About the conference: 

Island archaeology has long occupied a distinctive niche within the study of the human past. Literary and historical records attest to a perennial fascination with islands, emphasizing a dialectic between marginality and connectivity that informs both the physical realities and cultural conceptualizations of small islands. Archaeology is drawn to insular environments to investigate fundamental questions of human settlement and adaptation, historical ecology, and biogeography. The premise that islands function as “laboratories” for observing long-term human-environmental dynamics remains a potent analytical concept, notwithstanding extensive critique and refinement over the last decades. The archaeology of small islands has only recently emerged as a subject of systematic, specialized inquiry within island studies. A burgeoning corpus of interdisciplinary research— particularly regarding small, often uninhabited islands in the Mediterranean, Pacific, and elsewhere—has leveraged diverse theoretical viewpoints and interpretations. The resulting empirical wealth underscores the varied functional and symbolic roles these islands played across disparate temporal and spatial scales—roles that now call for rigorous comparative synthesis. Micronesia aims to interrogate how small islands were inhabited or utilized from the Palaeolithic through the 21st century. Participants are invited to address, among other things: (1) the articulation between settlement systems and connectivity networks amidst shifting socioenvironmental variables; (2) the causal mechanisms driving human groups toward physically marginal or ecologically precarious insular environments; and (3) the significance of small islands in the emergence of maritime seafaring and the maintenance of established exchange networks. Broader themes include: island ecology and biogeography; settlement, sustainability, and human experience; and the recognition of patterns and idiosyncrasies in human behavior in small island environments. Ultimately, this forum intends to foster a global comparative perspective on small island archipelagos and establish robust methodologies for the future of the sub-discipline. While measures of small islands might identify thresholds at 500, 100, or 50 sq km, we are particularly interested in very small islands that are under 50 sq km in size. We invite contributions from archaeologists, historians, biogeographers, palaeogeographers and cultural anthropologists researching small islands across the globe. We particularly encourage contributors to take synthetic, diachronic, and comparative approaches (as opposed to the presentation of case studies or fieldwork). We invite scholars working in the Mediterranean also to consider datasets and approaches from other parts of the world and vice versa. The conference is funded by a Collaborative Research Convening Grant from the US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and Hellenic Foundation for Research & Innovation (HFRI). It aims to bring together scholars from the US, Greece, and elsewhere, in order to address questions relevant to small-island archaeology in one of the world’s densest and most historically significant small-island theaters.

Below, we provide a preliminary template and loose structure for the organization of the conference, which we intend ultimately to result in an edited volume. These should be viewed as guiding questions and broad themes, rather than any prescriptive program for interested contributors to follow.

Part I: Why small islands?

How are they defined? Where do they occur? What is the global distribution?

What is the history of archaeological research on small islands?

What is the place of island archaeology within the wider field of island studies,

in the Mediterranean and elsewhere?

Part II: Small Island Ecologies and Biogeography

Sea levels, coastal change, and the problem of the Pleistocene/Paleolithic

Ecological thresholds for life on small islands

Animal species diversity

Plant species diversity and its effect on human settlement

Part III: Settlement, Sustainability, and the Human Experience of Life on Small Islands

Population and demographic issues

Island life between myth and reality

Identifying settlement versus use in small-island settings

What’s special about the experience of living on a small island? How is it apparent

archaeologically in different settings?

Ethnographic perspectives on small islands

Part IV: Pattern and Idiosyncrasy in Small Island Behavior

Colonization and exploitation

Stepping stones, maritime technologies, and sea routes

Strategic and military purposes

Emporia, ports of trade, middle grounds

Selective marginality and illicit activity – piracy, smuggling, trafficking

Goat islands – satellites and mobile larders

Sanctuaries