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33 IJCP 1 (2026)

handle is hein.journals/injculpy33 and id is 1 raw text is: InternationalJournal of Cultural Property (2026), 33, el, 1-28 CAMBRIDGE doi: i'i . ~UNIVERSITY PRESS ARTICLE Using kastom evidence in court: A legal and archaeological review of the intersection between Indigenous cultural heritage, land ownership, and law in Solomon Islands Charles James Tekarawa Radclyffe and Joseph D. Foukona 'Archaeology Programme, University of Otago, New Zealand and 2Department of History, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, HI, USA Corresponding authors: Charles James Tekarawa Radclyffe and Joseph D. Foukona; Emails: Abstract Solomon Islands' plural legal system, in which customary law operates in parallel with common law, and its practice and effects on society have drawn scholarly attention in spaces of legal studies, policy, economics, and state governance. An area that remains understudied is the dynamic nature in which landowners use Indigenous cultural heritage such as ancestral sites or genealogies as kastom evidence in courts. We explore this intersection through a critical review of the literature, Solomon Islands court judgments, and the nation's lacking cultural heritage legislation. Two major infrastructure development projects in Solomon Islands, the Tina Hydro Project located on Guadalcanal and the Bina-Talifu Project on Malaita, are also examined to explore the nuances of state-led compulsory versus negotiated land acquisition. Fueling the perception that the customary land system is more of a hinderence than a strength to its peoples, these case studies demonstrate the fluid and unpredictable nature with which kastom evidence has been implemented in legal forums to substantiate or dispute claims. Ultimately, we argue that this largely reflects an incongruence between the British legal framework and traditional land tenure systems. Furthermore, we highlight how greater integration of archaeological expertise into legal processes of land surveying in Solomon Islands has the potential to mitigate some of these challenges. Keywords: Indigenous cultural heritage; legal pluralism; Solomon Islands; customary land; archaeology Introduction Legal pluralism, defined conventionally here as the coexistence of multiple legal systems within the same social field,' has raised a wide array of challenges in the protection and management of cultural heritage across the globe.2 This has been the case in the Pacific, particularly for the highly culturally and linguistically diverse island nations of Melanesia 1 Merry 19'8, 870. 2 Gillespie 012; Kharel C The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalfoflnternational Cultural Property Society. This is an open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-shareAlike licence ( ), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the same Creative Commons licence is used to distribute the re-used or adapted article and the original article is properly cited. The written permission ofCambridge University Press or the rights holder(s) must be obtained prior to any commercial use. Published online by Cambridge University Press Gix~'kfo~