Most people I know have never heard of New Caledonia, or else they have no clue where to find it on a map. Some people think that New Caledonia is a kind of computer font, but it's an actual physical place in the world.
To help you locate New Caledonia, here are two maps of potential interest:
Map of the Southwest PacificThis map shows the so-called "Polynesian Outliers" with bold-face labels. West Uvea (or Ouvea) is the location of my doctoral dissertation work, located just off the east coast of the New Caledonia mainland. To locate New Caledonia, look towards the middle of the bottom of the map.
Map of New Caledonia and OuveaThis map shows New Caledonia and Ouvea in more detail.
If you ever want to travel to New Caledonia, then remember to check the local weather before you go there. I recommend to stay away during the cyclone season, sometimes beginning as early as November and ending as late as March.
I am interested in inter-cultural contacts in prehistory. West Uvea (also called "Uvea," "Ouvea," or "Uea") is known to be a place where people of both Polynesian (Fagauvea) and Melanesian (Iaai) cultures lived together for several generations, perhaps more than one thousand years. Ouvea is the only one of the Polynesian Outliers where two different ethnic communities live together. My dissertation work involves investigation in fields of ethnohistory, language, and archaeology. My focus has been on the iselt of Muli, home to one of the Fagauvea communities.
With the cooperation and support of the Services des Musees et du Patrimoine (SMP) of New Caledonia, I directed detailed and extensive archaeological excavations in two rockshelters (Sites LUV029 and LUV030) and their adjacent beach dune on Muli Islet. A variety of laboratory analyses are still underway, and the results should be reported in my doctoral dissertation, scheduled for completion in the beginning of the year 2000. Even after the completion of my doctoral work, I plan to continue a research program in Ouvea, in partnership with the SMP.
Also, New Caledonia is a great place to study material exchange. As an archaeologist, I look for fragments of pottery and stone tools. These items can be analyzed to determine their original geologic sources. Since New Caledonia is a very peculiar and also well-known place geologically, then this sort of "sourcing" work is very profitable for me to reconstruct the movement of materials in prehistoric times. Because Ouvea is a raised coral limestone island without clays for pottery and without lithic resources for stone tools, then it is an ideal place to look for evidence of materials brought from other parts of New Caledonia and perhaps even from more distant archipelagos.
Aside from Ouvea, New Caledonia is a wonderful place for archaeology, with plenty of pottery traditions, very nice adzes and other stone tools, an abundance of shell ornaments, some fortification settlements, large terracing systems, and several irrigation canals extending many kilometers. The archaeology department of the SMP of New Caledonia has been very active in recent years, working on a program of site inventories. From this inventory, sites can be assessed for their potential for further study, and the archaeology department aims to conduct detailed excavations at these sites.
I certainly do have plenty of photos. I cannot include all of my favorite photographs on this web page, but I encourgae you to check out the selections on my Photos of Places page.
send e-mail to me mcarson@hawaii.edu
