Indigenous Navigation And Voyaging In The Pacific

Features

Description

How have Pacific Islanders voyaged across the vast ocean around them and navigated their small crafts from one distant place to another for thousands of years? This reference guide describes the literature on indigenous navigation and voyaging in the Pacific. The annotated bibliography covers journal articles and books written in several languages, including English, German, Japanese, French, Spanish, and Dutch, pointing to materials of both recent and early origin.

The entries are arranged alphabetically by author under Pacific (General), Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia chapters. Indexes to authors, geographic areas, and to subjects provide the reader with easy access to the entries and to a wealth of interesting research on a complex subject with many perplexing questions.

Review: ?Although prepared for an anthropological series, this bibliography contains much that is important for history, sociology (race relations), and geography. Indigenous navigation methods and their relationship to the discovery and peopling of the Pacific islands have been a matter of interest and bafflement since the first Europeans entered that ocean.

The 694 entries touch only briefly, if at all, on European Pacific exploration, and concentrate on local achievements. A short introduction, which reviews advances in understanding over the last few decades since Sharp dismissed Polynesian migrations as accidental, sets the tone for this useful accumulation of scientific research.

All the expected names--Peter Buck, Ben Finney, Percy Smith, Andrew Sharp, Thor Heyerdahl, Elsdon Best, Robert Suggs--are present along with a host of others. The bibliography is divided into four parts: the Pacific in general, Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. As might be expected, Polynesia provides by far the greatest number of entries.

There are author, geographic, and subject indexes. Most annotations not only summarize the book or article cited, but also place it in a scientific and historical context. In fact, these annotations themselves provide a guide to the topic and amount to a comprehensive review of early Pacific navigation.

The only puzzling feature is the random provision of library locations, which seem to serve no useful purpose. Recommended highly; essential for all Pacific and anthropology collections. It is a good example of a reference work that has transcended the limits of its genre.?-Choice