  Evolution is the principal theoretical framework in Pacific Island
archaeology. Progressive cultural evolutionary stages, particularly the
chiefdom, provided the earliest framework. These ideas were increasingly linked
to islands as relatively isolated laboratories of cultural evolution and
diversification, albeit their populations phylogenetically linked in a series
of ancestral and descendant societies. With more sophisticated environmental
data, much research has investigated cultural adaptations and their homologous
or analogous origins. Most recently, Darwinian mechanisms of transmission,
selection, and drift comprise an important approach. The history of evolution
in Pacific archaeology suggests it will continue as a useful theoretical
framework, perhaps more so than in other world regions.
