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	Lapita - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Lapita is the common name of an ancient Pacific Ocean culture which is believed by some to be the common ancestor of several cultures in Polynesia and surrounding areas.
		Classic Lapita pottery was produced between 1350 and 750 BC in the Bismarck Archipelago.
		Lapita pottery is known from the Bismarck archipelago to Samoa and Tonga.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Lapita (599 words)

	Lapita -- Facts, Info, and Encyclopedia article (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Lapita is the common name of an ancient (The largest ocean in the world) Pacific Ocean (A particular society at a particular time and place) culture which is believed by some to be the common ancestor of several cultures in (The islands in the eastern part of Oceania) Polynesia and surrounding areas.
		Classic Lapita pottery was produced between (Click link for more info and facts about 1350) 1350 and 750 BC in the (A group of islands in the southwestern Pacific northeast of New Guinea; part of Papua New Guinea) Bismarck Archipelago.
		The 'Lapita people' are supposed to have spoken proto-Oceanic, a precursor of the Oceanic branch of (The family of languages spoken in Australia and Formosa and Malaysia and Polynesia) Austronesian.
	www.absoluteastronomy.com /encyclopedia/l/la/lapita.htm (665 words)

	Antiquity: Lapita and the temporal geography of prehistory. (Lapita pottery culture)@ HighBeam Research (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Antiquity: Lapita and the temporal geography of prehistory.
		Actual empirical data on Lapita pottery is limited and has thus hampered the establishment of the origins of the development of its form and content.
		What is common among the conflicting theories regarding the development of Lapita pottery is in the conflicting manner in which experts have reconstructed ancient temporal geography, which involves the basic elements of origins, movement, descent and change.
	www.highbeam.com /library/doc0.asp?DOCID=1G1:20202111&refid=ip_encyclopedia_hf (207 words)

	Message from the Ancestors – On Lapita Pottery
		Lapita pots are earthenware, low-fired at 500-600°C on open fires, as is still done in the Pacific.
		Given the strength of the evidence that the Lapita pots provide, however, it would be foolish to deny the Pacific peoples an important part of their history.
		Perhaps the Lapita pots’ decorations were not just coded messages between related clans on islands scattered across the vast ocean, or between ancestral spirits and descendants.
	www.craftculture.org /world/howes1.htm (1189 words)

	Encyclopedia: Lapita
		It is, however, difficult to link non-literate material culture to languages, and it can not be verified by independent sources.
		In archaeology, culture refers to either of two separate but allied concepts: An archaeological culture is a pattern of similar artefacts and features found within a specific area over a limited period of time.
		World map showing location of Asia A satellite composite image of Asia Asia is the central and eastern part of the continent of Eurasia, defined by subtracting the European peninsula from Eurasia.
	www.nationmaster.com /encyclopedia/Lapita (1344 words)

	Lapita pottery
		Therefore plainware appears to be a simplification of the Lapita cultural complex caused by isolation.
		Lapita pottery appeared 4000 years ago on an isolated island in the middle of the Bismark archepelago quite suddenly with little formative phase.
		Lapita pottery originated in a group of islands that happen to be at the end of the Southern Equatorial current, arriving from Central America, and funnily enough, these islands comprise an interesting mix of racial types where dark skinned frizzy haired Melanesians sometimes exhibit red and blonde hair.
	www.users.on.net /~mkfenn/page6.htm (4273 words)

	Stamps Fiji
		In the period 1500-100 BC, Lapita sites spread from the Bismarck Archipelago in the west to West Polynesia in the east of a major 500 sea mile gap from island Melanesia and may also have been the immediate for the first settlers of polynesia.
		Lapita sites can be found spread from New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago in the west, through Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, to Tonga and Samoa, identifying a common cultural group termed the Lapita people who manufactured and transported pottery, some of which was decorated in unique style.
		Lapita pottery was discovered through surface collections and shallow excavations at Vutua on the northeastern cost of the island.
	www.stampsfiji.com /stamps/pottery (843 words)

	Sciotecha: Reconstructed face of Lapita culture
		The face of Mana was reconstructed using a model of her skull which was discovered by a member of a research team from USP and the Fiji Museum which excavated an early human settlement at Naitabale in the south of Moturiki Island, central Fiji (Map 1) in June-July 2002.
		The distinctive Lapita pottery that identifies the culture of these early settlers was found in abundance at the Naitabale settlement.
		The discovery of the skeleton was exciting because it appeared certain to be of Lapita age.
	www.frimlin.com /links/2005/08/reconstructed-face-of-lapita-culture.php (391 words)

