Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T09:52:58.464Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter Nine - Lapita Long-Distance Interactions in the Western Pacific

From Prestige Goods to Prestige Practices

from Part III - The Role of Political Economy and Elite Control in Long-Distance Exchange

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2022

Johan Ling
Affiliation:
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Richard J. Chacon
Affiliation:
Winhrop University, South Carolina
Get access

Summary

This chapter will explore aspects of the Lapita culture of the Western Pacific, the culture of the initial colonizers of ‘Remote Oceania’, the area beyond the main Solomons chain around 3000 BP (Figure 9.1). The Lapita culture appears earliest in identifiable form in the Bismarck Archipelago off New Guinea a century or two earlier but derives in large part from the strand of the Island Southeast Asian Neolithic traceable to Taiwan around 5500 BP and beyond to southern China. There is evidence for Lapita long-distance interactions across some of the greatest distances found in Neolithic societies worldwide. The question must be posed, however, as to whether this represents exchange, particularly of prestige goods, or whether it signals some other form of interaction?

Type
Chapter
Information
Trade before Civilization
Long Distance Exchange and the Rise of Social Complexity
, pp. 209 - 229
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ambrose, W. (1978). The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Trader in Melanesia. Mankind 11, pp. 326333.Google Scholar
Ambrose, W. (2019). Plaited Textile Expression in Lapita Ceramic Ornamentation. in Bedford, S. and Spriggs, M. (eds) Debating Lapita: Distribution, Chronology, Society and Subsistence. Terra Australis 52. Canberra: ANU Press, pp. 241-256.Google Scholar
Bedford, S. (2006). The Pacific’s Earliest Painted Pottery: An Added Layer of Intrigue to the Lapita Debate and Beyond. Antiquity 80, pp. 544557.Google Scholar
Bedford, S., and Spriggs, M., eds. (2019). Debating Lapita: Distribution, Chronology, Society and Subsistence. Terra Australis 52. Canberra: ANU Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bedford, S., Spriggs, M., Buckley, H., Valentin, F., Regenvanu, R., and Abong, M. (2010). Un Cimetière de Premier Peuplement: le Site de Teouma, Sud Efate, Vanuatu/A Cemetery of First Settlement: Teouma, South Efate, Vanuatu. In Sand, C., and Bedford, S., eds., Lapita: AncêtresOcéaniens/Oceanic Ancestors. Paris: Musée du Quai Branly/Somogy, pp. 140161.Google Scholar
Bellwood, P. (1996). Hierarchy, Founder Ideology and Austronesian Expansion. In Fox, J. J. and Sather, C., eds., Origins, Ancestors and Alliance: Explorations in Austronesian Ethnography. Canberra: Department of Anthropology, RSPacS, The Australian National University, pp. 1840.Google Scholar
Bellwood, P. (2004.) First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bellwood, P., and Koon, P. 1989. ‘Lapita Colonists Leave Boats Unburned!’ The Question of Lapita Links with Island Southeast Asia. Antiquity 63, pp. 613622.Google Scholar
Best, S. (2002). Lapita: A View from the East. New Zealand Archaeological Association Monograph 24. Auckland: NZAA.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, M. (1984). The Past in the Past. Ritual and Prestige in the Prehistory of Wessex 2200–1400 BC: A New Dimension to the Archaeological Evidence. In Miller, D. and Tilley, C., eds., Ideology, Power and Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 93101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casey, D. A. (1936). Ethnological Notes. Memoirs of the National Museum of Victoria 9, pp. 9097.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chia, S. (2003). Obsidian Sourcing at Bukit Tengkorak, Sabah, Malaysia. Sabah Society Journal 20, pp. 4563.Google Scholar
