Roger Curtis Green
The following tribute was written by Professor Emeritus Andrew Pawley, of the Australian National University, a colleague of Roger Green, and co-author with him of papers in linguistics and archaeology.
Roger Curtis Green, eminent Pacific prehistorian, died in Auckland on 4 Oct 2009, aged 77. He was probably the most influential figure in the field of Oceanic prehistory over the past 50 years, not only because of his own scholarship (including some 300 publications) but because of his enormous contributions as teacher, mentor and backer (in matters of grant-getting etc) to countless younger scholars and as a mover and shaker. Although best known for his archaeological work in Polynesia and Melanesia, Green also made important contributions to Oceanic historical linguistics and more generally to reconstructing culture history by integrating findings from diverse historical disciplines.
Roger Green was born in New Jersey and grew up in Albuquerque. He did his PhD in Anthropology at Harvard, where Douglas Oliver diverted his research interests from the American Southwest to Polynesia. For much of his career he was based at the University of Auckland, with an interlude at the Bishop Museum and University of Hawaii.
Green’s contributions to Oceanic linguistics were of two different kinds. First, he was an academic entrepreneur and initiator of interdisciplinary projects in which there were archaeological, linguistic, ethnobotanical and other strands. After taking up a lectureship in archaeology at the University of Auckland in 1961 he encouraged Bruce Biggs, then primarily a descriptive linguist and Maori specialist, and Biggs’ student, Andrew Pawley, to get into Polynesian historical linguistics. In 1965 Green, in association with Biggs and Douglas Yen of the Bishop Museum, obtained a large NSF grant for a Polynesian Culture History project. That grant funded the first few years work on POLLEX, the Proto Polynesian Lexicon database, compiled by Biggs and David Walsh. This grew into a monumental etymological dictionary that is still being expanded and refined (now in electronic form, under the wing of Ross Clark).
The NSF grant also supported fieldwork by Biggs and several graduate students to record several little-known Polynesian languages. In 1969 Green organised a pioneering interdisciplinary symposium in Sigatoka, Fiji, in which (among other things) he invited linguists to seek high-order subgroupings within Oceanic and to take the first steps towards reconstructing Proto Oceanic grammar. Another major project led by Green in the 1970s investigated the prehistory of the Southeast Solomons. This funded fieldwork by Christine Cashmore and Peter Lincoln on the languages of the Outer Eastern Islands.
Green’s own publications in Oceanic (chiefly Polynesian) historical linguistics form his second category of contributions. The most important of these are listed below in an appendix (below). In 1966 he published evidence for what has become the accepted subgrouping of Eastern Polynesian languages: there is a Central Eastern group exclusive of Easter Island, and within this, a Marquesic group that includes Hawaiian and a Tahitic group that includes Tahitian, Maori, Rarotongan and Tuamotuan. He subsequently treated the position of Anuta.
He also wrote many works drawing together linguistic, archaeological and ethnographic evidence to reconstructs aspects of the material culture and social organization of the speakers of Oceanic languages who first settled the central Pacific. His most important synthesis is undoubtedly Hawaiki; Ancestral Polynesia: an Essay in Historical Anthropology, co-authored with the archaeologist Pat Kirch. This 370- page book draws heavily on the cognate sets in the POLLEX database to reconstruct the way of life of the Proto Polynesian speech community. It includes chapters on ‘subsistence’, ‘food preparation and cuisine’, ‘material culture’, ‘social and political organization’, and ‘gods, ancestors, seasons and rituals’, as well as on ‘Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit’.
Roger was honoured with many awards, among them membership of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of New Zealand, the Hector Memorial Medal and the Marsden Medal for services to science, and being made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit. He received a 700-page festschrift in 1996. Roger will be greatly missed by colleagues and students who benefited from his generosity of spirit, as well as from his stimulating intellect.
