When was Lapita pottery made?
Lapita Pottery (ca. 1500–500 B.C.) Works of Art (2) Essay. 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.
Where did the Lapita come from?
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.
What kind of art did the Lapita make?
Lapita culture In 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. Oceanic art In Oceanic art and architecture: Melanesia …is the ceramic style called Lapita, after a site in New Caledonia.
What are Lapita terracotta fragments?
Terracotta fragments, Lapita people, c. 1000 B.C.E., red-slip earthenware, Santa Cruz Islands, south-east of Solomon Islands ( Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) Archaeologists get very excited when they find pieces of Lapita pottery. Why?
Who produced Lapita pottery?
They come from the Santa Cruz group of islands, south-east of the Solomon Islands. Around 3000 BCE 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.
What is the origin of the Lapita?
The Lapita people were originally from Taiwan and other regions of East Asia. They were highly mobile seaborne explorers and colonists who had established themselves on the Bismarck Archipelago (northeast of New Guinea) by 2000 bce.
Who are the Lapita people and why are they important?
The Lapita were the first people to penetrate Remote Oceania. Between 1100 and 800 BCE they spread rapidly from Melanesia to Fiji and West Polynesia, including Tonga and Samoa. Explorers and settlers travelled across an expanse of the western Pacific in only 10–15 generations.
What is the importance of Lapita pottery?
Lapita sites are of international significance for the story they tell of the human colonization of the last major region of the world, and the navigational and seafaring skills this required to successful reach and settle on the Islands of Remote Oceania, that is, those islands to the south and east of the Solomon ...
How was the Lapita culture formed?
By 32,000 BP, humans had reached New Guinea and settled all intervisible islands east to the Solomon Islands. Around 3,500 BP, a distinct intrusive group from Southeast Asia reached coastal New Guinea, integrated their components with indigenous resources, and gave rise to the Lapita Cultural Complex.
Where are the Lapita people now?
"Now that we've got the DNA of the ancient Lapita people, the big shock is that they are really like [Aboriginal] people from Taiwan," Professor Spriggs said. Today, all south Pacific Islanders have a heritage that includes DNA from both a Papuan and an East Asian population to varying degrees.
Where was Lapita pottery not found?
Lapita pottery is common on most Melanesian islands and is often found associated with Melanesian deposits, but is not found amongst any Eastern Polynesian archaeological deposits in Hawai'i, Rapa Nui, Aoteoroa, Tahiti, Tuamotus, Raiatea, Raivavae or Rarotonga or any other Eastern Polynesian Islands.
Where did the Polynesians originate from?
The human settlement of the Pacific Islands represents one of the most recent major migration events of mankind. Polynesians originated in Asia according to linguistic evidence or in Melanesia according to archaeological evidence.
Where are the Lapita people now?
"Now that we've got the DNA of the ancient Lapita people, the big shock is that they are really like [Aboriginal] people from Taiwan," Professor Spriggs said. Today, all south Pacific Islanders have a heritage that includes DNA from both a Papuan and an East Asian population to varying degrees.
Where did Pasifika people come from?
At the time of writing, Pasifika peoples are defined as New Zealand residents belonging to the seven Pacific nations, namely, Samoa, Cook Islands, Tonga, Niue, Fiji, Tokelau, and Tuvalu.
Where did the Lapita voyages begin?
The 'Lapita Voyage' began in the first week of November 2008, when two 38ft double canoes, designed by James Wharram Designs, based on an ancient Polynesian canoe hull-form and built in the Philippines, set out on a 4,000Nm voyage along the island chains of the Philippines, Indonesia, New Guinea and the Solomons.
What is the Lapita pottery?
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.
Where is Lapita pottery found?
A few shards with figurative designs have also been found. Lapita pottery has been found from New Guinea eastward to Samoa. Fishhooks, pieces of obsidian and chert flakes, and beads and rings made of shells are the other principal artifacts of the Lapita culture. Lapita pottery.
Where did the Lapita culture originate?
From Fiji the Lapita culturewas carried to Tonga and Samoa, where the first distinctively Polynesian cultures evolved. Archaeological evidence suggests that two other pottery styles were subsequently introduced into Fiji, though it is not clear whether they represent major migrations or simply cultural innovations brought by small…
Where did the Lapita people come from?
The Lapita people were originally from Taiwan and other regions of East Asia. They were highly mobile seaborne explorers and colonists who had established themselves on the Bismarck Archipelago (northeast of New Guinea) by 2000 bce.
What is the Melanesia culture?
Melanesian culture: Traditional Melanesia. …shell ornaments that define the Lapita culture. They spoke an Austronesian language related to languages of the Philippines and Indonesia and ancestral to many of the languages of coastal eastern New Guinea; much of the Bismarck Archipelago; the Solomons, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia;
Where are Lapita pottery found?
