THEORIES BEHIND THE MARQUESAN BREADFRUIT CULTURAL COMPLEX

Introduction

While shell scrapers and peelers are ethnographically linked to the rise and dominance of breadfruit, little representation has been shown in archaeological data sets (Suggs 1961:181– 2). However, a sampling of shell scrapers and peelers can act as a line of evidence for the rise of breadfruit because of their: variety of species utilised, initial accessibility, marks of use-wear, and a lack of durability. A lack of durability in materials generally results in large numbers of discards and overused and broken pieces in the stratigraphic layers. When people colonised islands across Polynesia, familiar shells that matched or mimicked previously used species would have been the first tested before designating the best tools for each task. Theoretically, researchers should be able to find plenty of examples of these shell artefacts and can pose questions about them.

The approach a researcher chooses will change the focus that a research project will take. In this paper, I will explore three approaches that could be used to direct a researcher toward answering various research questions on the topic presented above. These questions would be more specific and directed by the major themes that are displayed in each of the outlined approaches. Those included will be the Marxist, Human Behavioural Ecology, and Agricultural Intensification approaches. In each section I will have a short synopsis of what each theoretical process focuses on, then an instance and exanimation from where it has been implemented previously, and then how it can be utilised within my work. This includes what questions each would lead me to ask, how I would answer them, and then the pitfalls and questions that are left unanswered. Finally, I will determine what sort of approach I prefer to utilise in my research going forward. The thesis question that I am addressing is: can an increased amount of specialised Cypraea shell tools during the Expansion through the Classic Periods’ stratigraphic layers be indicative of the increased reliance on breadfruit agroforestry subsistence? The determinating factors will also connect to more than one of the approaches that I will address because none of these ideas exists in a vacuum. 

Research Background

 It is now generally agreed that the Marquesas Islands were settled between 1000 and 1300 CE, though specific dates are unclear due to the continuing debate over the accuracy of dated materials and features. Much of the oldest dates came from the charcoal of breadfruit wood and candlenut in sites that were often within 400m of the bay (Allen and McAlister 2010; Hubert 2014; Hubert and Allen 2020: 10). During the Settlement and Developmental periods, after the earliest lowland settlements, the Polynesians domesticated the surrounding forests by utilising slash-and-burn techniques, widely altering the area from the native flora. Small patches of these areas still exist closer to the coast but were originally fully cultivated in the inland areas with trees, shrubs, and root plants (Addison 2006; Allen and Ussher 2013; Hubert 2014; Hubert and Allen 2020). 

The increased variability of weather patterns as periods of drought and higher yields of rainfall connect to El Niño & La Niña in the 14th (Expansion) and 17th centuries (Classic) (Sinoto 1966, 1970). The flooding and high erosion rates led to destabilised upland vegetation and increased sedimentation in lowlands (Allen 2009; Handy 1923:7–9; Robarts 1974; Cobb et al. 2003) making growing herbaceous crops and livestock husbandry difficult. In the Development through the Classic periods, the breadfruit tree was increasingly useful in its ability to grow in the wide range of terrains that exist in the Marquesas, from coastal lowlands to steep hillsides at high elevations. The widespread planting of trees acted to stabilise, enrich the soils and heightened harvest yields by lengthening the fruiting season and the increased ability for animal husbandry (Kirch & Yen 1982; Latinis 2000:50; Crook et al. 2007:140). The increasingly stratified and monumental Marquesan societies prevalent in the Classic period could intensify breadfruit production due to the high volume coming from each harvest, while not needing as high a labour cost as other crops. With social and economic differentiation, social processes of holding ceremonial feasts meant that people could store the fruit long-term and of making mā (fermented breadfruit paste) with reliable food stores (Handy 1923:183; Millerstrom 2001:247).

In the Expansion phase, vertical cultivation farming was beneficial for balancing the reduction of forests and the increase of erosion caused by deforestation and increasing crop yields per season while still actively engaging in human-centric niche construction (Huebert & Allen 2020). This also granted new settlements’ expanding influence on the changing fishing habitats and drastically falling bird population, possibly due to native habitat loss, based on faunal remain analysis (Dye 1996; Huebert and Allen 2020; Leach et al. 1997; Leach and Sinoto 2000; Rolett 1998; Steadman 2006:239–248; Steadman and Rolett 1996). These changes in the ecosystem at large led to the drastic rise of arboriculture and the major shifting of cultural lifeways dating to between 1400-1650 CE (Allen 2009, 2010) according to the radiocarbon dating of wood charcoal and pollen from earth-ovens, hearths, and post-holes (Huebert 2014; Hubert and Allen 2016: 81-3; Millerstrom & Coil 2008: 334-5). 

