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Abstract

Abstract for the whole book: Sessions XXXVIII-1,2 of UISPP 2018 in Paris were dedicated to monumental constructions and to complex exchange networks in the Pacific. Both topics have been extensively commented on and described by indigenous experts, explorers, missionaries, and scholars over the last two centuries, however these have been made famous only for the most impressive examples such as the moai statues of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) or the kula exchange system of the Trobriand Islands. Some of the latest research on these key aspects of Pacific islands societies are made available in this volume to researchers focusing on the region, but also to a more global scientific community and to the general public. The volume reflects the tremendous progress made in Pacific island archaeology in the last 60 years which has considerably advanced our knowledge of early Pacific island societies, the rise of traditional cultural systems, and their later historical developments from European contact onwards. Interdisciplinarity is particularly stimulating in the Pacific region, where the study of the archaeological record and of chronological sequences are often combined with other kinds of information such as ethnohistorical accounts, oral traditions, and linguistic reconstructions, in the French tradition of ethnoarchéologie and the American tradition of historical anthropology.