The Pottery Trail From Southeast Asia to Remote Oceania

Abstract

ABSTRACT A set of unique circumstances created a durable archaeological record of ancient human migration from Southeast Asia to Remote Oceania, useful as a global model of population dispersals. Finely made pottery with a very specific decorative signature is found in multiple locations in the Philippines and western Oceania, constituting a shared cultural trait that can be traced, both geographically and chronologically, to a specific homeland. Especially important for human migration models, this decorated pottery is linked to a system of cultural origin, so the spread as a diagnostic tradition can be related to the spread of a cultural group. Even more important, this decorated pottery appeared with the first peopling of the remote Pacific Islands, thus providing a clear and datable chronicle of where and when people spread from one location to another. The pottery trail points to a homeland in the Philippine Neolithic about 2000–1800 BC, followed by expansion into the remote Mariana Islands 1500 BC, and then slightly later into the Lapita world of Melanesia and Polynesia.