Breadfruit production further intensified in the Classic with higher volumes coming from each harvest, while still maintaining a lower labour cost when compared to the other crops, because of the breadfruit trees’ ability to grow in the wide range of terrains that exist in the Marquesas. From coastal lowlands to steep hillsides and at high elevations, the deliberate planting of tree crops also acted to stabilise and enrich the soil while heightening harvest yields by lengthening the fruiting season and acting to increase the areas available for animal husbandry (Kirch & Yen 1982; Latinis 2000:50). In this period the people who had surplus were able to store the fruit long-term and participated in the making of mā (fermented breadfruit paste) giving those same households reliable food stores and a leading role in social processes, such as holding ceremonial feasts wherein the fruit would first be processed by the community (Hubert 2014). These societal procedures ran cyclically to the increasing social and economic differentiation demonstrated by the Classic’s stratified and monument building societies (Handy 1923:183; Millerstrom 2001:247).

Current research doesn’t provide a definite date for the beginning of massive breadfruit agroforestry because of a lack of remains from the herbaceous cultigens along with the Cypraea shell peelers that are ethnographically believed to be the main tools, in addition to poi pounders, which were used in processing (Handy 1923; Suggs 1961; Rolett 1989). The other aspect of research that has not been solidified is that the Cypraea peelers have not adequately been identified as only being used for breadfruit, especially because not many examples of the artefacts have been found within the stratigraphy (Allen and Ussher 2013; Huebert and Allen 2020).

Marquesan peelers have two holes drilled into the dorsal side then sharpened and the ventral (the base) is broken off. After peeling, the innards are pounded out into a paste with a poi pounder. These tools have been stylized across the spectrum, ranging from very plain to extremely decorated, with the latter being dated to the later periods like the Classic and are generally assumed to be prestige items. The last aspect of the process is to wrap the paste in leaves and leave it, wrapped in coconut leaves and buried in a pit for 2-3 years (Rolett 1989). These mā pits come in a variety of sizes, from an individual family or a local community to the massive elite pits, which were 10 meters deep and lay behind fortified walls and were backed by the highest mountains at the valley’s head (Rolett 1989).

Marxist

Researchers using the Marxist approach focus on the existence of the materials as more relevant than structural ideas though not necessarily the goods themselves. The control of material culture is what the societal structure is based around and inferences are made and conclusions are drawn.  The background of who has access to the resources and who has control over means of production and how they implement their power within a society are the driving forces behind questions utilising the Marxist approach. In the Earle & Spriggs (2015) article, on the Marxist approach in Polynesian prehistory, there is a focus on finding the economic bottlenecks, the accessibility, and the various economic and political power structures that occurred in the Lapita Cultural Complex during Oceanic prehistory. Bottlenecks are created when work is specialised to such a degree that only small numbers of people carry out a certain task or can create a specialised piece of material culture. By focusing on the materials more than on individual people, the artefacts’ chaîne de opératoire becomes an important overarching theme. The “life” of the tool can be traced back to its beginning, its production or collection, and the economic background can be followed for economic accessibility, with any signs of bottlenecks, trade, and the costs of labour. For both the shell tools and the breadfruit plants a researcher needs to ask; who owns the materials or the location where someone could collect them, as well as who owns the means of production.

To be a strong functioning and productive workforce people need to be able to choose what they want to do, and whether they are capable of leaving the area if leadership or food availability became unacceptable (Earl and Spriggs 2015). According to Suggs (1961), to build monumental community projects there must be a “sizable, well-organized labour force, based on a highly productive economy” with “the food surplus necessary to support [it]”. In the Marquesas, this surplus came in part from the huge amounts of fermented mā paste that was kept in communal storage pits (Handy 1923; Suggs 1961; Rolett 1989; Kirch 1973). With the switch to arboriculture, labour costs are much lower than with shifting cultivation so more surplus could be provided but the production required fewer people and/or less time.

