The Lapita Peoples

The Lapita Peoples
Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 376
Release: 1997-01-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781577180364

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This is the first account of the Lapita peoples, the common ancestor of the Polynesians, Micronesians, and Austronesian-speaking Melanesians who over the last 4000 years colonized the islands of the Pacific, including New Zealand and territories as far afield as Fiji and Hawaii. Its purpose is to provide answers to some of the most puzzling archaeological and anthropological questions: who were the Lapita peoples? what was their history? how were they able to travel such great distances? and why did they do so? Recent discoveries (several by the author of this book) have begun at last to yield a coherent picture of these elusive peoples. Professor Kirch takes the reader back many thousands of years to the earliest evidence of the Lapita peoples. He describes the research itself and conveys the excitement of the first discoveries of Lapita settlements, tools and pottery. He then traces the remarkable cultural development and spread of the Lapita peoples across the unoccupied islands of Eastern Melanesia, Micronesia and Western Polynesia. He shows how they became the progenitors of the Polynesian and Austronesian-speaking Melanesian peoples. The author describes Lapita sites, communities and landscapes, the development of their decorated ceramics, and their shell-tool industry. He reveals the means by which they accomplished such prodigious voyages and explains why they undertook them. He illustrates his account with specially drawn maps and with a wide range of photographs, many published for the first time. Drawing on the latest research in archaeology, anthropology, biology and linguistics, and written in clear, non-specialized language, this is an outstanding book of great importance to the history of South-East Asia and the Pacific.

Lapita Peoples

Lapita Peoples
Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 384
Release: 1997-02-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781557861122

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This is the first account of the Lapita peoples, the common ancestor of the Polynesians, Micronesians, and Austronesian-speaking Melanesians who over the last 4000 years colonized the islands of the Pacific, including New Zealand and territories as far afield as Fiji and Hawaii. Its purpose is to provide answers to some of the most puzzling archaeological and anthropological questions: who were the Lapita peoples? what was their history? how were they able to travel such great distances? and why did they do so? Recent discoveries (several by the author of this book) have begun at last to yield a coherent picture of these elusive peoples. Professor Kirch takes the reader back many thousands of years to the earliest evidence of the Lapita peoples. He describes the research itself and conveys the excitement of the first discoveries of Lapita settlements, tools and pottery. He then traces the remarkable cultural development and spread of the Lapita peoples across the unoccupied islands of Eastern Melanesia, Micronesia and Western Polynesia. He shows how they became the progenitors of the Polynesian and Austronesian-speaking Melanesian peoples. The author describes Lapita sites, communities and landscapes, the development of their decorated ceramics, and their shell-tool industry. He reveals the means by which they accomplished such prodigious voyages and explains why they undertook them. He illustrates his account with specially drawn maps and with a wide range of photographs, many published for the first time. Drawing on the latest research in archaeology, anthropology, biology and linguistics, and written in clear, non-specialized language, this is an outstanding book of great importance to the history of South-East Asia and the Pacific.

Debating Lapita

Debating Lapita
Author: Stuart Bedford
Publisher: ANU Press
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2019-12-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1760463310

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‘This volume is the most comprehensive review of Lapita research to date, tackling many of the lingering questions regarding origin and dispersal. Multidisciplinary in nature with a focus on summarising new findings, but also identifying important gaps that can help direct future research.’ — Professor Scott Fitzpatrick, Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon ‘This substantial volume offers a welcome update on the definition of the Lapita culture. It significantly refreshes the knowledge on this foundational archaeological culture of the Pacific Islands in providing new data on sites and assemblages, and new discussions of hypotheses previously proposed.’ — Dr Frédérique Valentin, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris This volume comprises 23 chapters that focus on the archaeology of Lapita, a cultural horizon associated with the founding populations who first colonised much of the south west Pacific some 3000 years ago. The Lapita culture has been most clearly defined by its distinctive dentate-stamped decorated pottery and the design system represented on it and on further incised pots. Modern research now encompasses a whole range of aspects associated with Lapita and this is reflected in this volume. The broad overlapping themes of the volume—Lapita distribution and chronology, society and subsistence—relate to research questions that have long been debated in relation to Lapita.

Lapita peoples

Lapita peoples
Author: Stuart Bedford
Publisher:
Total Pages: 49
Release: 2010
Genre: Excavations (Archaeology)
ISBN:

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Talepakemalai

Talepakemalai
Author: Javier Fonseca Santa Cruz
Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2021
Genre: Excavations (Archaeology)
ISBN: 9781950446179

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"The Lapita Cultural Complex-first uncovered in the mid-20th century as a widespread archaeological complex spanning both Melanesia and Western Polynesia-has subsequently become recognized as of fundamental importance to Oceanic prehistory. Notable for its highly distinctive, elaborate, dentate-stamped pottery, Lapita sites date to between 3500-2700 BP, spanning the geographic range from the Bismarck Archipelago to Tonga and Samoa. The Lapita culture has been interpreted as the archaeological manifestation of a diaspora of Austronesian-speaking people (specifically of Proto-Oceanic language) who rapidly expanded from Near Oceania (the New Guinea-Bismarcks region) into Remote Oceania, where no humans had previously ventured. Lapita is thus a foundational culture throughout much of the southwestern Pacific, ancestral to much of the later, ethnographically-attested cultural diversity of the region. The Mussau materials are essential to understanding how Lapita developed and was transformed during the period prior to and following the Lapita diaspora into Remote Oceania. This volume thus presents the definitive "final report" on the excavation not only of Talepakemalai, but of all of the Lapita and post-Lapita sites investigated during the Mussau Project"--