Childe, V. G. (1930). The Bronze Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clark., G. (2007). Standardization, Specialization and Lapita Ceramics. In Bedford, S., Sand, C. and Connaughton, S. P., eds., Oceanic Explorations: Lapita and Western Pacific Settlement. Terra Australis 26. Canberra: Pandanus Press, pp. 289299.Google Scholar
Constantine, A., Reepmeyer, C., Bedford, S., Spriggs, M., and Ravn, M. (2015). Obsidian Distribution from a Lapita Cemetery Sheds Light on Its Value to Past Societies. Archaeology in Oceania 50, pp. 111116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D’Altroy, T. N., and Earle, T. K. (1985.) Staple Finance, Wealth Finance and Storage in the Inka Political Economy. Current Anthropology 26:2, pp. 187206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickinson, W., Bedford, S., and Spriggs, M. (2013). Petrography of Temper Sands in 112 Reconstructed Lapita Pottery Vessels from Teouma (Efate): Archaeological Implications and Relations to Other Vanuatu Tempers. Journal of Pacific Archaeology 4:2, pp. 120.Google Scholar
Dusinberre, E. R. M. (2002). An Excavated Ivory from Kerkenes Dağ, Turkey. Transcultural Fluidities, Significance of Collective Identity, and the Problem of Median Art. Ars Asiatica 32, pp. 1754.Google Scholar
Earle, T. K. (1997. How Chiefs Come to Power: The Political Economy in Prehistory. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earle, T. K., and Spriggs, M. 2015. Political Economy in Prehistory: A Marxist Approach to Pacific Sequences (with Comments and Reply). Current Anthropology 56:4, pp. 515544.Google Scholar
Friedman, J. (1981). Notes on Structure and History in Oceania. Folk 23, pp. 275295.Google Scholar
Friedman, J. (1982). Catastrophe and Continuity in Social Evolution. In Renfrew, C., Rowlands, M. J. and Segraves, B. A., eds., Theory and Explanation in Archaeology: The Southampton Conference. London: Academic Press, pp. 175196.Google Scholar
Galipaud, J.-C., and Swete-Kelly, M. C. (2007). Makue (Aore Island, Santo, Vanuatu): A New Lapita Site in the Ambit of New Britain Obsidian Distribution. In Bedford, S., Sand, C. and Connaughton, S., eds., Oceanic Explorations: Lapita and Western Pacific Settlement. Canberra: ANU E Press, pp. 151162.Google Scholar
Galipaud, J.-C., Reepmeyer, C., Torrence, R., Kelloway, S., and White, P. (2014). Long-Distance Connections in Vanuatu: New Obsidian Characterisations for the Makue Site, Aore Island. Archaeology in Oceania 49, pp. 110116.Google Scholar
Gibson, D. B. (1996.) Death of a Salesman: Childe’s Itinerant Craftsman in the Light of Present Knowledge of Late Prehistoric European Craft Production. In Wailes, B., ed., Craft Specialization and Social Evolution: In Memory of Gordon Childe. Monograph 93. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum, pp. 107119.Google Scholar
Gosden, C., and Pavlides, C. (1994). Are Islands Insular? Landscape vs. Seascape in the Case of the Arawe Islands, Papua New Guinea. Archaeology in Oceania 29, pp. 162171.Google Scholar
Green, R. (1979). Early Lapita Art from Polynesia and Island Melanesia: Continuities in Ceramic, Barkcloth and Tattoo Decorations. In Mead, S., ed., Exploring the Visual Art of Oceania. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 1331.Google Scholar
Green, R. C. (1987). Obsidian Results from the Lapita Sites of the Reef/Santa Cruz Islands. In Ambrose, W. R. and Mummery, J. M. J., eds., Archaeometry: Further Australasian Studies. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, RSPacS, ANU and Australian National Gallery, pp. 239249.Google Scholar
Harlow, G. E., Summerhayes, G. R., Davies, H. L., and Matisoo-Smith, L. (2012). A Jade Gouge from Emirau Island, Papua New Guinea (Early Lapita Context, 3300 BP): A Unique Jadeitite. European Journal of Mineralogy 24, pp. 391399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, S. (2015). Human Behavioural Ecology, Anthropogenic Impact and Subsistence Change at the Teouma Lapita Site, Central Vanuatu, 3000–2500 BP. Unpublished PhD thesis, The Australian National University.Google Scholar
