Poster Presented at the 68th Annual Meeting for the Society for American Archaeology, Milwaukee

Introduction | Material Analysis | Geochronology of A'asu | Conclusion | Photos | Credits

The A’asu valley is a lush, tropical valley on the Northwestern shores of Tutuila, American Samoa. The site is accessed by boat.

          In the summer of 2002 archaeologists from Texas A&M University began an archaeological investigation of A’asu (AS-32-006), also known as Massacre Bay. The site has tremendous historical significance because it is at this location that the first European explorers to make landfall in the Samoa group had a violent encounter with the Samoan people. Most of what we know about the contact between the first European party of exploration to land on Tutuila and the Samoans comes from the published journals of the French explorer La Pérouse. Though his ill-fated expedition never made it back to France, he sent his journals back to France after a port-of-call at Botany Bay, Australia. This is the principal record that we have of the “A’asu massacre.”

          However, virtually nothing was known of the prehistory of this site, other than that the fact that it was present when the Europeans first arrived. Indeed, the rugged northwestern shores of Tutuila are largely unexplored archaeologically. Yet A’asu stream is one of the more significant drainages on the island. As the discovery and analysis of sites with preserved stratigraphy is one of the more important objectives of archaeologists working in the Pacific, A’asu was chosen as the site for an in-depth study.