Northern Vanuatu as a Pacific Crossroads: The Archaeology of Discovery, Interaction, and the Emergence of the "Ethnographic Present"

Northern Vanuatu is a significant crossroads region of the Southwest Pacific. This paper outlines current archaeological research being undertaken in the area, focusing on defining initial human settlement there some 3000 years ago and subsequent cultural transformations which led to the establishment of the ethnographic present. The study to date has contributed to a more detailed picture of inter- and intra-archipelago interaction, settlement pattern, subsistence, and cultural differentiation. The research contributes to regional debates on human colonization, patterns of social interaction, and the drivers of social change in island contexts

Political economy in prehistory: A marxist approach to pacific sequences

Development of strong leaders and social stratification in prehistory is suitable for a political economy approach to the longue durée. Our goal is to encourage archaeologists to formulate prehistoric research that draws on historical materialism, the Marxist reasoning for understanding political economy. Three prehistoric cases from the Pacific (Lapita, Vanuatu, and Hawai‘i) help us evaluate the steps required to do this. Most importantly, we identify economic bottlenecks (constriction points) based on property rights for land or on production and trade of prestige goods. Resources can be mobilized by emergent elites at such bottlenecks to support strategies that enmesh land managers, captains, warriors, and priests to centralize power. A political economy approach in prehistory can help explain striking parallels observed for independent sequences as well as conjunctures and divergences in specific world culture areas

Birds on the rim: a unique Lapita carinated vessel in its wider context

This paper describes a decorated carinated vessel excavated at the Teouma Lapita site, on the south coast of Efate, central Vanuatu. The vessel contained human bones and, following reconstruction, was found to have had four modelled birds on its rim. Th

Radiocarbon dating of burials from the Teouma Lapita cemetery, Efate, Vanuatu

The discovery of a cemetery at Teouma on the island of Efate in Vanuatu dated to c. 3000 years ago increased the number of early Pacific human remains available for study by nearly an order of magnitude and provided for the first time the ability to study the population dynamics of these early colonizers. The cemetery also provided an opportunity to investigate the chronological development of such a unique site. Although identified short-lived plant materials are favoured for dating archaeological sites, the reality of research in the Pacific region is that such materials are often rare, difficult to identify to species because of an absence of suitable reference collections, and dates on other materials often have greater potential to refine and focus ¹⁴C chronologies that deal with specific research questions. At Teouma, dates on the burial remains themselves are the best means to answer questions about the age and duration of the burial ground. Human bone, however, is one of the most complicated materials to date reliably because of dietary ¹⁴C offsets and bone preservation. One commonly used methodology for calibrating dates on human bone from Pacific human skeletal remains, based on linear interpolation between δ¹³C endpoints and δ¹⁵N values, is complicated by the wide range of foods available (marine, reef, C₄ and C₃), and remains largely untested in Pacific contexts. Radiocarbon dating of the Teouma site, including 36 Lapita-age burials, 5 dates on Conus sp. ring artefacts, and dates from the associated midden deposit, has enabled further evaluation of ¹⁴C dietary offsets and the reliability of calibrated radiocarbon ages on human bone. Bayesian evaluation of the ¹⁴C dates suggests the burial ground was in regular use by c. 2940-2880 cal BP, with the last interments occurring c. 2770-2710 cal BP. A number of burials could indicate possible earlier use, perhaps as early as 3110-2930 cal BP as indicated by the calibrated age range of Burial 57. This cannot be independently substantiated using other radiocarbon dates or context at the present time. Overall, these results suggest the burial ground was in use over a possible 150 to 240 years during the formative phase of Lapita expansion into Remote Oceania

Faces of the Teouma Lapita People: Art, Accuracy and Facial Approximation

In 2008 we completed facial approximations of four individuals from the early Lapita Culture, a seafaring people who were the first to settle the islands of the Western Pacific circa 3000 years ago. Typically an approximation is performed as a 3D sculpture or using computer graphics. We chose to sketch what we have been able to determine from the remains because the artistic conventions of drawing work with visual perception in ways that are more complementary to the knowledge, theories and methods that make up the facial approximation of human remains

'The Collective Biography of Archaeology in the Pacific': Seven Years of the CBAP Project

The Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Project, The Collective Biography of Archaeology in the Pacific or ‘CBAP’ was funded between 2015-2020 and, due to COVID disruptions, associated events continued until the end of 2022. Some of the initial aims included: to create a sub-field of the history of Pacific archaeology; to re-define the development of Australian archaeology within its wider Oceanic context; to re-discover the contribution of both French and German scholars; to recover the considerable amount of archaeological excavation that took place in the Pacific from the 1870s until WWII; to re-conceptualise the perennial issue of trans-Oceanic cultural contacts; to redress the neglect of the role of Indigenous Pacific scholars and of women in archaeology; and to re-engage with descendant communities in the light of our research and its findings. The paper discusses the project’s results in light of these and other emerging aims during the last seven years. It also provides a comprehensive bibliography of publications by the Project’s main contributors