Talepakemalai

Talepakemalai
Author: Brian S Bauer
Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
Total Pages: 594
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1950446239

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The Lapita Cultural Complex--first uncovered in the mid-20th century as a widespread archaeological complex spanning both Melanesia and Western Polynesia--has subsequently become recognized as of fundamental importance to Oceanic prehistory. Notable for its highly distinctive, elaborate, dentate-stamped pottery, Lapita sites date to between 3500-2700 BP, spanning the geographic range from the Bismarck Archipelago to Tonga and Samoa. The Lapita culture has been interpreted as the archaeological manifestation of a diaspora of Austronesian-speaking people (specifically of Proto-Oceanic language) who rapidly expanded from Near Oceania (the New Guinea-Bismarcks region) into Remote Oceania, where no humans had previously ventured. Lapita is thus a foundational culture throughout much of the southwestern Pacific, ancestral to much of the later, ethnographically-attested cultural diversity of the region.

Music, Lapita, and the Problem of Polynesian Origins

Music, Lapita, and the Problem of Polynesian Origins
Author: Mervyn McLean
Publisher: Mervyn McLean
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2014-01-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0473288737

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For more than twenty years the standard view among anthropologists has been that Polynesians evolved from a group of settlers known as Lapita people whose characteristically dentate-stamped pottery has been found on numerous mostly Melanesian sites, and who entered Fiji more than 3000 years ago from a starting point in the Bismarck Archipelago. An alternative view that champions Micronesia as a primary area of origin for Polynesians has been in limbo as a result of the prevailing theory, but is reappraised in the present book and found once again to be in contention. The book takes an historical view of theories of origin, and provides some account of methodologies used by scholarly disciplines which have been brought to bear on the subject, including evidence from music and dance, which forms the core of the book.

Prehistory in the Pacific Islands

Prehistory in the Pacific Islands
Author: John Terrell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 1986
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521369565

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How, asks John Terrell in this richly illustrated and original book, can we best account for the remarkable diversity of the Pacific Islanders in biology, language, and custom? Traditionally scholars have recognized a simple racial division between Polynesians, Micronesians, Melanesians, Australians, and South-east Asians: peoples allegedly differing in physical appearance, temperament, achievements, and perhaps even intelligence. Terrell shows that such simple divisions do not fit the known facts and provide little more than a crude, static picture of human diversity.

Native Peoples of the World

Native Peoples of the World
Author: Steven L. Danver
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1030
Release: 2015-03-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317464001

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This work examines the world's indigenous peoples, their cultures, the countries in which they reside, and the issues that impact these groups.

Lapita Plants, People and Pigs

Lapita Plants, People and Pigs
Author: Monica Tromp (‡e author)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN:

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The Lapita cultural complex is associated with the Austronesian expansion out of Island Southeast Asia beginning approximately 3,500 BP. Sites associated with this archaeological culture have been found from the coast of New Guinea in Near Oceania and out past the Solomon Islands into Remote Oceania as far south as New Caledonia and as far east as Samoa by 2,700 BP. Major components of this culture include the commensal animals and horticultural plants that were transported with them as a portable subsistence economy during their voyaging. The commensal animal component of this package is reasonably well established, but the plant portion is less clear. This is primarily due to the scarcity of plant macro remains that have been found from archaeological sites and the lack of specificity of actual foods consumed in stable isotope analyses of archaeological human and animal bone. One direct way to explore the dietary plant component is to identify micro particles of plants (microfossils) that have been trapped within calcified plaque (dental calculus).The primary aim of this thesis is to examine the relationship between Lapita and immediately post-Lapita people and plants. The secondary aim is to examine whether human and commensal pig plant diets are similar and if it is possible to use pig diet as a proxy for human diet when human remains are not available for analysis. To address these aims, microfossils were extracted from human and pig dental calculus from four different sites: the SAC site on Watom Island, East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea; Teouma on Efate Island, and Vao and Uripiv islands off the coast of northeast Malakula in Vanuatu. The samples were examined using a combination of light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. All of the samples analysed date between Lapita (~3000 cal BP) and post-Lapita (~2500 cal BP) periods. These sites allow for a comparison of 1) an initial colonizing population (Teouma) and later populations (Watom, Uripiv and Vao), 2) Near Oceanic (Watom) and Remote Oceanic (Teouma, Uripiv and Vao) sites and 3) the wild versus cultivated plant components of their diets.The results show a much more diverse plant diet than has previously been shown. The importance of indigenous trees and shrubs to both Lapita and post-Lapita people analysed from all sites has been demonstrated in this study. Novel results include the first instance of banana seed phytoliths outside of the Bismarck Archipelago and an early introduction of Dioscorea esculenta to Vanuatu. The appearance of these non-indigenous plants at Teouma provides support for the concept of a “transported landscape”. However, the majority of identified plants were indigenous tree crops that suggest Lapita colonists were at least partly reliant on the forest resources that already existed on the islands they inhabited. This study represents the first direct plant evidence for Lapita and immediately post-Lapita diet of humans and pigs from this region.