Patrick D. Nunn

University of the Sunshine Coast

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Roselyn Kumar

University of the Sunshine Coast

Nicholas C. Kraus

United States Army

Dieter Kelletat

University of Cologne

Hillert Ibbeken

Freie Universität Berlin

George A. Maul

Florida Institute of Technology

Michael S. Bruno

GeoMechanics Technologies (United States)

Ian Shennan

Durham University

Cheryl J. Hapke

University of South Florida St. Petersburg

E. Robert Thieler

United States Geological Survey

Paul D. Komar

Oregon State University

Cooperative Institutions

University of the Sunshine Coast

Australian National University

University of the South Pacific

University of Queensland

UNSW Sydney

Griffith University

University of New England

University of Wollongong

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

University of Tasmania

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Evidence for late Quaternary sea level change around St. Helena island, south Atlantic

CATENA (1984)

Patrick D. Nunn

10.1016/0341-8162(84)90008-0

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Citations (1)

Future sea-level rise in the Pacific: Effects on selected parts of Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga and Western Samoa

Patrick D. Nunn

American samoa

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Citations (2)

The archaeology of orality: Dating Tasmanian Aboriginal oral traditions to the Late Pleistocene

Journal of Archaeological Science (2023)

Duane W. Hamacher Patrick D. Nunn Michelle Gantevoort Rebe Taylor G Lehman

Aboriginal people have lived in Australia, continuously, for tens of thousands of years. Over that time, they developed complex knowledge systems that were committed to memory and passed to successive generations through oral tradition. The length of time oral traditions can be passed down while maintaining vitality is a topic of ongoing debate in the social sciences. In recent years, scientists have weighed into the debate by studying traditions that describe natural events, such as volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts, which can be dated using scientific techniques. Here, we bring together a trans-disciplinary team of scholars to apply this approach to Tasmanian Aboriginal (palawa) oral traditions that were recorded in the early nineteenth century. These traditions describe the flooding of the Bassian Land Bridge connecting Tasmania to mainland Australia and the presence of a culturally significant "Great South Star", identified as Canopus (α Carinae). Utilising bathymetric and topographic data of the land and sea floor in the Bass Strait, we estimate the Bassian Land Bridge was finally submerged approximately 12,000 years ago. We then calculate the declination of the star Canopus over the last precessional cycle (26,000 years) to show that it was at a far southerly declination (δ < −75°) between 16,300 and 11,800 years ago, reaching its minimum declination approximately 14,000 years ago. These lines of evidence provide a terminus ante quem of the Tasmanian traditions to the end of the Late Pleistocene. This paper supports arguments that the longevity of orality can exceed ten millennia, providing critical information essential to the further development of theoretical frameworks regarding the archaeology of orality.

Oral Tradition

Mainland

Orality

10.1016/j.jas.2023.105819

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Coastal processes and landforms of Fiji: their bearing on holocene sea-level changes in the South and West Pacific

Journal of Coastal Research (1990)

Patrick D. Nunn

In Fiji, the legacy of past sea-level changes, notably those of Holocene age, cannot be deciphered on modern coastlines without reference to the contemporary local tectonic regime. The structure and the dominant tectonic tendency for each constituent element of the Fiji islands during the late Quaternary include: (a) areas of predominant uplift and perhaps vertical creep, such as Cikobia and Taveuni; (b) areas where subsidence dominated between intermittent bursts of uplift, such as the Cakaudrove coast of Vanua Levu and parts of Viti Levu's south coast; areas where subsidence was dominant, such as the Yasawa and Mamanuca island groups and the Yasayasa Moala; and tdl areas which were (effectively) stable, such as the islands of the Lau Ridge and Lomaiviti. Evidence for low-level/Holocene shoreline displacement from Fiji's coasts can be interpreted in the context of local tectonics. Average shoreline displacement increases from areas where subsidence has been dominant through those which have been (effectively) stable to those where uplift has been dominant. The likeliest explanation for this pattern of shoreline displacement is one involving a uniform Holocene emergence, probably a sea-level fall and not a regional hydro-isostatic effect, being imposed on local tectonics. Dates from emerged Holocene shorelines in Fiji suggest that the Holocene transgressive maximum reached 1-2 m above present mean sea level some 3,000-2,000 years ago. Selected aspects of Holocene coastline development are described in the context of the sea level history established earlier. These include river-mouth and coastal progradation, which seems to have been most marked on stable or slowly subsiding coasts; coastal dune accumulation, which may have been more closely linked to Holocene eustatic and tectonic changes than hitherto suspected; beach rock and related deposits; lagoon infilling and coral-reef emergence; and the effects of catastrophic events, particularly storm surges, on Fiji's coasts. An account is also given of the explanations which the deduced Holocene sea-Ievel history provides for aspects of contemporary settlement history which have long puzzled prehistorians. Some discussion of shoreline movements in the last fifty years and in the future in Fiji concludes the paper.