Like the Lapita before them, the people colonising Central Eastern Polynesia had prestige-good systems (Spriggs 2020: 181). Friedman’s Oceanic model, based on the Lapita political economy has four necessary components as well as the prior existence of a political hierarchy: 

• Generalised exchange systems

• Monopoly over prestige-goods imports that are necessary for the reproduction of local kinship groups

• Asymmetric kinship group structures

• Asymmetric societal and political dualism.

(Friedman 1981:281 in Spriggs 2020:193; Earle and Spriggs 2015).

If these political systems already existed, we could use this approach to track how the demographic changes altered the hierarchy and the need and use of such required food and economic resources. 

Demographic changes

It is unclear which occurred first, the switch to arboriculture or the massive population increase because they seemed to have happened in the same centuries. But as time progressed people spread out across the islands and divided into groups based on which valet they had settled in. If, however, we follow Friedman’s model from 1981, the hierarchical group structure with a chief would have already existed because the highest tiers of the society claimed the backs of the valleys for the tohua (monumental structures for ceremonial and elite residential complexes). Even with the chiefs of individual valleys focusing their attention on their particular localities, raiding parties were often sent to the neighbouring area (Kirch 2020). This regional competition for resources was not seen as a battle for political authority and there is no evidence of a king in the Marquesas, nor one per island (Kirch, 2020). Chiefs ruled within their valley, and that was all. Warriors were also part of the elite class because warfare was such a normal occurrence, warriors were venerated and decorated with elaborate (often full-bodied) tattoos. This hierarchy then leads to the question, for the Marquesas, ‘who takes, or is given, the power of access to the resources?’

The control of the land and the novel forests that stand upon them is thought to have gone to the families or kinship communities that lived/live on it. The largest forested areas would have belonged to the richest families, the chiefs and the priests, and behind the fortified stone walls at the back of the valley sit the largest mā pits, some being 10 meters deep with the most protection (Handy 1923; Suggs 1961; Rolett 1989). The smaller plots of land for novel forests lined the steep mountainous walls of the valleys of the island’s interior. Because of the risk that comes from the environmental aspects, such as unpredictable rainfall, the Marquesans use the buffering mechanisms of mobility, storage, and trade to serve as risk management (Addison 2006). They were worked on by the class of common people who have their own smaller familial ulu pits (Kirch, 2020). Many/most of the breadfruit trees belonged to the people who cultivated them within their homesteads. Families had their own land, agroforests, and their mā pits to preserve food in times of trouble. Because everyone takes part in the community activities for processing the breadfruit, the knowledge and skills to do the production and to create the proper tools are regularly passed down and thus do not have a bottleneck. Similarly, neither would the kin-based access to the ulu pit land and the possibility of collecting the fermenting breadfruit if it is needed (Kirch 2020). This accessibility also comes into play with risk management, because if the common people don’t have access to the resources that they saved for hard times, there is no point in putting in costly labour. 

The Marxist approach would ask who the risk management benefits the most. The largest and most defended ulu pits were in the backs of the valleys, where raiding parties could not easily reach them as they lay within the fortress walls (Kirch 2020). Leaders would hold feasting events at their tohua on special occasions to demonstrate the power they can wield among their people and this would be an occasion to share the fermented breadfruit (Kirch 2020). Especially following the pattern of simpler planting strategies and risk management in fermenting the crop, the breadfruit quickly became the main staple food crop in the Marquesas Islands and the specialised tools developed right alongside.

Tools In the Marquesas

Questions based on Marxist theory would not be about the individual study of artefacts found, but where they are being found and the differentiation in the amount or quality of the tools found within different classes of society. As the evidence for class differences has already been well recorded, researchers can use the approach to focus on how these systems that were already in place shaped the culture. 

When Ha’atuatua was studied by Suggs in 1957-1958 he found the late Lapita plainware pottery sherds along with a wide array of portable artefacts (Suggs 1961). One of the most valuable pieces used in previous research and dating is the jabbing fish hook because of the experimentation that occurred in the earlier phases of island settlement before its dominance over all other styles by the classic (Rolett 1989, 1998; Leach et al 2000; Richards et al 2009). The stylistic changes answer questions with a Marxist framework because the limits of product accessibility come through the individuals’ ability and freedom to try new things, and the materials are only possible to create with access to raw materials. Different from the islands and atolls the colonists sailed from, the majority of the island coastlines in the Marquesas have no reefs, let alone lagoons, and new fishing strategies needed to be established. After a time of experimenting with fishing hooks of various materials and stylistic shapes, the jabbing hook was seen to work the best for deeper water and the style monopolised the products. There was likely not a restriction on who could make them, but if a few people were to specialise in crafting them and then traded their wears, over time the pieces and the knowledge of how to best craft them could have created a bottleneck (Earle and Spriggs 2015).