Archaeological sites containing Lapita pottery have been identified on all island groups in the Kingdom of Tonga and currently number over 30 sites (Burley, 2001). Most of the known sites that have been excavated are in the Ha'apai Group and are an intrinsic component of the Ha'apai cultural landscape. The archaeological deposits containing Lapita ceramics are similar in their range of artefactual material and in their locations, almost all located on or adjacent to a beach and commonly on small islands. The decorated ceramics found in these sites have a characteristic style of decoration known as ‘Lapita' (after the site at which these ceramics were first recorded, the Lapita site on New Caledonia) and also contain a range of artifacts manufactured from shell and stone, plain pottery and faunal remains.
When did Lapita pottery come to the Pacific?
Sites containing Lapita pottery are also found in the Bismarck Archipelago (PNG), Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji and Samoa and collectively these sites reflect major social and cultural changes in the Western Pacific around 3000 years ago , possibly associated with the spread of Austronesian speaking people from Island southeast Asia that resulted in the movement of the makers of Lapita pottery out of Island Melanesia into Remote Oceania being the initial human colonization of the region.
Why are Lapita sites important?
Lapita sites are of international significance for the story they tell of the human colonization of the last major region of the world, and the navigational and seafaring skills this required to successful reach and settle on the Islands of Remote Oceania, that is, those islands to the south and east of the Solomon Islands. The successful colonisation of this region depended on very detailed knowledge and understanding of the Oceanic environment, the natural resources of the land and sea and a knowledge of horticulture and arboriculture that enables these early colonizers to transport their food resources from island Melanesia to the island of West Polynesia creating the landscapes of the Pacific that we see today.
Where are Lapita sites?
As discussed above, Lapita sites are found across the Western Pacific and collectively tell the story of a major episode of human colonization and the first colonization of the Oceanic world, a story of great regional and international significance and clearly of outstanding universal value. Collectively the archaeological sites containing Lapita ceramics and other important very important archaeological material create a pattern that tells this story through their locations, being found from Papua New Guinea to Samoa.
What is Ha'apai culture?
Ha'apai sites are an intrinsic component of the cultural landscapes of Tonga and reflect the sophisticated adaptation of the first colonizers of the Kingdom and the region as a whole to this truly oceanic environment of small coral islands.
Where is Lapita pottery from?
Material culture. Lapita pottery from Vanuatu, Museum in Port Vila. Pottery whose detailed decorative designs suggest Lapita influence was made from a variety of materials, depending on what was available, and their crafters used a variety of techniques, depending on the tools they had.
What was Lapita pottery made of?
Pottery whose detailed decorative designs suggest Lapita influence was made from a variety of materials, depending on what was available, and their crafters used a variety of techniques, depending on the tools they had. But, typically, the pottery consisted of low-fired earthenware, tempered with shells or sand, and decorated using a toothed (“dentate”) stamp. It has been theorized that these decorations may have been transferred from less hardy material, such as bark cloth (“tapa”) or mats, or from tattoos, onto the pottery — or transferred from the pottery onto those materials. Other important parts of the Lapita repertoire were: undecorated ("plain-ware") pottery, including beakers, cooking pots, and bowls; shell artifacts; ground-stone adzes; and flaked-stone tools made of obsidian, chert, or other available kinds of rock.
What is the Lapita culture?
Archaeological evidence also broadly supports the theory that the people of the Lapita culture are of Austronesian origin. On the Bismarck Archipelago, around 3,500 years ago, the Lapita complex appears suddenly, as a fully-developed archaeological horizon with associated highly developed technological assemblages.
What language did the Lapita speak?
Linguists and other researchers theorize that the people of the Lapita cultural complex spoke a proto-Oceanic language that contributed to languages in the Austronesian language group spoken in Oceania today. However, the particular language or languages spoken by the Lapita is unknown. The languages spoken in the region today derive from a number of different ancient languages, and material culture uncovered by archaeology does not generally provide clues to the language spoken by the makers of the artifacts.
What are the elements of Lapita culture?
These include pottery, crops, paddy field agriculture, domesticated animals (chickens, dogs, and pigs), rectangular stilt houses, tattoo chisels, quadrangular adzes, polished stone chisels, outrigger boat technology, trolling hooks, and various other stone artifacts. Lapita pottery offers the strongest evidence of an Austronesian origin. It has very distinctive elements, like the use of the red slips, tiny punch marks, dentate stamps, circle stamps, and a cross-in-circle motif. Similar pottery has been found in Taiwan, the Batanes and Luzon islands of the Philippines, and the Marianas.
