Radiocarbon Dates from the Mussau Islands and the Lapita Colonization of the Southwestern Pacific

Abstract

Three decades of archaeological excavations in Melanesia and Western Polynesia have led to a consensus among Oceanic prehistorians that the initial human colonization of the southwestern Pacific (east of the Solomons) was effected by populations of the Lapita Cultural Complex (Green, 1979; Kirch, 1982, 1984; Allen, 1984; Spriggs, 1984). Although the western Melanesian islands of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and possibly the Solomon Islands were settled in the late Pleistocene by small hunter-gatherer populations (Downie & White, 1979; Specht, Lilley & Normu, 1981; Groubeet al, 1986), discovery and occupation by humans of the more remote island chains to the east required sophisticated voyaging and colonization strategies. That the Austronesian-speaking Lapita people possessed long-distance voyaging craft is suggested both by lexical reconstructions, and by the archaeological evidence of long-distance transport of obsidian and other exotic materials over distances of up to 3700km (Ambrose & Green, 1972; Best, 1987). Lapita sites are marked by a distinctive complex of dentate-stamped earthenware ceramics, and associated shell, bone, and stone artifacts. Sites yielding such assemblages have been recorded between the Bismarck Archipelago in the west, through Melanesia, and as far east as Samoa and Tonga, a straight-line distance of ca 4500km.