The Marquesan breadfruit peelers, like the specialised fish hooks, demonstrated a change in the design. In the original Ha’atuatua dune site, Suggs (1961) described a shell with one hole drilled on the dorsal edge as a breadfruit peeler similar to the pieces Spennemann (1993) described from the Marshall Islands. The Classic sites have supplied artefacts also identified as breadfruit peelers made specifically from Cypreae shells, but drilled with two holes, one near either end of the dorsal crest and then sharpened along the interior edges (Sinoto, 2013). These varieties have been well documented ethnographically and are in the style that is commonly found within the Marquesas Island archipelago (Rolett 1989; Huebert and Allen 2020). When the growing population moved into the valleys and breadfruit became more of a staple crop, the increased workload due to prestige feasts could have led to a style that works better for the breadfruit crop. However, there is not enough information on these changes nor on complete examples of the tool to yet record a definitive cultural alteration, whether by bottlenecks or general experimentation. 

Human Behavioural Ecology

As a subsection of evolutionary theory, Human Behavioural Ecology (HBE), follows the assumptions that human behaviour, traits, and life histories are adapted to the ecological conditions and that those conditions can be used to make predictions about the “fitness consequences” for multiple generations (Nettle et al 2013). The goals of this approach are, according to Broughton and O’Connell, to understand, reconstruct, and explain past human behaviour (1999). One of the theories often used within this is the Optimal Foraging Theory, which assumes that a species will follow the most productive foraging strategy when weighing time and energy costs versus food benefits as energy for the future. In terms of anthropology and archaeology, this will include the tools that are functionally produced for a particular task (Broughton and O’Connell 1990). The behaviours of humans moving between new islands can fit within this framework because of the cultural adjustments that are made, as well as the new skills that are learned which can be traced back to the differences in their interactions with the new environments.

These interactions and differentiation are developed by selections of traits that are made by humans upon the environment. For example, looking at the Artocarpus altilis, a species of domesticated breadfruit, the settlers of Oceania selected for desired traits; surviving in brackish water, generating little to no seeds, large fruits, and fruiting more for longer periods during a season (Zerega 2006, Elevitch et al. 2014). Once these traits were selected by the cultivators, purposeful breeding in Melanesia, west Polynesia, along with a hybrid in Micronesia later gave rise to the A. altilis and was spread across east Polynesia as a staple crop and became a well-documented part of everyday life (Zerega 2006; Jones et al. 2011).

The domestication of the breadfruit brings up a more specific aspect of HBE: Niche Construction theory, which thinks of human populations in biological terms. Humans are creating their niches on these islands in a variety of ways to fit the ecosystem best. As settlers continue to move onto new islands and into new landscapes in Oceania, the major constant is the idea of the transported landscapes (Kirch 1982; Quintus 2019; Huebert and Allen 2020). “Matthews et al (2014: 247) suggests two criteria to test to determine the presence of NC and a third to determine if there were effects on evolutionary processes” (Huebert and Allen 2020:2). 

• An organism significantly modifies environmental conditions,

• Those modifications influence selection pressures on organisms,

• The modifications lead to evolutionary responses in at least one population

The transported landscapes that the Oceanic colonists used to fit this mould, both for the humans themselves and the organisms that they bring along. For the human element, they applied slash and burn on the native brush and planted new crops. This loss of habitat was devastating for various species of birds, land snails, and insects. These native species would also have to compete with the new invasive species that were either purposefully carried aboard or stowed away for the voyage, leading to either evolutionary adaptation or extirpation (Kirch 1973; Yen 1973; Rolett 1989). 

Using HBE in the Marquesas

Colonists in the Marquesas used their transported landscapes, which included both plant and animal domesticates, to purposefully adapt an entire landscape to be a domesticated novel ecosystem (Quintus 2019). For the human populations colonising the Oceanic geographic region in general and the Marquesas Islands specifically, this behavioural adaptation is shown archaeologically as developing of the land to create a niche suitable for them (Kirch 1982, Millerstrom and Coil 2008, Quintus 2019). For each ecological system, the actions and future interactions of the people had to adapt based on the availability of the necessary resources and their challenges (Kirch 1994). In the Marquesas, the initial settlers had to reframe their traditional subsistence strategy because these islands are volcanic high islands without reefs or lagoons unlike what can be found on the islands further west (Millerstrom and Coil 2008). This follows more succinctly with HBE as fishing strategies and the fish hook shapes were altered over time, specialising on the larger fish of deepwater areas and shell collection practices were varied from those carried out on the other islands and atolls (Rolett, 1989). And without coastal plains, agroforestry was focused on within the valleys and along the often steep mountainsides (Rolett 1989).