Progradation

Tectonic uplift

Neotectonics

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Citations (45)

Alluvial charcoal in the Sigatoka Valley, Viti Levu Island, Fiji

Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology (2004)

Patrick D. Nunn Roselyn Kumar

Charcoal

River valley

Alluvial fan

Settlement (finance)

Alluvial plain

Alluvial soils

10.1016/j.palaeo.2004.07.011

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Times of sand: Sedimentary history and archaeology at the Sigatoka Dunes, Fiji

Geoarchaeology (2006)

Atholl Anderson Richard G. Roberts William Dickinson Geoffrey Clark David V. Burley

The orthodox archaeological sequence at the Sigatoka Dunes site (VL 16/1) in Fiji proposes three phases of occupation spanning Fijian prehistory, each associated with a period of dune stability. It has been taken as the standard model of Fijian prehistory for more than 30 years. Recently, however, it has been argued that there is no stratigraphic support for three discrete levels and that the occupation history was fragmented, complex, and continuous within a volatile dune system. We present new data, from optical and radiocarbon dating, to argue that a three-phase model, although somewhat more complex in detail, remains the most robust interpretation of site history. The longest stable phase (Level 2) began 2500–2300 cal yr B.P. and is possibly associated with relatively low ENSO frequency. Substantial sand dune accumulation began after ˜1300 cal yr B.P. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Sand dune stabilization

Sequence (biology)

Sequence Stratigraphy

10.1002/gea.20094

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Citations (45)

Vanished Islands and Hidden Continents in the World’s Oceans

University of Hawaii Press eBooks (2008)

Patrick D. Nunn

Abstract This chapter describes some of the reasons why people are interested in vanished islands and hidden continents. Islands have become a convenient vehicle for parading utopian systems or, whether or not in the guise of continents, as places where polities of enviable order and achievement once existed and may reappear. While it is difficult to second-guess the intentions of everyone who has used islands in this way, but it is plausible to suppose that for continental dwellers, whose conceptions of islands may owe most to imagination and least to experience, islands are often, on account of their boundedness and their effective unattainability, places of refuge, inviolate places, where life is at once simpler and safer. The chapter concludes by acknowledging the obvious dangers in writing a book such as this. The author argues that lot of the information in this book could be misrepresented and used in ways that are far from appropriate or intended. He asks readers to read not just the details of the examples in this book but also the numerous caveats.

10.21313/hawaii/9780824832193.003.0011

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Peripherality as key to understanding opportunities and needs for effective and sustainable climate-change adaptation: a case study from Viti Levu Island, Fiji

Climate and Development (2019)

Isoa Korovulavula Patrick D. Nunn Roselyn Kumar Teddy Fong

A study of various defining aspects of 11 rural communities along the cross-island road on Viti Levu (Fiji) shows diversity attributable largely to their peripherality, proxied by distance along this 200-km long road. Strong relationships are found between peripherality and both community size and the dependency ratio (percent of young/old dependents), as well as traditional medicine usage (and percent traditional healers), and autonomous community coping after disasters. Two measures are calculated to capture community autonomy, both of which proxy peripherality.Results show the usefulness of peripherality as a way of measuring community diversity in developing-country contexts. Peripherality also correlates with community autonomy, more-peripheral communities having greater autonomous coping abilities/capacity than near-core (less-peripheral) communities. Results also show the unhelpfulness of the default ‘“one-size-fits-all’” approach to communities implicit in many external assistance programs. Yet while traditional coping in such communities may not be able to fully overcome future climate-change challenges, the conservation of the traditional knowledge underpinning this should be encouraged, mainly because of the likelihood that external funding for future adaptation in such communities will be inadequate. The best hope for effective and sustainable adaptation to future climate change, focused on sustaining livelihoods, lies in strengthening autonomous community coping.

10.1080/17565529.2019.1701972

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Citations (28)

Lithospheric flexure in southeast Fiji consistent with the tectonic history of islands in the Yasayasa Moala

Australian Journal of Earth Sciences (1995)

Patrick D. Nunn

The islands of the Yasayasa Moala (Moala, Totoya and Matuku) in southeast Fiji (southwest Pacific) are all oceanic central volcanoes active 8.4–3.5 Ma with contrasting post‐volcanic histories. Moala exhibits a series of three contrasting fault systems; the two earliest (Pliocene?) are associated with cross‐island rifts, the youngest (Pleistocene?) is strike‐slip. One low‐level emerged shoreline (averaging 1.2 m above mean sea level) is visible on Moala; traces of higher ones occur. Totoya has a well‐developed low‐level shoreline that emerges a similar amount. While Moala and Totoya are comprised solely of subaerial volcanics, Matuku has pillow lavas which indicate about 120 m of emergence relative to Moala and Totoya. The Yasayasa Moala borders a prominent ocean trench, believed to have been a plate boundary which actively accommodated convergence of the Indo‐Australian and Fiji (?) plates during most of the Late Cenozoic. The diverse tectonic history of the associated islands may be associated with lithospheric flexure. Moala, the closest island to the trench, is believed to have ascended and descended the flexure already; its fault systems developed as the result of associated extension and compression. Matuku, the next closest, is believed to be at the crest of the flexure. Totoya has yet to ascend the flexure. This study emphasizes the point that studies of oceanic island tectonics can aid the understanding of the geotectonic history of poorly known regions such as the southwest Pacific.

Pacific Plate

10.1080/08120099508728209

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Citations (8)

Plate boundary tectonics and oceanic island geomorphology

Patrick D. Nunn

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Citations (2)