Lapita Pottery (ca. 1500–500 BCE)
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/lapi/hd_lapi.htm
The term Lapita refers to an ancient Pacific culture that
archaeologists believe to be the common ancestor of the
contemporary cultures of Polynesia, Micronesia, and some
areas of Melanesia. The culture takes its name from the site of
Lapita in New Caledonia, one of the first places in which its
distinctive pottery was discovered. While archaeologists
debate the precise region where Lapita culture itself
developed, the ancestors of the Lapita people came originally
from Southeast Asia. Beginning around 1500 B.C., Lapita
peoples began to spread eastward through the islands of
Melanesia and into the remote archipelagos of the central and
eastern Pacific, reaching Tonga and Samoa by roughly 1000
B.C. The Lapita were a seafaring people who settled primarily
on the coast rather than inland and their skilled navigators
traversed the ocean with ease.
Pottery Fragment, 1000 B.C.
Solomon Islands, Reef Islands
Nenumbo site, Lapita culture
Courtesy of the Photographic Archive,
Department of Anthropology, University of Auckla
One of the finest examples of the Lapita potter's art,
this fragment depicts a human face incorporated into
the intricate geometric designs characteristic of the
Lapita ceramic tradition
Lapita art is best known for its ceramics, which feature intricate repeating geometric patterns that
occasionally include anthropomorphic faces and figures. The patterns were incised into the pots before
firing with a comblike tool used to stamp designs into the wet clay. Each stamp consisted of a single
design element that was combined with others to form elaborate patterns. Many Lapita ceramics are
large vessels thought to have been used for cooking, serving, or storing food. Some of the designs
found on Lapita pottery may be related to patterns seen in modern Polynesian tattoos and barkcloth. In
addition to vessels, a number of freestanding pottery figures depicting anthropomorphic and
zoomorphic subjects have been unearthed at Lapita sites, as well as a single bone image representing a
stylized human figure.
Jennifer Wagelie
Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York
Region where Lapita pottery has been found.
The Lapita culture or tradition was a prehistoric Pacific Ocean people from c. 1600 BCE to c. 500 BCE.
Archaeologists believe that the Lapita is the ancestor of historic cultures in Polynesia, Micronesia, and some
coastal areas of Melanesia. The characteristics of the Lapita culture are the extension of human settlement to
previously uninhabited Pacific Islands scattered over a large area, distinctive geometric dentate-stamped pottery,
the use and widespread distribution of obsidian, and the spread of Oceanic languages.
The Lapita were perhaps the most advanced people of their day in seamanship and navigation, reaching out and
finding islands separated from each other by hundreds of miles of empty ocean. Their descendants, the
Polynesians, would populate islands from Hawaii to Easter Island, possibly even reaching the South American
continent.
Pottery (from Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapita_culture
Classic' Lapita pottery was produced between 1350 and 750 BCE in the Bismarck Archipelago. A late variety
might have been produced there up to 250 BCE. Local styles of Lapita pottery are found in Vanuatu and New
Caledonia. Pottery persisted in Fiji, whereas it disappeared completely in other areas of Melanesia and in Siassi.
In Western Polynesia, Lapita pottery is found from 800 BCE onwards in the Fiji-Samoa-Tonga area. From
Tonga and Samoa, Polynesian culture spread to Eastern Polynesia areas including the Marquesas and the
Society Islands, and then later to Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand. However, pottery-making did not
persist in most of Polynesia, mainly due to the lack of suitable clay on small islands.
Material culture
The low-fired earthenware pottery, often tempered with shell or sand, is typically decorated with a dentate
(toothed) stamp. It has been theorized[4] that these decorations may have been transferred to or from less hardy
mediums such as tapa (bark cloth), mats or tattoos. Undecorated "plain-ware" pottery is an important part of the
Lapita cultural complex, which also includes ground-stone adzes and shell artefacts, and flaked-stone tools of
obsidian, chert and other available rock.
Burial customs
Excavation of a large cemetery at Teouma on Efate Island in Vanuatu, discovered in 2003, found 36 bodies in
25 graves, as well as burial jars. All skeletons were headless with the skulls removed after original burial and
replaced with rings made from cone shell. The heads were reburied. One burial of an elderly man had three
skulls lined up on his chest. One burial jar featured four birds looking into the jar. Carbon dating of the shells
placed this cemetery at about 1000 BC.[5]
Settlements
n the west, villages were located on small offshore islands or the beaches of larger islands. This may have been
to avoid areas already settled in coastal New Guinea, or malaria-carrying mosquitoes for which Lapita people
had no immune defense. Some houses were built on stilts over larger lagoons. In New Britain, settlements are
found inland as well, near the obsidian sources. In the eastern archipelago, all settlements are located on land,
sometimes some distance inland.