On the high, steep mountains it is harder to find places to grow plants with regularity. Agroforests would generally be grown on the valley floors, with the novel forests at higher elevations being harvested on a later rotation because the fruits ripen later in the season (Zerega et al. 2006). Humans domesticating plants, specifically the breadfruit, and bringing them within their transported landscape allowed the people of the Marquesas Islands to create a specialized niche. This specialized niche was one in which although shallow water seafood was not as readily available as on other islands, the lack of which played an important role in the development of a new subsistence strategy and economic processes. To use HBE and Niche Construction in the Marquesas for the original shell proxy question I would have to find either the remnants of the breadfruit ‘pits’, the remains of a midden or individual Cypraea shells, and some variation in the remains of native plants and/or animals between the time before and the time after the colonists arrived and introduced the new landscape.  Xing et al (2012) provides an example of this using the appearance of domesticated breadfruit with the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AM fungi) that was carried on the crops’ roots as a mutualist relationship. As the environments change, so do the reactions and relationships between the species that create their niches. This further affects the soils and other floral and faunal life within that environment (Xing et al. 2012).

Looking at the choices of people as they moved into the valleys, only certain portions of the full population could comfortably fit into the allocated regions. These demographics would most often be divided along kinship lines with the mountains separating between groups. The raiding parties were not fighting for political power, but instead generally used gathering resources as the driver, the ranking of individual households could likely be extrapolated by the layout of the housing pattern and the size of the kinship novel forests, although this research has not yet been done. This economic aspect of human behaviour and niche construction is paralleled in the Marxist approach when questioning the amount of protection a family was afforded from the chief and warriors, the accessibility of the terrain itself, the availability of fertile soil plots, along with the development of a productive labour force. What determines the spatial distribution of human forager groups?

Agricultural Cultivation Intensification

 The Agricultural Intensification approach focuses on how and why intensification happens, which is defined as the “addition of inputs up to the economic margin” and lines up with actors acting logically in their use of labour, capital, and skill, of which are all interlaced (Brookfield 1972:31). Agricultural Intensification arises with “either a shortening in the fallow length or permanent agricultural complexes that allow ‘continuous cropping’ ” (Kirch 1994:5). This leads to a “higher yield per unit area” and therefore generally means more labour time (Kirch 1994). There is a range of different paths a society can take when intensifying its cultivation structures that can be affected by the crops chosen, the land acreage used, or the methods and layout planned (Brookfield 1972). These different varieties lead to questions for this approach: What are the different pathways and/or methods involved in a certain area's intensification? What is the prime initiator? Does the population growth lead to the need for a food surplus or does a surplus lead to a growth in population? 

Looking at agriculture in the Pacific, dryland or wetland cultivation can be utilised on the same island at the same time. This differentiation will depend on the environment and climate in which the crops are grown. The same outside influence fits natural versus artificial irrigation. If the plot is in a wetland marsh or on a hillside with plenty of natural rainfall a community may not need to develop irrigation. On the other hand, a community that is vulnerable to drought periods or builds terraces on mountain slopes or in marshes to prevent their crop drowning may require that infrastructure. Additionally, another aspect is what goes into the switch between shifting cultivation and full-time agriculture or agroforestry. Other than the increase in labour, skill, and material in active cropping and harvesting, they are needed for planning locations and the best way to fill the plots of land as optimally as possible.

How to use in the Marquesas

In the Marquesas one would look at wet- versus dryland cultivation, here they can use both, depending on where on the island the crops are planted. According to Lincoln and Ladefoged (2014), breadfruit is grown in dryland agroecological environments. Like their example in Kona, Hawai‘i, breadfruit in the Marquesas is farmed the same, both examples needed the rainwater the support trees. However, because the Marquesan breadfruit gets less rain than their Hawaiian counterparts, so to make sure the plants have enough water, one could look at if or how they are irrigated. 