Roger C Green: selected publications on Oceanic historical linguistics and culture history
The following is a list of Roger Green’s most important publications on Oceanic historical linguistics and on the intersection of evidence from linguistics, archaeology and other historical disciplines (the basis of what he called ‘culture history’). As Green published around 300 papers on Oceanic prehistory, a good many of them interdisciplinary in scope, it would be a tall order to list all those that touch on linguistic evidence and I will not try to do so here. (AKP, 10.10.2009)
1966 'Linguistic subgrouping within Polynesia: the implications for prehistoric settlement'. J Polynesian Society 75:6-38
1967 'The immediate origins of the Polynesians'. In Highland, Genevieve, R W Force, A Howard, M Kelly and Y Sinoto (eds), Polynesian Culture History. Essays in Honor of Kenneth P Emory, 215-240. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press
1971 'Anuta’s position in the subgrouping of Polynesian languages'. J Polynesian Society 80:355-370
1973 Pawley, A and Green, R C. 'Dating the dispersal of the Oceanic languages'. Oceanic Linguistics 12:1-67
1981 'Location of the Polynesian homeland: a continuing problem'. In Jim Hollyman and Andrew Pawley (eds), Studies in Pacific Languages and Culture History in Honour of Bruce Biggs,133-158. Auckland: Linguistic Society of New Zealand
1984 Pawley, A and Green, R C. 'The Proto-Oceanic language community', J Pacific History 19:123-146 [reprinted in R Kirk and E Szathmary (eds) Out of Asia: Peopling the Americas and the Pacific, 161-184. Canberra: J Pacific History (1985)]
1987 Kirch P V and Green R C. 'History, phylogeny and evolution in Polynesia', Current Anthropology 28:31-56
1988 'Subgrouping of the Rapanui language of Easter Island and its implications for East Polynesian prehistory'. In C Cristino F P Vargas , R Izaurieta S and R Budd P (eds), First International Congress, Easter Island and East Polynesia. vol 1 Archaeology, pp 37-57. Santiago, Faculdad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Instituto de Estudios, Universidad de Chile
1994 'Archaeological problems with the use of linguistic evidence in reconstruction of rank, status and social organisation in Ancestral Polynesian Society'. In A Pawley and M Ross (eds), Austronesian Terminologies: Continuity and Change, 171-184. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics
1997 'Linguistic, biological and cultural origins of the initial inhabitants of Remote Oceania'. New Zealand J Archaeology 17 [1995]:5-27
1998 'From Proto-Oceanic *Rumaq to Proto-Polynesian *fale: a significant reorganization in Austronesian housing'. Archaeology in New Zealand 42:253-272
1999a Green R C and Pawley A. 'Early Oceanic architectural forms and settlement patterns: linguistic, archaeological and ethnological perspectives'. In Roger Blench and Matthew Spriggs (eds), Archaeology and Language, vol 3, 31-89. London: Routledge [an abridged and slightly revised version appears in M Ross, A Pawley and M Osmond (eds), The Lexicon of Proto Oceanic: the Culture and Environment of Ancestral Oceanic Society: vol 1 Material Culture, 37-65 (1998)]
1999b 'Integrating historical linguistics with archaeology: insights from research in Remote Oceania'. In P Bellwood, D Bowdery et al (eds), Indo-Pacific Prehistory: the Melaka papers, vol 2, 3-24. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 18: Canberra
2001 Kirch P V and Green R C. Hawaiki: Ancestral Polynesia: An Essay in Historical Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2002 'Rediscovering the social aspects of Ancestral Oceanic societies through archaeology, linguistics and ethnology'. In S Bedford and D Burley (eds), Fifty Years in the Field. Essays in Honour and Celebration of Richard Shutler Jr’s Archaeological Career. 21-35. NZ Archaeological Society monograph 24, Auckland
2003 'The Lapita horizon and traditions – signature for one set of oceanic migrations'. In C Sand (ed), Pacific Archaeology: Assessments and prospects (Proceedings of the Conference for the 50th Anniversary of the First Lapita Excavation. Koné Nouméa 2002), 95-120. Nouméa: Les Cahiers de l’archéologie en Nouvelle-Caledonie 15
In press. 'The Outer Eastern Islands of the Solomons: a puzzle for the holistic approach to the anthropology of history'. In John Bowden, Nikolaus Himmelmann and Malcolm Ross, eds, A Journey through Austronesian and Papuan Linguistic and Cultural Space: Papers in Honour of Andrew K Pawley. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics
The following obituary was written for the University of Auckland News website by Peter Sheppard, Associate Professor in Archaeology who came to New Zealand as a Post-doctoral Scholar to work with Roger on aspects of the archaeology of the Solomon Islands.