	Publications (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Lapita archaeology is of fundamental importance to understanding the Pacific since it unearths information about the first people to establish themselves beyond the Solomon Islands to as far east as Samoa around 3000 years ago, and whose descendants eventually colonised Polynesia.
		The wide distribution of Lapita, its relatively rapid spread, debate about its origin, composition and mode of dispersal, and the meanings to be extracted from its distinctive and often striking ceramics are issues that underpin a sustained interest in it regionally and also from perspectives in world archaeology.
		From the abstract: "Lapita assemblages from the western Pacific have been regionalised into stylistic boundaries or provinces, known as Far Western, Western, and Eastern, and it has been thought that differences between them are partly temporal (Far Western) and mainly a result of isolation after the initial colonisation of the area (Western versus Eastern).
	car.anu.edu.au /publications3b.html (2650 words)

	lapitaconfabstracts (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Attention is focussed on several approaches to the chronology of Lapita culture, including OSL results from Sigatoka, the nature of Lapita settlements, and the discovery and dating of the Fijian megafauna.
		Lapita in the Bismarck Archipelago: escaping the strait-jacket.
		The Lapita period, which coincides with the W-K2 palaeosol (3,600 to 1,900 yrs BP), is marked by a palm forest vegetation type although there is a grass signature indicating forest disturbance related to clearing and village settlement.
	car.anu.edu.au /lapitaconfabstracts.html (7537 words)

	Asian Perspectives: the Journal of Archaeology for Asia and the Pacific: Dating Lapita pottery in the Bismarck ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Dating evidence of Lapita pottery in the Bismarck Archipelago is examined and two conclusions are suggested.
		If the initial time-line interpretation is correct, Lapita pottery may have begun in the Mussau Islands earlier than in New Britain.
		Prehistoric sites with pottery known as Lapita have been the focus of archaeological attention in the western Pacific for more than thirty years.
	www.highbeam.com /library/doc0.asp?DOCID=1G1:20215350&refid=ip_encyclopedia_hf (254 words)

	Polynesia - Lapita Pottery
		The easily identified style of pottery now called Lapita is a distinctive Oceanic cultural complex that eventually would prove to be ancestral to Polynesian culture in the western area of the Polynesian triangle.
		The initial discovery of this pottery was made by Father Otto Meyer in 1908-1909 at the village of Rakival on the small island of Waton some 6.5 kilometers off the northeastern end of New Britain in the Bismark Archipelago (see map locality 3).
		It is a name of this locality - Lapita - that has subsequently served to designate both the pottery and the cultural complex.
	www.janesoceania.com /polynesia_lapita (403 words)

	Untitled Document (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		The Lapita complex follow-up research of Golson and his students in the 1960's led to great interest of the whole Pacific archaeology community in Melanesia and its mysterious ties to Lapita.
		Golson suggested that the presence of the Lapita complex in both Melanesia and Polynesia questioned the validity of the boundary line between the two regions--a line that had first been demarkated by Durmont d'Urville in the 18th century and then maintained by ethnologists as a cultural boundary (Terrell 161).
		Hence, we can see that the Lapita series is of great importance in hypotheses concerning prehistoric expansion and has had a tremendous impact on the dialogue in the archaeological community.
	itrs.scu.edu /anthroweb2/004/melanesia5.html (314 words)

	Polynesian Voyaging
		Five years later the same pottery was uncovered at Lapita in New Caledonia.
		Lapita pottery was excavated in Tonga in 1963-64, and has recently been found in Samoa as well - both in western Polynesia.
		The swift and capacious vessels of the Lapita navigators were probably little changed by Captain Cook's day.
	www.janeresture.com /voyaging/main.htm (1334 words)

	Mainstream theories
		Lapita Pottery is still held to be the key to unraveling the Polynesians' origins.
		Lapita pottery is found amongst Melanesian deposits and is also found on some western Polynesian islands, especially Tonga and Samoa.
		The Lapita Potters were the Proto Melanesians, they were the Obsidian traders and they were adventurous sailors and they did sail to some Polynesian islands 100's of years prior to the Polynesians arriving.
	www.users.on.net /~mkfenn/page1.htm (1079 words)

