9.1 Period Characteristics The Pacific, 700-1980 CE

Spread across approximately 25,000 islands, the Pacific region is one of the most expansive and remote 🗺️ places studied in AP Art History. Because of this unique characteristic, many of its people have not had contact with those living in nearby areas, keeping artistic styles to their islands of origin 🏝️ and not allowing for syncretism (the blending of elements from another region into native art). Be sure to keep this in mind as we go island-hopping across the world's largest ocean. Welcome to the Pacific!

Compared to other places like Europe, the Pacific was not inhabited until much later, anywhere from 700 to 70,000 years ago depending on the island. The people of this area originally lived in Asia and later settled on the islands of Near Oceania (present-day Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands) and Remote Oceania (present-day Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Polynesia) by boat 🛶 Some groups in Polynesia moved even further by continuing to travel to islands on the outskirts of the region, which is now referred to as the Polynesian Migration.

The islands of the Pacific remained untouched by outside powers until American, British, French, German, Chilean, and Japanese expansionism reached the region in the nineteenth century. As a result of this, the native people of the Pacific began to westernize by converting to Christianity ⛪, adopting a more processed diet 🍔, and beginning to speak the language of their colonizers 🗣️ These factors have impacted recent works made in Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia, the Pacific's subregions.