Polynesians

Lapita, the First Polynesians

Scholars generally agree now that the ancestors of Polynesian people, who made a distinctive type of pottery called Lapita, migrated from insular Melanesia around 3500–3400 B. C. eastward into New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. This ancestral Polynesian society seems to have begun in the latter three of the archipelagoes and eventually moved further eastward into the far corners of the triangle, occupying many of the islands in between.

Archaeologists still debate, however, whether Lapita derives from an indigenous population in Melanesia or represents a completely new group of seafarers who moved southward from Taiwan through the Philippines on their way into Near Oceania around 2500 B.C. Some archaeologists, such as Patrick Vinton Kirch at the University of California–Berkeley, have been strong proponents of the view that Lapita represented an intrusive development deriving from an expansion of peoples who spoke languages related to the Austronesian family. The earliest pottery from Lapita deposits in the Bismarck Archipelago appears to be related to sites found on islands such as Sulawesi and the Philippines, but the Lapita style of pottery decoration seems to be something unique that may represent a melding of both Austronesian-speaking and Papuan cultures in Near Oceania. Nonetheless, it is clear that Lapita disperses southward and eastward, bringing along a host of new plants and animals as well as a distinctive cultural kit with which to exploit these new island environments.

Archaeology in Polynesia

As archaeological research in Polynesia increased in the 1950s and1960s, it became clearer to archaeologists such as Jack Golson(Australian National University) [Page 1886]and Roger Green(University of Auckland), that Lapita pottery-producing peoples successfully crossed the nearly 900-kilometer ocean gap between Vanuatu and/or the Solomons into Fiji by 1200–1000 B.C. Other nearby island groups, such as Samoa, were colonized by around 1000B.C. as evidenced by the spread of early Lapita pottery as well as artifacts made from chert, obsidian, basalt, and other stone. The introduction and cultivation of various plants (including taro) and animals (like the dog, pig, and chicken) also testifies to a new human (and Lapita) presence on these islands.

The continuing social and economic interaction of human groups living in the newer environments of Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, along with their relative isolation from the Near Oceanic homeland, led to the development of this unique Polynesian culture. Over the course of the first millenium B. C, these cultural traits changed as the highly decorated, dentate-designed pottery characteristic of early Lapita became plainer and thicker. Some tool forms changed in response to the discovery of new stone resources (for example, the adz), while others remained fairly consistent over time (for example, fishing gear). The cultural characteristics that evolved from the first Lapita settlers into ancestral Polynesian cultures included not only plain ware, but adzes made from Tridacna (giant clam) shell and basalt; Conus shell beads and rings; one-piece Turbo shell fishhooks; abraders made from sea urchin spine, coral, or pumice; and a myriad of other tools produced from basalt, obsidian, and various stone types. One can assume that an even wider range of artifacts and other cultural remains made from perishable materials were not preserved in the archaeological record.

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