	Fiji Museum -- Archaeology News
		This is the first Lapita site on the islands of Ovalau and Moturiki although one on Naigani Island, northwest of Ovalau, has been known for twenty years.
		The Lapita people reached our islands from the west about 2900 years ago and lived a largely coastal existence for hundreds of years with probably little impact on island environments.
		What these recent findings show is that Lapita settlement in Fiji was more intense than previously thought suggesting, although this is far from certain, that large numbers of colonists arrived within a short period of time.
	www.fijimuseum.org.fj /fm-archnews1000.htm (1223 words)

	EDITORIAL (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		The term ‘Lapita’ is also used to denote the elaborately-decorated form of low-fired, earthenware pottery which characterizes such assemblages, which are found from the Bismarck Archipelago near New Guinea to Samoa in western Polynesia and New Caledonia in southern Melanesia in contexts dating between about 3300 and 2700 BP.
		In the case of Lapita there is a way forward that deals realistically with archaeological and other evidence for migration into Melanesia while paying more than lip-service to the evidence for significant local input and avoiding the pitfalls of an essentialist culture-historical approach.
		Immediately prior to the appearance of Lapita, however, there was a volcanic eruption of staggering proportions in the eastern part of the obsidian source area on New Britain.
	www.wac.uct.ac.za /bulletin/wab12/lilley.html (6360 words)

	Gosden_21_1 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		The fullest evidence comes from the Lapita period dating from 3500 to 2000 b.p., which has assemblages characterized by dentate stamped pottery, obsidian, and shell.
		During the Lapita period in the Arawes there is evidence of a clustered settlement pattern in the form of stilt villages built in shallow water on the lee sides of islands.
		Thus during the Lapita period many of the features of the lowland portions of the islands as they exist today were created by human patterns of land use.
	www.bu.edu /jfa/Abstracts/G/Gosden_21_1.html (218 words)

	Passionate about History
		Some argue the Lapita people were ancestral Polynesians from Southeast Asia who migrated east, some groups settling long term on islands, while others carried on.
		They believe Lapita people were the ancestors of the inhabitants of eastern Melanesia who now look different because of later waves of migration.
		The remains were well-preserved because of the island uplift and later volcanic eruptions, which buried the site with ash up to one metre in some places.
	darkwing.uoregon.edu /~mharrsch/2004/09/lapita-find-considered-pompeii-of.html (280 words)

	About Fiji : History & Culture : Pre-history - Fiji Visitors Bureau (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		The trail of their pots, hooks, obsidian cutting tools and ornaments leads down from New Britain through some of the outer islands fringing the Solomons and Vanuatu, suggesting that perhaps they were not powerful enough to force settlements on the bigger islands which were already supporting large populations of people.
		At some stage, about 2000 years before the birth of Christ, a canoe load of adventurous "Lapita" sailors either deliberately set out to the east or were driven off course by a westerly wind and made landfall in the Fijian archipelago.
		It is reasonable to suppose that groups of Melanesians who were in contact with the "Lapita" people in the west would have been quick to take advantage of the better craft used by the "Lapita" seafarers and to incorporate them into their own technology.
	www.fijifvb.gov.fj /about/history/pre_hist.shtml (3644 words)

	South Pacific : The People (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		The most tangible remains of the early Austronesians are remnants of pottery, the first shards of which were found during the 1970s in Lapita, a village in New Caledonia.
		Lapita was the only type of pottery in the South Pacific for a millennium.
		By the time European explorers arrived in the 1770s, gourds and coconut shells were the only crockery used by the Polynesians, who cooked their meals underground and ate with their fingers off banana leaves.
	www.frommers.com /destinations/print-narrative.cfm?destID=240&catID=0240020416 (1133 words)

	Science -- Gibbons 291 (5509): 1735
		The archaeological evidence was a trail of distinctive pottery, obsidian, and shell ornaments known as the Lapita culture, which first appeared 3500 to 3200 years ago in the Bismarck Archipelago in Near Oceania and spread in rapid succession to the islands of Vanuatu and New Caledonia.
		What is open to debate is precisely where the Lapita peoples came from and how much they intermingled along the way with the indigenous people whose ancestors had been living in Near Oceania for at least 33,000 years.
		The oldest Lapita sites, after all, are in the Bismarcks in Near Oceania, where the culture appears to emerge as a fusion between the incoming seafarers and the indigenous Melanesians.
	www.zoology.ubc.ca /~etaylor/413www/gibbons.htm (2621 words)

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