As many of you will have heard the Western Province was hit by a massive 8.1 magnitude earthquake on April 1st. This was quickly followed by a series of tsunami waves. The provincial capital Gizo and neighbouring settlements were damaged quite heavily during these events, and 52 people were killed. Very good maps of the epicentre and location of the earthquake can be found here.

So far it appears that most of our friends and colleagues who live and work in this part of the Solomons are all safe and well. We still have to hear from some, but then the communities are very remote in terms of communication systems.  A post conference field-trip to Gizo is still being planned, and we hope that the clean-up operation will have advanced sufficiently by July so that some conference-goers will still be able to travel to this beautiful part of the islands. Honestly, traveling all the way to the Solomons to only experience the dust and bustle of Honiara is a waste, and if at all possible you should try to include at least a small trip out to the provinces. 

Archaeologically speaking, the recent earthquake is highly relevant to our conference. This part of the Solomons is extremely tectonically active, located at the convergence of several plate boundaries, with varying processes of subduction, uplift and spreading in effect. Whilst working on the islands in the Western Province it becomes obvious how much localised variation there is, with neighbouring coastlines seemingly subjected to quite different events - parts of Rendova and Tetepare for instance see uplift rates varying between 0.1 and 9mm per year. Some processes have been gradual whilst others are episodic: during the recent earthquake parts of the island of Ranongga have reportedly been uplifted by as much as 3 metres ... as the fresh coral in the following photograph indicates....

Several papers during the conference will address how these sorts of events have affected the prehistory and taphonomy of site survival in the Solomons. It should make for an interesting discussion....