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Known distribution of the Lapita culture Reconstruction of the face of a Lapita woman exhibited in the National Museum of Ethnology of Japan. 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.
Key sites on Upolu island include the Lapita site at Mulifanua where 4,288 pottery sherds and two Lapita type adzes have been recovered. The site has a true age of circa 3,000 BP based on C14 dating on a shell. [12] The submerged Lapita site at Mulifanua was discovered in 1973 during work carried out to expand the inter-island ferry berth.
In 1973, archaeology in Samoa uncovered a Lapita site at Mulifanua where 4,288 pottery sherds and two Lapita type adzes have been recovered. The site has a true age of circa 3,000 BP based on C14 dating on a shell. [1]
This estimate is based on dating the ancient Lapita pottery shards that are found throughout the islands. The oldest shards found so far have been in Mulifanua and in Sasoa'a, Falefa. [ 1 ] The oldest archaeological evidence found on the islands of Polynesia, Samoa and Tonga all date from around that same period, suggesting that the first ...
Tongan Lapita designs were simpler than western Lapita designs, evolving from ornate curvilinear and rectilinear patterns into simple rectilinear forms. [4] The pottery was “slab-built earthenware of andesitic-tephra clay mixed with calcareous or mineral sand tempers and fired at a low temperature.” [4]
Lapita pottery. The ancient Lapita potteries date to 1000 BC. Essentially a women's craft, the pottery is generally decorated with geometric patterns and stylised human faces, although there is variation between northern and southern New Caledonian pottery. The various handles and glazes have pinhole-incised designs made from tooth combs.
The pottery is also seen as a sign that the Austronesians who populated Polynesia had spent a long time on the Melanesian islands, since Lapita pottery is common to both areas, and Melanesia is the older of the two. However, whether this type of pottery was directly brought by immigrants (and therefore initially developed outside the Lapita ...
The Lapita cultural complex [19] [20] Green was among the first to identify Lapita pottery and material culture with the Austronesian-speaking ancestors of the Polynesians. His excavations in the Reef [ 21 ] and Santa Cruz Islands , [ 22 ] as well as Watom Island in Papua New Guinea [ 23 ] furnished significant data for this interpretation.