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Commentary: what Lapita is and what Lapita isn't

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

John Terrell
John Terrell*
Affiliation:
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago IL 60605, USA; and Northwestern University, Evanston IL 60208, USA
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Extract

The essays in this special section on early settlement in Island Southeast Asia may be puzzling to readers of Antiquity who are uninitiated to the ways and concerns of archaeologists working in the Pacific. Some of these authors appear almost reluctant to draw conclusions from the evidence they survey. Others champion their own interpretations unequivocally. What is going on here?

It may be, as some say, that academics are by nature a quarrelsome lot. Even so, why is the Lapita cultural complex ‘ever a hot source of debate’ (Bellwood & Koon, above, p. 613)? The essays published here may lack the direct cantankerousness of face-to-face confronat international symposia and professional meetings, but they reinforce the suggestion made in Antiquity a year ago that archaeologists in the Pacific today have come to a crossroads where we often find ourselves talking past each other because we are no longer in general agreement on what is interesting about Pacific prehistory and why (Terrell 1988).

Type
Special section
Information
Antiquity , Volume 63 , Issue 240 , September 1989 , pp. 623 - 626
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1989

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References

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