The picture (left) shows Roger cutting a cake in celebration of the 50th anniversary of his arrival in New Zealand
In 1958 archaeologist Roger Green came to the University of Auckland as a Fullbright scholar to spend 9 months in New Zealand preparing for fieldwork in French Polynesia. Although Roger’s early interest was the archaeology of the southwest USA, his exposure at Harvard to the Pacific anthropologist Douglas Oliver turned his interest to the Pacific. This shift in interest resulted in a career which spanned 50 years and field research which covered Oceania.
In 1961 Roger joined the Department of Anthropology at Auckland as the only archaeologist, replacing Professor Jack Golson, who had moved to ANU. Between 1961 and 1967 Roger conducted significant research in New Zealand, ultimately writing the important theoretical piece A Review of the Prehistoric Sequence in the Auckland Province, which was presented as his Harvard PhD. In keeping with his life-long pattern, however, his New Zealand research was complemented by large seminal research projects in the tropical Pacific (Moorea 1961-62; Western Samoa 1963-1967).
These projects were funded by the NSF through the Bishop Museum in Hawaii and in 1967 Roger left Auckland to take up a position at the Bishop. During this period (1967 to early 1970) Roger conducted important work on a series of Hawaiian valley systems, where he initiated research into agricultural field systems in collaboration with the New Zealand born ethnobotanist Douglas Yen.
Roger returned to Auckland in 1970 as the first James Cook Fellow, taking up a three year position at the Auckland Museum. From the Museum he initiated, with Douglas Yen, the Southeast Solomons Culture History Project (1970-72, 1976). This was the first large-scale, multi-disciplinary, multi-phase archaeological research project in the Pacific and the breadth of collaboration amongst archaeologists, social anthropologists, linguists, geologists, palynologists and other archaeological scientists reflected Roger’s enduring interest in what he termed 'holistic archaeology or anthropological history'.
During this project sites bearing Lapita pottery were found in the Reef/Santa Cruz Islands which lie 400km beyond the Main Solomons across what Roger came to call the Near/Remote Oceania boundary. This boundary marked the limits of human settlement until people bearing Lapita culture and speaking Austronesian languages moved out into the Pacific some 3,200 years ago. Although Lapita sites had been found prior to Roger’s work, his were the first systematic excavations providing detailed information on the Lapita culture and as such they have served as archetypes for subsequent work and debate. Throughout the rest of his career questions of Lapita settlement and Polynesian origins were at the core of Roger’s work and he continued to publish on his Southeast Solomons research up until his death.
In 1973 Roger was appointed to a personal Chair at Auckland which he held until his retirement in 1992, after which he was Emeritus until his death. Retirement for Roger simply meant more opportunity for publishing and his output has been prodigious. In 1995 at the time of the publication of the festschrift, Oceanic Culture History: Essays in Honour of Roger Green, a bibliography of 259 publications was compiled. Since 1995 publication has been steady with two new papers in the week prior to his death and more in train. Perhaps one of Roger’s proudest achievements in later years was his co-authoring with Professor Patrick Kirch (University of California, Berkeley) in 2001 of Hawaiki, Ancestral Polynesia: An Essay in Historical Anthropology, which allowed him to combine his expertise in Pacific archaeology and linguistics and provide a theoretical and methodological basis for a holistic historical anthropology.
Roger Green has been a foundation scholar in the archaeology of the Pacific and his contribution is marked by his publication record but also by his hundreds of colleagues and students who have gone on to define the field. His contributions were recognized by memberships in the National Academy of Science (USA) and the Royal Society of New Zealand. In 2003 he was awarded the Marsden Medal by the New Zealand Association of Scientists for his work in Pacific archaeology and cultural history and in 2007 he was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for 'services to New Zealand history'. Roger has been the father and grandfather of archaeology and anthropology at the University of Auckland, his academic family will miss him. Kua hinga te kauri o te wao nui a Tāne
Roger Curtis Green 1932–2009 BA BSc (New Mexico) PhD (Harvard) ONZM FRSNZ Member NatAcadSci (USA), Hon Fellow Society of Antiquaries of London Emeritus Professor of Prehistory at the University of Auckland
Further information about Roger's life and work can be found on Archaeopedia.