Abstract
Ancestral Polynesian society is the formative base for development of the Polynesian cultural template and proto-Polynesian linguistic stage. Emerging in western Polynesia ca 2700 cal BP, it is correlated in the archaeological record of Tonga with the Polynesian Plainware ceramic phase presently thought to be of approximately 800 years duration or longer. Here we re-establish the upper boundary for this phase to no more than 2350 cal BP employing a suite of 44 new and existing radiocarbon dates from 13 Polynesian Plainware site occupations across the extent of Tonga. The implications of this boundary, the abruptness of ceramic loss, and the shortening of duration to 350 years have substantive implications for archaeological interpretations in the ancestral Polynesian homeland.
Highlights
The presence of ceramic vessels in the archaeological record typically is viewed as a technological development with high functionality, a technology concurrent with sedentism and agricultural production, and a marker for increasing cultural complexity
That a society could or would abandon a robust potting industry without apparent reason. Such was the case in the Polynesian homeland of Tonga where Lapita colonizer groups of 2850 cal BP produced a range of both decorated and plain ceramic vessel forms
We address the timing for ceramic production loss in the archaeological record of Tonga
Summary
The presence of ceramic vessels in the archaeological record typically is viewed as a technological development with high functionality, a technology concurrent with sedentism and agricultural production, and a marker for increasing cultural complexity. Our data incorporate a volume of 44 existing and new radiocarbon dates for the Polynesian Plainware phase in Tonga as recovered from 13 sites across the archipelago. Connaughton [11] acknowledges this in his regional review of Polynesian Plainware phase dates for western Polynesia but goes on to project a general duration lasting 1200–1300 years after the loss of decorated vessels.
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