Presented in person and online, details below.

The Mangareva Islands of French Polynesia are a remote archipelago located about 1600km southeast of Tahiti. In 1834, French Catholic priests and lay brothers from the order of SacrésCœurs de Jésus et Marie arrived in the islands to establish the first permanent mission in the region. In addition to building mission infrastructure including schools, churches, a cathedral, and other structures to support their activities, the missionaries permanently altered the nature of everyday domestic life in Mangareva. Presbytères or priest’s houses were constructed in association with churches on the islands of Mangareva, Akamaru, Aukena, and Taravai. In addition, ordinary Mangarevans built dozens of ‘are po‘atu, small stone cottages to replace the traditional buildings of wood and thatch. This talk focuses on the results of excavations carried out in 2023-2024 that documented many of the remaining stone houses. These were constructed between the 1840s and 1870s, though some were occupied for over 100 years, including a handful of buildings still occupied today. In addition to recording building techniques, which used materials and methods imported from Europe but adapted to the local environment, the excavations recovered a sample of material culture that reflect the increasingly globalised economy of Polynesia over the course of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. 

Speaker bio:
James Flexner is Associate Professor in Historical Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia. From 2022-2026 he is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, working on the project “Archaeologies of community and colonialism in Oceania.” His research focuses on historical archaeology and landscape archaeology in the Pacific Islands and the east coast of Australia, with his recent projects spanning Vanuatu, the Mangareva Islands, tropical Queensland, and southeast Tasmania. 

Join Zoom Meeting: https://anu.zoom.us/j/89310466848?pwd=KwyXKZpSFLBSTbaCCLQGyKH52eLNbo.1
Meeting ID: 893 1046 6848
Password: 858113

In-person: Room 3.03/3.04, Sir Roland Wilson building 120, McCoy Cct, ANU.

This seminar is part of the School of Archaeology and Anthropology's 2025 Centre for Archaeological Research (CAR) Seminar series