Pre-Columbian Contact Between the Americas and Oceania

This book weaves together theories of pre-Columbian trans-Pacific contact between Oceania and the Americas and analyses them from a history of ideas perspective. Despite limited factual evidence, trans-Pacific contact theories between the Americas and Oceania have been discussed in various forms since the sixteenth century and remain a persistent trope.

To provide a context for the history of ideas of trans-Pacific contact involving the Americas and Oceania, this book addresses the changing conceptions of the Pacific according to scholars from Europe and the Americas, the development of science and later anthropology and archaeology in this region and in the Americas, and the growing understanding of the history of settlement of the Americas and the Pacific. This book covers views predominantly from the Global South, making them more accessible to an Anglophone audience worldwide.

Andrea Ballesteros Danel is an independent scholar based in Brisbane, Australia. She completed her PhD at the Australian National University in 2020. Her thesis focused on the history of ideas about pre-Columbian trans-Pacific contact between the Americas and Oceania. Her research was part of the Collective Biography of Archaeology in the Pacific (CBAP) project, a five-year project funded by the Australian Research Council through its Laureate Fellowship grant scheme, and by the Australian National University.