Lapita culture
The Lapita culture is the name given to a Neolithic Austronesian people and their distinct material culture, who settled Island Melanesia via a seaborne migration at around 1600 to 500 BCE.[1][2] The Lapita people are believed to have originated from the northern Philippines, either directly, via the Mariana Islands, or both.[3] They were notable for their distinctive geometric designs on dentate-stamped pottery, which closely resemble the pottery recovered from the Nagsabaran archaeological site in northern Luzon. The Lapita intermarried with the Papuan populations to various degrees, and are the direct ancestors of the Austronesian peoples of Polynesia, eastern Micronesia, and Island Melanesia.[4][5][6]
Etymology[edit]
The term 'Lapita' was coined by archaeologists after mishearing a word in the local Haveke language, xapeta'a, which means 'to dig a hole' or 'the place where one digs', during the 1952 excavation in New Caledonia.[7][8] The Lapita archaeological culture is named after the type site where it was first uncovered in the Foué peninsula on Grande Terre, the main island of New Caledonia.[2]: 1-3 The excavation was carried out in 1952 by American archaeologists Edward W. Gifford and Richard Shutler Jr at 'Site 13'.[7] The settlement and pottery sherds were later dated to 800 BCE and proved significant in research on the early peopling of the Pacific Islands. More than 200 Lapita sites have since been uncovered,[9] ranging more than 4,000 km from coastal and island Melanesia to Fiji and Tonga with its most eastern limit so far in Samoa.
The term Lapita is now used to refer to the collection of theories regarding the origin and features of the ancestors of the people that speak the Oceanic languages. It also refers to the material culture found in excavations, especially pottery, related to these ancestral communities.[2]: 21
Artifact dating[edit]
'Classic' Lapita pottery was produced between 1,600 and 1,200 BCE on the Bismarck Archipelago.[5] Artifacts exhibiting Lapita designs and techniques from a period later than 1,200 BCE have been found in the Solomon Islands,[10] Vanuatu and New Caledonia.[5][11] Lapita pottery styles from around 1,000 BCE have been found in Fiji and Western Polynesia.[5]
In Western Polynesia, Lapita pottery became less decorative[4] and progressively simpler over time. It seems to have stopped being produced altogether in Samoa by about 2,800 years ago, and in Tonga by about 2,000 years ago.[5]
Burial customs[edit]
In 2003, at the Teouma archeological excavation site on Efate Island in Vanuatu, a large cemetery was discovered, including 25 graves containing burial jars and a total of 36 human skeletons. All the skeletons were headless: At some point after the bodies had originally been buried, the skulls had been removed and replaced with rings made from cone shells, and the heads had been reburied. One grave contained the skeleton of an elderly man with three skulls sitting on his chest. Another grave contained a burial jar depicting four birds looking into the jar. Carbon dating of the shells placed this cemetery as having been in use around 1000 BCE.[16]
Settlements[edit]
Lapita culture villages on islands in the area of Remote Oceania tended not to be located inland, but instead on the beach, or on small offshore islets. These locations may have been chosen because inland areas – for example in New Guinea – were already settled by other peoples. Or they may have been chosen in order to avoid areas inhabited by mosquitoes carrying malaria, against which Lapita people likely had no immune defence. Some of their houses were built on stilts over large lagoons. In New Britain, however, there were inland settlements; they were located near obsidian sources. And on the islands at the eastern end of the archipelago, all settlements were located inland rather than on the beaches – sometimes fairly far inland.