Tracking 3000 years of agricultural adaptation to the resource poor, climate sensitive and remote Solomon Islands using biomarkers and palaeoecology

Biomarkers provide unique fossil signatures of past climate fluctuations in sedimentary archives. This project tests their utility for understanding human-environmental interaction by sampling biomarkers and multiple fossil proxies for agricultural activity from the same sedimentary units. Climate change is seen as a compounding factor influencing social success or collapse on remote islands. By examining islands in the remote Solomon Islands and Cook/Austral Islands, this approach will enhance recognition of initial human colonisation and agricultural land-use, provide direct comparisons of fluctuations in climate and biodiversity at sub-centennial time scales, and test hypotheses relating to social-environmental collapse or recovery.