ABSTRACT
Few other regions of the world exhibit so little evidence of urbanisation in the pre-colonial era. Throughout the Pacific the population lived in villages or scattered hamlets, and there were very few central places of any kind where regional trading might have occurred. The most extensive trading networks, such as the kula ring of the Trobriand Islands (PNG) and the ‘stone-age trade’ of the New Guinea highlands, failed to result in central places (Hughes 1977; Allen 1982). There were no significant functional specialisations beyond village level, nor were there traditional state structures, as existed in southeast Asia, but a proliferation of tenuously linked small-scale societies. Even in Polynesia, where more complex hierarchical systems existed, there were no townships; elaborate ceremonial and burial grounds had no counterparts in daily life. Only the larger islands of Micronesia and Tonga provide evidence of urbanisation before European contact.
