Our final member of the project arrived Tuesday morning on the Samoa Express. Dr. Lisa Matisoo-Smith will be taking DNA samples of the occupants of the island in order to see the genetic makeup of the current population of Atafu. We have met several people who tell us they are from other islands such as Tuvalu and Chuk, as well as many from the other islands of Tokelau. If this pattern had continued for a long time in the past the population could have a very diverse gene pool. Lisa may be able to say which islands past immigrants came from based on different haplotype groups with common DNA sequences. This study will also serve as a reference for prehistoric DNA studies of human teeth found in TU-4 & and other archaeological excavations on the island. Work began the next day at an aumaga meeting where the details of the project were discussed and a dozen men had their cheeks swabbed for their DNA material, a painless process requiring only a cotton swab.
In the meanwhile excavation moved to the other side of the island to begin the next test unit. The area to be excavated was chosen based on Simon Best’s previous finding of large amounts of faunal material including bird bone. We are hoping to find that some of this bird bone is from chickens so that we may submit some of the bones to Dr. Alice Storey who will look at the DNA of the prehistoric chickens. By comparing these DNA samples to samples from other islands it can be determined from which islands the chickens were brought and thus which islands the people that previous occupied Atafu came from or were in contact with. If the deposit is old, it may also contain birds that were extirpated, killed off by the early colonizers of the island. In addition, we hope to provide Rintaro with additional fish bone for his study.
Our first unit in this area does provide abundant bird and fish bone, as well as large turtle bones. However, the high quantity of fish scales leads us to believe the deposit may not be so old. The absence of dog bone, found in our previous studies to be present from early on, supports this idea. Also absent however is pig bone which is ubiquitous in modern deposits thus sampled. Therefore we think this deposit may date to a time in between this transition giving us an interesting look at a time period without domesticated mammals.
The first unit however also contains pit features originating from the modern levels with several fragments of metal, possibly barbed wire, showing disturbance. Yet, several flakes of pahua, clam shell, show the construction of shell adzes at the time of the undisturbed layers negating the presence of metal at that time. Fortunately, one wall shows an excellent profile promising intact, undisturbed layers for tomorrow to hopefully answer all our questions.
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