Evidence of people living on Taveuni before volcanic activity
EVIDENCE of people living on Taveuni before volcanic activity had completely stopped has been discovered by two American anthropologists.
Mr and Mrs Everett Frost of the University of Oregon were conducting research on the island for a year when the discovery was made.
This, according to an article in The Fiji Times on August 7, 1969.
The report said that on the south end of the island, at the old unoccupied village of Navolivoli, they found broken pieces of pottery on an old habitation surface which was buried by about 12 feet of volcanic ash, believed to have come from one of several inactive volcanic cones on the south end of Taveuni.
The buried pottery was found during excavations of the old village.
Fragments of burned wood collected from around the base of a pot — probably crushed by the falling ash — were analysed by Dr Kunihiko Kigoshi of Gakushuin University in Japan and revealed that the time of pre-volcanic occupation at Navolivoli was about 100 BC to 50 AD.
Other fragments of charcoal removed from a fire hearth excavated in an old house foundation on the later, post volcanic fortified level of Navolivoli, showed that the later volcanic occupation of the village occurred about 1160 Ad to 1320 AD.
Charcoal excavated from fire hearths on two other fortified sites on southern Taveuni also showed they were occupied at about the same time that volcanic action took place at Navolivoli.
The couple also discovered that a group of seven villages joined by a fortifying network of ditches and causeways at Vatuwiri estate on Taveuni, dated from 1160 AD to 1320 AD.
Another village similarly enclosed on Wainiyakau estate dated from 1140 AD to 1290 AD
Geologists had believed that the last volcanic action was about 1.1 million years ago.
Navolivoli is one of several old villages on Taveuni that the Frosts excavated as part of a research program supported by the United States National Science Foundation, to investigate Fijian fortified villages.
Their research was based on an archaeological survey of Taveuni which was carried out in 1966 and 1967 by the Fiji Museum, under the supervision of its former director, Bruce Palmer.
The museum survey located, mapped and described more than 200 old Fijian villages and brought to attention the fact that Taveuni had an unusually large number and wide variety of fortified villages.
Mr Frost said that it was this information and other data made available by the Fiji Museum that aroused his interest in Fijian archaeology.