IntroducedDioscoreaspp. starch in Lapita and later deposits, Vao Island, Vanuatu

Diet and Human Mobility from the Lapita to the Early Historic Period on Uripiv Island, Northeast Malakula, Vanuatu

Vanuatu was first settled ca. 3000 years ago by populations associated with the Lapita culture. Models of diet, subsistence practices, and human interaction for the Lapita and subsequent occupation periods have been developed mainly using the available archaeological and paleoenvironmental data. We test these models using stable (carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur) and radiogenic (strontium) isotopes...

Lapita Diet in Remote Oceania: New Stable Isotope Evidence from the 3000-Year-Old Teouma Site, Efate Island, Vanuatu

Remote Oceania was colonized ca. 3000 BP by populations associated with the Lapita Cultural Complex, marking a major event in the prehistoric settlement of the Pacific Islands. Although over 250 Lapita sites have been found throughout the Western Pacific, human remains associated with Lapita period sites are rare. The site of Teouma, on Efate Island, Vanuatu has yielded the largest burial assem...

The Language of Lapita: Vanuatu and an Early Papuan Presence in the Pacific

The languages of Vanuatu are uniformly Austronesian, but have long been described as “aberrant.” Blust (2005) points out a number of morphosyntactic features of the Vanuatu languages that might provide evidence for a Papuan element in their history. We add to that argument, presenting phonological evidence that links the languages of Vanuatu and New Caledonia with the non-Austronesian languages...

Lapita and Proto-Oceanic

Linguistics and archaeology have been, and continue to be, entwined in the discourse on the early human history of the Pacific. It is commonly assumed, explicitly or otherwise, that the bearers of the Lapita culture were speakers of Proto-Oceanic, the ancestor of the Austronesian languages of most of the Pacific. In this discursive piece, the chronological data for the location and timing of th...

Specialisation, standardisation and Lapita ceramics