[en] The Isle of Pines, 80 km south of Noumea, New Caledonia, is famous for its mysterious earth mounds, whose anthropic nature and construction dates have been the source of heated scientific debate since the late 19th century. A large number of them are located on the island's ferrallitic plateau, an environment in which the acidic soil would not allow any kind of perennial human settlement and horticultural practices. Amateur digs have had poor results so far, these inconclusive findings have led to sometimes far‑fetched interpretations. However, their interpretation has played a key role in the New Caledonian archaeological discourse and the historical paradigm that was locally issued from it since the 1960s: reviving diffusionist theories put forward in the early 20th century, some local amateur historians had suggested that these structures were the remnants of a megalithic age, when "fair‑skin" predecessors of the Kanaks settled the archipelago (Avias, 1949, Brou, 1977) in an attempt to deny the latter of their legitimacy to land claims that became more and more numerous in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1988, pioneering Oceanic archaeologist Roger C. Green, who perfectly understood their importance, put forward a non‑anthropic hypothesis for their origin, suggesting that large flightless megapod birds (now extinct) were actually the builders of these structures (Green, 1988). This hypothesis then allowed the debate to settle down.Almost 30 years have passed, during which further archaeological fieldwork on Isle of Pines has been undertaken. Daniel Frimigacci's pioneering (although unfortunately overlooked) work on the earth mounds that are located on the calcareous plain of the island had already allowed the discovery of human remains within the structures, dating to the first centuries AD (Frimigacci, 1986). Therefore, these calcareous mounds, of identical proportions (and in similar numbers) to the ferrallitic ones found on the plateau, hold a probable interpretation key to the earth mounds' mystery. New results from global surveys, new radiocarbon dating obtained from human bone samples in other earth mounds give additional weight to these findings, as the recent samples date to the first centuries BC. It is, therefore, necessary to reconsider what has been written on these enigmatic structures. After thorough re‑evaluation of the earth mounds' diverse interpretations over time, there is now a strong possibility that they are of anthropic origin and that at least some of them were used as funerary mounds for primary burials, within an indigenous, localised and specific tradition, roughly 2,000 years ago.

[fr] L'Île des Pins, à 80 km au Sud de Nouméa, en Nouvelle‑Calédonie, est célèbre pour ses mystérieux tumuli, dont la nature anthropique et les dates d'édification ont été la source de vifs débats scientifiques depuis la fin du xixe siècle. Des fouilles amateurs n'ont permis jusqu'ici que des mises au jour peu concluantes, ouvrant la voie à des interprétations parfois peu réalistes, qui ont joué un rôle important dans le discours historique néo‑calédonien mis en place à partir des années 1960: des historiens amateurs locaux ont suggéré que ces structures pouvaient être les vestiges d'une culture mégalithique, possiblement " à peau blanche ", ayant peuplé l'archipel plusieurs millénaires avant les Kanak, avec pour but inavoué de nier la légitimité kanak des revendications foncières. En 1988, l'archéologue Roger C. Green, qui avait compris l'importance politique de ces structures, proposa une explication non‑anthropique de leur origine, suggérant que des oiseaux mégapodes en étaient les constructeurs. Depuis la publication de l'article de Green, des travaux archéologiques complémentaires ont été menés sur l'Île des Pins. De plus, le travail pionnier de Daniel Frimigacci sur les tumuli situés dans la plaine côtière calcaire de l'île, avait permis la mise au jour d'ossements humains dans ces structures, datés des premiers siècles de notre ère. Ces tumuli similaires à ceux du plateau ferralitique, offrent peut‑être une clé interprétative au mystère des tumuli. Après réévaluation des différentes hypothèses relatives à leur édification, il est dorénavant proposé que ces tumuli soient bien d'origine anthropique et qu'au moins une partie d'entre eux aient été utilisés comme cimetières pour des inhumations primaires, dans le cadre d'une tradition indigène, localisée et spécifique, il y a environ deux millénaires.