Distribution
Lapita pottery is known from the Bismarck archipelago to Samoa and Tonga. Currently, the most eastern Lapita
site is Mulifanua in Samoa where 4,288 pottery sherds and two Lapita type adzes have been recovered. The site
has a true age of c. 3,000 BP based on 14C dating on a shell.[6] The domesticates spread into farther Oceania as
well. Humans, their domesticated animals, and species that were introduced involuntarily (perhaps as the
Polynesian Rat was) led to extinctions of endemic species on many islands, especially of flightless birds.
Origin
An ultimate Southeast Asian origin of the Lapita complex is assumed by most scholars, perhaps originating
from the Austronesians in Taiwan or southern China some 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. This Neolithic dispersal
was driven by a rapid population growth in east and southeast Asia (Formosa), and has often been called 'the
express-train to Polynesia'. Burial pottery similar to "red slip" pottery of Taiwan, as well as detailed linguistic
evidence,[7] seem to lend support to this theory.[5]
The orthodox view argued by people like Roger Green and Peter Bellwood for a “Triple-I “model where Lapita
arose from this Austronesian expansion through a process of intrusion into new territories, innovation of new
technologies (such as the outrigger canoe), and integration with the existing populations.[8]
Direct links between Lapita and mainland Southeast Asia are still missing, due to a lack of data in Indonesia and
Malaysia.
Other scholars like J. Allen located the origin of the Lapita complex in the Bismarck Archipelago that was first
colonized 30,000 to 35,000 BCE. Others see obsidian trade as the motor of the spread of Lapita-elements in the
western distribution area.
Lapita in Polynesia
Many scientists believe Lapita pottery in Melanesia to be proof that Polynesian ancestors passed through this
area on their way into the central Pacific. The earliest archaeological site in Polynesia is in Tonga, dates to 900
BCE and contains the typical pottery and other archaeological "kit" of Lapita sites in Fiji and eastern Melanesia
of about that time and immediately before.[9][10]
Lapita pottery
A human face stares from these remnants of Lapita pottery, dated 1000 BC. They come from the Santa
Cruz group of islands, south-east of the Solomon Islands. Around 3000 BC ceramic-making peoples
appeared in Taiwan. Taiwanese pottery was red-slipped but otherwise plain. Over the next 1,500 years
their descendants moved south and south-east towards Near Oceania. In the Bismarck Archipelago
these Austronesian peoples mixed with the indigenous inhabitants and the Lapita culture, with its
distinctive pottery, emerged. Lapita pottery had surface decorations; these motifs probably already
existed in tattoos.
The Pacific was the first ocean to be
explored and settled, and its history is
one of voyages. New Zealand, isolated
far to the south, was the last substantial
land mass to be reached.
The origins of the Pacific’s diverse
peoples can be traced back along
seaways to mainland Asia. The people
of the ancient period (50,000–25,000
BC) had a palaeolithic (Old Stone Age)
technology and a hunting and foraging
economy. Setting off in simple rafts,
they gradually dispersed through the
large islands of South-East Asia.
Eventually they reached Australia and
New Guinea, which were then
connected by a land bridge.
These ancient people ultimately travelled as far into Melanesia as the southern end of the main chain of
the Solomon Islands. They made a remarkable series of adaptations to diverse environments, which
ranged from tropical islands in the north to glacial Tasmania in the south, from coastline to interior,
and from rainforest to near-desert.
This wider region is known as Near Oceania. It consists of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago,
the Admiralty Islands and the Solomon Islands.
Recent voyaging: into Remote Oceania
Around 1200 BC migration into Remote Oceania began. Remote Oceania lies to the east and south of
Near Oceania, and consists of Melanesia south-east of the Solomons, Micronesia and Polynesia. The
islands are generally smaller, with fewer food resources, and were beyond the reach of simple water
craft.
However, the migrating people had neolithic (New Stone Age) technologies, and food-producing
economies. Known as Lapita, they had learned to explore the open sea and survive. After millennia
of developments in boat building, and accumulated experience of seafaring in Near Oceania, skilled
navigators began to explore in sophisticated canoes.
Migrants voyaged east across the tropical Pacific into Remote Oceania, carrying with them
domesticated plants and animals, to sustain settlement in their new island homes.
Reaching South America Ultimately explorers arrived at South America, and then returned to their
home islands in Remote Oceania with the kūmara (sweet potato) and a species of gourd. Radiocarbon
dates for kūmara found on Mangaia in the southern Cook Islands show that Polynesians had reached
South America and returned by 1000 AD.