Because arboriculture is already defined as an intensification strategy that is paired with the preserving of the starch pastes in pits, it solidly fits as a justifiable approach in the Marquesas (Kirch 1994: 5). Therefore, research in this area should search for material culture found which includes the tools produced and/or used in a particular location and the floral or faunal evidence that changed in the short time that the agricultural process took place to answer an intensification-based question. In the Marquesas Islands, this includes recognising more tools, more pollens, charcoal from burning, and more processed foodstuffs. Then the line of questioning could turn to why the population would need this infrastructure, where it overlaps with HBE or a Marxist approach.

Discussion

Turning the attention to some of the questions that would help implement these different approaches into my continuing research are:

• Who has the access to the breadfruit forests? The Cypraea shell? The Poi pounders? The mā pits?

• How were the Cypraea shell and poi pounder made into tools? 

• What was the environment like before and after intensification?

• How did the human population choose where and how to plant their novel forests and how did that affect the communities?

To determine what type of site and the chronology through Radiocarbon dating or Uranium/ Thorium dating (specifically using coral). And the other archaeological cultural material that helps me to date and answers these questions include: botanical remains of breadfruit, soil collections with other floral or faunal remains, shell peelers (and/or drills to make the peelers), and poi pounders with examples of features being hearths, middens, and mā pits.

One should use a combination of all of these different approaches to find these answers because they overlap at multiple points but can cover aspects that the others don’t. As the material shows through the chaîne de opératoire we may be able to use proxies for materials that are no longer available. Data collection and examination show who has the resources, who does the work, and where prestige competition is in play. How people, who have freedom of choice, would have been affected when and how the subsistence strategy changed as farming practices intensified. They had to learn and implement new techniques and changed their behaviours and the surrounding environment based on those changes. The costs and benefits depended on the outcomes of the change and influence future practices, both in the human community and in the niche that they reside in.

This combination leads to adding the influence from the Annales school would include the cooperation with multiple disciplines such as marine biology, anthropology, and environmental sciences. Marine biology is needed to understand where the shells come from, an important aspect of the Marxist chaîne de opératiore. Anthropology is essential because oral history ethnography is how one knows what sort of shells to look for. And a myriad of other environmental sciences to understand how the ecosystem functions, how changes are made and then influencing the alterations in the future. As well as the focus on longue durée, as a sort of extension of the chaîne de opértoire to recognise the Marquesas and all other Oceanic Islands as ecosystems that existed far longer than humans had and having that evolution through time continues to affect niches being altered. 

Some Pitfalls

With each approach, problems can be uncovered and pieces of the puzzle left out. When looking at the Marxist approach, human agency is not well represented until recent papers. In HBE humans do not act optimally and what happens when short term fitness is deemed more important than the long term. It is difficult to make an overlying theory for all hominids and is often seen as deterministic. HBE can often stand apart from the rest of BE (Nettle et al 2013), and according to West et al (2011), human-focused studies don’t often pull in data from other species or other systems. An important takeaway from Agricultural Intensification is the need to adopt a wider view of work in cultural ecology (Brookfield 1972). In this theoretical perspective as well, the humans that are actively involved with farming are assumed to be acting and farming with optimal efficiency.

Conclusion 

For this paper I put forward the question, can an increase of Cypraea shell peelers in the Marquesan archaeological record be indicative of the rise of breadfruit as a staple food and economic crop? To examine possible answers to this question I explored three approaches that could be used to direct a researcher toward answering various research questions on the topic presented. These questions would be more specific and directed by the major themes that are displayed in each of the outlined approaches. The approaches included were Marxist, Human Behavioural Ecology with Niche Construction Theory, and Agricultural Intensification.

As of now, it is impossible to answer the question that I put forth based on a lack of data from the excavated sites. To prime the research questions, however, one should use all of these approaches to determine the full story because of the effect that the rapid intensification of breadfruit cultivation had on both society and culture, as well as the environment. This led to increases in the availability of breadfruit and tools along with the increasing economic importance of community processing and exhibition feasting. The choices by people to live in these particular areas and farm these plants and the choice of tools used, the life cycles of these tools, and their effect on history. Additionally, pulling in experts from multiple disciplines rounds out a knowledge base to fill in any gaps. All while following the Community and Indigenous Archaeological directions and insights. It, therefore, would be irresponsible to leave out important parts of the story to leave out particular theoretical approaches, especially because there can be issues found with each approach and ideas are left out.

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