagues a series of six posters illustrating different aspects of the Bourewa discoveries. These posters were displayed at the 18th Annual Conference of the Pacific History Association in December 2008. Here they are for you to look at –
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