What are the characteristics of Lapita culture?
The historically recognized characteristic of the Lapita culture is a distinctive geometric design on dentate-stamped pottery.
Where is Jack Golson's Lapita pottery found?
See also: Archaeology in Samoa. Lapita pottery has been found in Near Oceania as well as Remote Oceania, as far west as the Bismarck Archipelago, as far east as Samoa, and as far south as New Caledonia.
What is the Lapita culture?
Lapita culture. In Lapita culture. The Lapita people are known principally on the basis of the remains of their fired pottery, which consists of bea kers, 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…. Read More.
Where did the Lapita culture originate?
From Fiji the Lapita culture was carried to Tonga and Samoa, where the first distinctively Polynesian cultures evolved. Archaeological evidence suggests that two other…. Pottery of the Lapita culture was in use in Santa Cruz and the Reef Islands about 1500 bce.
Where did the Lapita people settle?
…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.
What is the style of pottery in Fiji?
Fiji. In Fiji: History of Fiji. …style of pottery known as Lapita ware. That pottery is generally associated with peoples who had well-developed skills in navigation and canoe building and were horticulturists.
What is Lapita pottery?
Lapita pottery was shaped by hand, and perhaps using a paddle-and-anvil technique to thin the walls, but without the aid of a potter’s wheel. It is low-fire earthenware (no evidence of Lapita kilns have been found). This means that the dry clay pots would likely have been placed in open fires to harden—the descendants of the Lapita people in Fiji and other areas still make pottery in this way. There is some geographical variation in the shapes and sizes of the pottery but most were simple bowls, some had pedestal feet, and others were flat-bottomed vessels. We know that the pottery was generally not used for cooking because carbon residues are not normally found on the potsherds. Rather, the evidence suggests that much of the pottery was used for serving food, while larger vessels were likely used for storage.
Why are Lapita pottery pieces so important?
Archaeologists get very excited when they find pieces of Lapita pottery. Why? Because the sequential depositing of potsherds (fragments of pottery) in an easterly direction across the island groups of the Pacific has become the pivotal evidence that tells the extraordinary story of the peopling of the vast Pacific Ocean. Pieces of the distinctive red-slipped pottery of the Lapita people have been recovered from sites spanning thousands of miles across the Pacific from the outer reaches of Southeast Asia, through the island groups often referred to as Micronesia and Melanesia, and into the central Pacific and Polynesia.
What is the Lapita design system?
A major breakthrough in the analysis of the Lapita design system came in the 1970s when Māori archaeologist Sydney Moko Mead developed a coherent formal system to categorize the design elements and motifs found on Lapita pottery. Mead’s system drew inspiration from linguistic analysis and has a set of components that form the building blocks of the “grammar” of the Lapita design system. These include: design elements, motifs, zone markers, and design fields. Even though the design system changed incrementally through time and within specific geographical areas as people moved across the Pacific, the underlying structural patterns and rules of the system remained the same. From an analytical point of view, the systemized grammar of design has meant that potsherds found in one site can be categorized and compared with others found in multiple other sites to provide evidence of the movement of the Lapita people in particular timeframes. What’s more, vestiges of the design motifs and the grammar of the system are apparent in contemporary tattooing, barkcloth decoration and other art forms throughout contemporary Remote Oceania (image above).
Why was sand used in Lapita pottery?
The makers of the Lapita pottery blended clay with a particular type of sand. The sand was needed as a temper to make the vessels more durable during firing.
Where did the Lapita people come from?
The new arrivals, who we now know as the Lapita people (named for the beach on the island of New Caledonia where a large number of pottery sherds were found), spoke a different language than the people they would have encountered there. These local people had been living on the large island now known as New Guinea and the surrounding islands for between 60,000 and 40,000 years.2 Aside from their language and different genetic stock, the Lapita were different to those they encountered because they had sophisticated seafaring and navigation capability—and they manufactured and decorated ceramics in very particular ways. We can only theorize about the political and environmental pressures that drove these people to set out to sea in search of new places to live. Nevertheless, the pieces of broken but stylistically related potsherds distributed across thousands of miles of islands, laid down in datable stratigraphic layers, have revealed important information about the ancestors of the contemporary peoples of the central Pacific.
Where are Lapita potsherds found?
It seems that within a couple of hundred years of arriving in what are now Samoa and Tonga (see map above), Lapita pottery and its distinctive design decoration had all but disappeared.
When did the Lapita people move east?
An extraordinary story. As the Lapita people moved east past the Bismarck archipelago they likely reached the Samoan and Tongan Island groups around 800 B.C.E. They then paused for 1200 years when another phase of colonization began, and people headed toward the most distant reaches of the Polynesian triangle.
