Faunal collapse, landscape change and settlement history in Remote Oceania Atholl Anderson Abstract Substantial anthropogenic environmental change occurred in Remote Oceania following the rst arrival of people at 3000 BP and their spread throughout the region by 700 BP. It included numer- ous faunal extinctions, widespread deforestation and the erosion and re-deposition of sediments, to which are attributed various consequences for cultural development. The issue considered here is whether an explanation of anthropogenic change could extend to variations in settlement history between Remote Oceanic islands. Most of those were inhabited continuously, especially in the older settled area, but in East Polynesia settlement is thought to have declined on several islands and it was abandoned in many others. Consideration of the type and scale of anthropogenic changes indi- cates no correlation with variations in settlement history. Anthropogenic changes might be regarded as constants of the settlement process. Late Holocene climatic patterns, ecological complexity and isolation with its effect on the availability of subsistence choices, may have been more in uential variables. Keywords Remote Oceania; faunal collapse; landscape transformation; settlement history; isolation; subsistence choices; ecological complexity; aridity. Introduction Dramatic environmental changes accompanied the rst arrival of people in Remote Oceania (Fig. 1), but within the prehistoric era, beginning at 3000 BP, these changes did not constitute, for them, an ‘ecodisaster’. The ‘dreadful syncopation’ (Martin and Stead- man 1999: 50) of human arrival and faunal extinction on Oceanic islands certainly created a biological catastrophe. Yet, if this was ecodisaster measured by the loss of island avifau- nas, in particular, it was at the same time a kind of ‘ecotriumph’ measured by the success of human colonization. The rst imperative of colonization is to survive by creating a viable population. Overkill of ightless birds and other large animals was the optimal World Archaeology Vol. 33(3): 375–390 Ancient Ecodisasters © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd ISSN 0043-8243 print/1470-1375 online DOI: 10.1080/00438240120107431