Hayden, B. (1983). Social Characteristics of Early Austronesian Colonizers. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 4, pp. 123134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayden, B. (1995). The Emergence of Prestige Technologies and Pottery. In Barnett, W. K. and Hoopes, J. W., eds., The Emergence of Pottery: Technology and Innovation in Ancient Societies. Washington; London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 257265.Google Scholar
Helms, M. (1988). Ulysses’ Sail: An Ethnographic Odyssey of Power, Knowledge, and Geographic Distance. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Irwin, G. (1992). The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonization of the Pacific. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kayser, M., Lao, O., Saar, K., Brauer, S., Wang, X., Nürnberg, P., Trent, R. J., and Stoneking, M. (2008). Genome-wide Analysis Indicates More Asian Than Melanesian Ancestry in Polynesians. American Journal of Human Genetics 82, pp. 194198.Google Scholar
Kirch, P. V. (1988). Long-distance Exchange and Island Colonization: The Lapita Case. Norwegian Archaeological Review 21:2, pp. 103117.Google Scholar
Kirch, P. V. (1991). Prehistoric Exchange in Western Melanesia. Annual Review of Anthropology 20, pp. 142165.Google Scholar
Kirch, P. V. (1997). The Lapita Peoples: Ancestors of the Oceanic World. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kononenko, N. (2012). Middle and Late Holocene Skin-working Tools in Melanesia: Tattooing and Scarification. Archaeology in Oceania 47:1, pp. 1428.Google Scholar
Kononenko, N, Torrence, R., and Sheppard, P. (2016). Detecting Early Tattooing in the Pacific Region through Experimental Usewear and Residue Analysis of Obsidian Tools. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 8, pp. 147163.Google Scholar
Küchler, S. (2002). Malanggan: Art, Memory and Sacrifice. Oxford: BergGoogle Scholar
Langley, M., Bedford, S., Spriggs, M., and Phillip, I. (2020). Manufacture and Use of Lapita Conus Multi-section Broad Rings: Evidence from the Teouma Site, Central Vanuatu. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 15:3, pp. 364383.Google Scholar
Lipson, M., Spriggs, M., Valentin, F., Bedford, S., Shing, R., Zinger, W., Buckley, H., Petchey, F., Matanik, R., Cheronet, O., Rohland, N., Pinhasi, R., and Reich, D. (2020). Three Phases of Ancient Migration Shaped the Ancestry of Human Populations in Vanuatu. Current Biology 30 (21 December), pp. 48464856 and Supplementary Information.Google Scholar
Noury, A., and Galipaud, J.-C. (2011). Les Lapita: Nomades du Pacifique. Marseille: IRD Éditions.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pawley, A. (1981). Melanesian Diversity and Polynesian Homogeneity: A Unified Explanation for Language. In Hollyman, J. and Pawley, A., eds., Studies in Pacific Languages and Cultures in Honour of Bruce Biggs. Auckland: Linguistic Society of New Zealand, pp. 269309.Google Scholar
Pawley, A. (2002). The Austronesian Dispersal: Languages, Technologies and People. In Bellwood, P. and Renfrew, C., eds., Examining the Farming / Language Dispersal Hypothesis. McDonald Institute Monographs. Cambridge: McDonald Institute, pp. 251273.Google Scholar
Pawley, A. (2007). The Origins of Early Lapita Culture: The Testimony of Historical Linguistics. In Bedford, S., Sand, C. and Connaughton, S. P., eds., Oceanic Explorations: Lapita and Western Pacific Settlement. Terra Australis 26. Canberra: ANU E-Press, pp. 1749.Google Scholar
Reepmeyer, C., Spriggs, M., Bedford, S., and Ambrose, W. C. (2010). Provenance and Technology of Lithic Artefacts from the Teouma Lapita Site, Vanuatu. Asian Perspectives 49:1, pp. 205225.Google Scholar
