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The human colonization of the Pacific is an enduring problem in historical anthropology. Recent advances in archaeology, historical linguistics, and bioanthropology have coalesced to form a set of models for population movements and interactions in Oceania, which have been tested on independent data sets. Earliest human movements into Near Oceania began about 40,000 years ago, resulting in great cultural, linguistic, and genetic diversity in this region. About 4000 years ago, the expansion of Austronesian speakers out of Southeast Asia led to the emergence of the Lapita cultural complex in Near Oceania. The Lapita expansion into Remote Oceania, commencing about 1200 BC, led ultimately to the settlement of the vast eastern Pacific, ending with the colonization of New Zealand about AD 1250. Polynesians probably reached the coast of South America, returning with the sweet potato and possibly the bottle gourd. Polynesian influences on New World cultures remain a topic of debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History is of critical importance for anthropology because, in human affairs, the present is intimately linked to the past. Archaeology is important to the study of history because the material remains of the past supplement and interrogate historical documents. Collaboration between cultural anthropologists and archaeologists will produce a broader knowledge of past worlds and how those worlds have been constructed in historical texts, both past and present. Cultural anthropologists and archaeologists should also compare the ways in which they engage in discussions about the past with both the American public and local communities--discussions that are quite different in the two subfields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the state of ethnohistory and considers the state of play between anthropology and history. In anthropology, the relationship between history and anthropology has been marked by interpenetration. The ahistoricity and the opposition to "conjectural history" of British structural-functionalist social anthropology and much American cultural anthropology were eroding on a broad front as an increasing number of analyses incorporating history appeared. In history, new histories undermined the prevalence of the historical political and biographical narrative that had come to dominate historiography during the first half of the 20th century.