Strategies for Small Island Living through a Wallacean Lens

Sue O'Connor*, Shimona Kealy, Emily Nutman, Hendri Kaharudin, and Ceri Shipton

The biogeographic region known as Wallacea is comprised of many thousands of islands. Pre-modern hominins reached the larger western Wallacean islands of Flores and Sulawesi between ~1 m and 800 ka, but there is little or no evidence that they made use of marine resources. Modern humans settled these same islands, and the island of Timor, between 60 and 45 ka and their subsistence seems to have included a mix of terrestrial and marine resources. As modern humans moved east through Wallacea to the more faunally depauperate islands, the ability to exploit coastal resources became paramount. The limited resources on the smaller islands in the archipelago posed the greatest challenge to permanent settlement; and one that does not appear to have been met until the terminal Pleistocene ~16 ka. Making a living on these islands required advanced maritime technology and networks enabling population mobility and relocation. We examine the chronology, archaeological evidence and strategies for small island living in Wallacea.