Reepmeyer, C., Spriggs, M., Anggraeni, A., Lape, P., Neri, L., Ronquillo, W. P., Simanjuntak, T., Summerhayes, G., Tanudirjo, D., and Tiauzon, A. (2011). Obsidian Sources and Distribution Systems in Island Southeast Asia: New Results and Implications from Geochemical Research using LA-ICPMS. Journal of Archaeological Science 38:1, pp. 29953005.Google Scholar
Ross-Sheppard, C., Sand, C., Balenaivalu, J., and Burley, D. (2013). Kutau/Bao Obsidian – Extending Its Eastern Distribution into the Fijian Northeast. Journal of Pacific Archaeology 4:2, pp. 7983.Google Scholar
Sand, C. (2015). Comparing Lapita Pottery Forms in the Southwestern Pacific. In Sand, C., Chiu, S. and Hogg, N., eds., The Lapita Cultural Complex in Time and Space: Expansion Routes, Chronologies and Typologies. Archeologia Pasifika 4. Nouméa; Taipei: IANCP and Academia Sinica, pp. 125171.Google Scholar
Sand, C., and Sheppard, P. (2000). Long Distance Prehistoric Obsidian Imports in New Caledonia: Characteristics and Meaning. Earth and Planetary Sciences 331, pp. 335343.Google Scholar
Sheppard, P. J. (1993). Lapita Lithics: Trade/Exchange and Technology: A View from the Reefs/Santa Cruz. Archaeology in Oceania 28:3, pp. 121137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skoglund, P., Posth, C., Sirak, K., Spriggs, M., Valentin, F., Bedford, S., Clark, G. A., Reepmeyer, C., Fernandes, D., Fu, Q., Harney, E., Lipson, M., Mallick, S., Novak, M., Rohland, N., Stewardson, K., Abdullah, S., Cox, M. P., Friedlaender, F. R., Friedlaender, J. S., Kivisild, T., Koki, G., Kusuma, P., Merriweather, D. A., Ricaut, F.- X., Wee, J. T. S., Patterson, N., Krause, J., Pinhasi, R., and Reich, D. (2016). Genomic Insights into the Peopling of the Southwest Pacific. Nature 538 (27 October), pp. 510513 and Supplementary Information.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M. (1990). The Changing Face of Lapita: Transformation of a Design. In Spriggs, M., ed., Lapita Design, Form and Composition: Proceedings of the Lapita Design Workshop, Canberra, December 1988. Occasional Papers in Prehistory 19. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, RSPacS, ANU, pp. 83122.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M. (1997). The Island Melanesians. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M. (2011). Archaeology and the Austronesian Expansion: Where Are We Now? Antiquity 85:328, pp. 510528.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M. (2013). Leaving Safe Harbours: Movement to Immobility, Homogeneity to Diversification. A Comparative Archaeological Sequence from the Western Pacific. In Bergerbrant, S. and Sabatini, S., eds., Counterpoint: Essays in Archaeology and Heritage Studies in Honour of Professor Kristian Kristiansen. BAR International Series 2508. Oxford: Archaeopress, pp. 549556.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M. (2016a.) Lapita and the Linearbandkeramik: What Can a Comparative Approach Tell Us about Either? In Amkreutz, L., Haack, F., Hofmann, D. and van Wijk, I., eds., Something Out of the Ordinary? Interpreting Diversity in the Early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik Culture of Central and Western Europe. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, pp. 481504.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M. (2016b). Thoughts of a Comparativist on Past Colonization, Maritime Interaction and Cultural Integration. In Glørstad, H. and Melheim, L., eds., Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Past Colonization, Maritime Interaction and Cultural Integration. New Directions in Anthropological Archaeology Series. Sheffield: Equinox, pp. 271280.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M. (2019). The Hat Makes the Man: Masks, Headdresses and Skullcaps in Lapita Iconography. In Bedford, S. and Spriggs, M., eds., Debating Lapita: Distribution, Chronology, Society and Subsistence. Terra Australis 52. Canberra: ANU Press, pp. 257273.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M., and Bedford, S. (2013). Is There an Incised Lapita Phase after Dentate-Stamped Pottery Ends? Data from Teouma, Efate Island, Vanuatu. In Summerhayes, G. R. and Buckley, H., eds., Pacific Archaeology: Documenting the past 50,000 years. University of Otago Studies in Archaeology 25. Dunedin: Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Otago, pp. 148156.Google Scholar
