The archaeological landscapes of Polynesia are an immense store of social and ecological knowledge, and this book examines how that knowledge was linked to agricultural change.

Polynesia is often viewed as culturally and environmentally homogeneous. This popular image is far from the truth, and this book explores that diversity through the lens of the agricultural landscapes of the region. Using an archaeological framework, it tracks how people migrated across the region successfully, bringing the crops and animals on which they would rely, and how their agricultural economies developed once they arrived. The communities that settled these islands not only adapted to diverse environments and ecosystems, but also engineered their landscapes to ensure long-term survival. This engineering was conditioned by the constraints and opportunities within environments recognized by generations of farmers. Farmers made decisions about how best to ensure access to food and resources, both for themselves and to meet the demands of a growing population that was divorced from everyday food production.

This book highlights the complexity of agricultural landscapes in Polynesia, integrating the physical remnants of agriculture, the daily lives of those who worked fields, gardens, and plots, and the social groups in which those farmers were embedded. These archaeological landscapes, produced through centuries of applied ecological knowledge and influenced by social relationships, persist across the islands as resources for use.