Vikings and Polynesians According to Icelandic sagas, Vikings from Greenland found Labrador and
briefly settled in Newfoundland around the same time. The circumstances in both North and South
America were similar for Vikings and Polynesians. Both travelled in small parties to the extreme limits
of their range, encountering populated continents. There is little archaeological evidence of these
contacts.
To New Zealand and the Chatham Islands Around 1300 AD Polynesian settlers used subtropical
weather systems to navigate their way to New Zealand. These migrants were the ancestors of New
Zealand’s Māori people. At about the same time, they reached the northern satellite islands of Norfolk
and the Kermadecs. Later still, early Māori exploring eastward from New Zealand discovered the
Chatham Islands, just a few centuries before the first European expeditions reached the Pacific.
Prehistoric Lapita Pottery in the Pacific
Ornate hand-drawn patterns of the face motif on Lapita pottery, unearthed on the Solomon Islands
Based on archeological evidence, the Lapita Culture Complex spread over an extensive area of islands,
stretching through the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, the Vanuatu
Islands, New Caledonia, and eastward to Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, between 3,600 to 2,500 years ago.
Artifacts found in the area include dentate-stamped pottery, stone and shell tools, shell decorations,
and items used for trade. Archaeologists believe the economy of the Lapita was primarily marinebased, though agriculture could have also played an important role.
Lapita pottery was mostly made of local clay tempered with calcium-rich sand, mud, and shredded
seashells. This mixture would be attached to thin clay slabs and then shaped by sticks and stones to
form the vessel wall. Before the clay was completely dry and hardened over an open fire, the clay
would be stamped, etched, or decorated with raised patterns. Archeologists generally believe that
Lapita pottery pieces were brought from islands in Southeast Asia, where cultures of the Austronesian
language family had been producing pottery for a long time. Indeed, existing archeological data
suggests that although human beings have been living on the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New
Guinea and the northern region of the Solomon Islands for more than 10,000 years, no pottery has been
unearthed in any archeological site in the region dating back to earlier than 3,500 years ago.
Additionally, the production method and decorations of Lapita pottery are similar to those of
traditional pottery on Southeast Asian islands at the time. However, the earliest Lapita pottery pieces
have ornate face motifs that are of little practical value and are distinct from prevalent decorative
patterns of the same period on the islands. Therefore, archeologists believe that Lapita pottery is the
embodiment of cultural exchange at that time. Over the following centuries, the Lapita Cultural
Complex spread to inhabited places such as the southern region of the Solomon Islands, the Vanuatu
Islands, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, and the Samoan Islands. Such movement is testament to the
expansion of the Austronesian language family, and set the foundation for future material culture in
Oceania.
Items of the Collection: Prehistoric Lapita Pottery in the Pacific
Lapita ware
Fiji: History
When Fiji’s first settlers arrived from the islands of Melanesia at least 3,500 years ago,
they carried with them a wide range of food plants, the pig, and a style of pottery known
as Lapita ware. This pottery is generally associated with peoples who had welldeveloped skills in navigation and canoe building and were horticulturists. From Fiji the
Lapita culture was carried to Tonga and Samoa,...
Solomon Islands: History
The Solomon Islands were initially settled by at least 2000 bce—well before the
archaeological record begins—probably by people of the Austronesian language group.
Pottery of the Lapita culture was in use in Santa Cruz and the Reef Islands about 1500
bce. Material dating to about 1000 bce has also been excavated at Vatuluma Cave
(Guadalcanal), on Santa Ana Island, and on the...
o
Development of Lapita culture
Lapita culture
The Lapita people are known principally on the basis of the remains of their fired
pottery, which consists of beakers, cooking pots, and bowls. Many of the pottery shards
that have been found are decorated with geometric designs made by stamping the
unfired clay with a toothlike implement. A few shards with figurative designs have also
been found. Lapita pottery has been found from New Guinea...
o
Oceanic art
Oceanic art and architecture: Melanesia
The most important evidence of art in the early western Pacific is the ceramic style
called Lapita, after a site in New Caledonia. It is the most prominent material aspect of
a culture that flourished from approximately 1900 bc to the beginning of the modern era
and that achieved an astonishingly wide distribution. Lapita sites, or other evidences of
Lapita influence, are found from the...
Oceanic arts
Indonesian affinities with Oceania have been postulated on the basis of Lapita pottery,
which is stylistically similar to early ceramics found on the Moluccas. These early
people settled farther east on Tonga and Samoa, where a millennium of isolation bred a
distinct Polynesian culture. (See also Melanesian culture; Micronesian culture.) When
Samoan seafarers arrived on Marquesas, it became the...