Summerhayes, G. R. (1998). The Face of Lapita. Archaeology in Oceania 33, p. 100.Google Scholar
Summerhayes, G. R. (2000a). Lapita Interaction. Terra Australis 15. Canberra: Centre for Archaeological Research, ANU.Google Scholar
Summerhayes, G. R. (2000b). Far Western, Western and Eastern Lapita: A Re-evaluation. Asian Perspectives 39, pp. 109138.Google Scholar
Summerhayes, G. R. (2003). Modelling Differences between Lapita Obsidian and Pottery Distribution Patterns in the Bismarck Archipelago, PNG. In Sand, C., ed., Pacific Archaeology: Asessments and Prospects. Proceedings of the International Conference for the 50th Anniversary of the First Lapita Excavation, July 2002, Koné-Nouméa, Les Cahiers de L’Archéologie en Nouvelle-Calédonie 15. Nouméa: Musée de Nouvelle-Calédonie, pp. 139149.Google Scholar
Summerhayes, G. R. (2009). Obsidian Network Patterns in Melanesia: Sources, Characterisation and Distribution. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 29, pp. 109123.Google Scholar
Swadling, P. (1996). Plumes from Paradise: Trade Cycles in Outer Southeast Asia and Their Impact on New Guinea and Nearby Islands until 1920. Boroko: PNG National Museum.Google Scholar
Szabo, K. (2010). Shell Artefacts and Shell-Working within the Lapita Cultural Complex. Journal of Pacific Archaeology 1, pp. 115127.Google Scholar
Thomas, T. (2001). The Social Practice of Colonisation: Re-thinking Prehistoric Polynesian Migration. People and Culture in Oceania 17, pp. 2746.Google Scholar
Torrence, R., Kononenko, N., Sheppard, P., Allen, M., Bedford, S., Kirch, P., and Spriggs, M. (2018). Tattooing Tools and the Lapita Cultural Complex. Archaeology in Oceania 53:2, pp. 5773.Google Scholar
Trigger, B. (1985). Marxism in Archaeology: Real or Spurious? Reviews in Anthropology 12:2, pp. 114123.Google Scholar
Trigger, B. (1993). Marxism in Contemporary Western Archaeology. Archaeological Method and Theory 5, pp. 159200.Google Scholar
Valentin, F., Bedford, S., Buckley, H., and Spriggs, M. (2010). Lapita Burial Practices: Evidence for Complex Body and Bone Treatment at the Teouma Cemetery, Vanuatu, Southwest Pacific. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 5, pp. 124.Google Scholar
Valentin, F., Détroit, F., Spriggs, M., and Bedford, S. (2016). Early Lapita Skeletons from Vanuatu Display Polynesian Craniofacial Shape: The Implications for Remote Oceanic Settlement and Lapita Origins. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113:2, pp. 292297.Google Scholar
Valentin, F., Spriggs, M., Bedford, S., and Buckley, H. (2011). Vanuatu Mortuary Practices over Three Millennia: Lapita to the Early European Contact Period. Journal of Pacific Archaeology 2:2, pp. 4965.Google Scholar
Watts, J., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., Currie, T. E., Bulbulia, J., and Gray, R. (2015). Broad Supernatural Punishment but Not Moralising High Gods Precede the Evolution of Political Complexity in Austronesia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 282: 20142556. doi:10.1098/rspb2014.2556.Google Scholar
Wollstein, A., Lao, O., Becker, C., Brauer, S, Trent, R. J., Nürnberg, P., Stoneking, M., and Kayser, M. (2010). Demographic History of Oceania Inferred from Genome-wide Data. Current Biology 20, pp. 19831992.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×