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Culture & Groups Lapita culture

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dyno avatar
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The Lapita culture is the name given to a Neolithic Austronesian people and their material culture, who settled Island Melanesia via a seaborne migration at around 1600 to 500 BCE.[1] They are believed to have originated from the northern Philippines, either directly, via the Mariana Islands, or both.[2] They were notable for their distinctive geometric designs on dentate-stamped pottery, which closely resemble the pottery recovered from the Nagsabaran archaeological site in northern Luzon. The Lapita intermarried with the Papuan populations to various degrees, and are the direct ancestors of the Austronesian peoples of Polynesia, eastern Micronesia, and Island Melanesia.[3][4][5]

 

Known distribution of the Lapita culture

 

Reconstruction of the face of a Lapita woman. National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka. Reconstruction showed she had thick lips, wide nose, straight hair

Etymology[edit]

The term 'Lapita' was coined by archaeologists after mishearing a word in the local Haveke language, xapeta'a, which means 'to dig a hole' or 'the place where one digs', during the 1952 excavation in New Caledonia.[6][7] The Lapita archaeological culture is named after the type site where it was first uncovered in the Foué peninsula on Grande Terre, the main island of New Caledonia. The excavation was carried out in 1952 by American archaeologists Edward W. Gifford and Richard Shulter Jr at 'Site 13'.[6] The settlement and pottery sherds were later dated to 800 BCE and proved significant in research on the early peopling of the Pacific Islands. More than 200 Lapita sites have since been uncovered,[8] ranging more than 4,000 km from coastal and island Melanesia to Fiji and Tonga with its most eastern limit so far in Samoa.

Artifact dating[edit]

'Classic' Lapita pottery was produced between 1,600 and 1,200 BCE on the Bismarck Archipelago.[4] Artifacts exhibiting Lapita designs and techniques from a period later than 1,200 BCE have been found in the Solomon Islands,[9] Vanuatu and New Caledonia.[4][10] Lapita pottery styles from around 1,000 BCE have been found in Fiji and Western Polynesia.[4]

In Western Polynesia, Lapita pottery became less decorative [3] and progressively simpler over time. It seems to have stopped being produced altogether in Samoa by about 2,800 years ago, and in Tonga by about 2,000 years ago.[4]

Material culture[edit]

 

Lapita pottery from Vanuatu, Museum in Port Vila.

 

Prehistoric pottery vessels, including some with Lapita designs, from the island of Taumako

Pottery whose detailed decorative designs suggest Lapita influence was made from a variety of materials, depending on what was available, and their crafters used a variety of techniques, depending on the tools they had.[11] But, typically, the pottery consisted of low-fired earthenware, tempered with shells or sand, and decorated using a toothed (“dentate”) stamp.[3] It has been theorized[12] that these decorations may have been transferred from less hardy material, such as bark cloth (“tapa”) or mats, or from tattoos, onto the pottery – or transferred from the pottery onto those materials. Other important parts of the Lapita repertoire were: undecorated ("plain-ware") pottery, including beakers, cooking pots, and bowls; shell artifacts; ground-stone adzes; and flaked-stone tools made of obsidian, chert, or other available kinds of rock.[13][3]

Economy[edit]

The Lapita kept pigs, dogs, and chickens. Horticulture was based on root crops and tree crops, most importantly taro, yam, coconuts, bananas, and varieties of breadfruit. These foods were likely supplemented by fishing and mollusc gathering. Long-distance trade was practiced; items traded included obsidian,[14] adzes, adze source-rock, and shells.[3]

Burial customs[edit]

In 2003, at the Teouma archeological excavation site on Efate Island in Vanuatu, a large cemetery was discovered, including 25 graves containing burial jars and a total of 36 human skeletons. All the skeletons were headless: At some point after the bodies had originally been buried, the skulls had been removed and replaced with rings made from cone shells, and the heads had been reburied. One grave contained the skeleton of an elderly man with three skulls sitting on his chest. Another grave contained a burial jar with four birds looking into the jar. Carbon dating of the shells placed this cemetery as having been in use around 1000 BCE.[15]

Settlements[edit]

Lapita culture villages on islands in the area of Remote Oceania tended not to be located inland, but instead on the beach, or on small offshore islets. These locations may have been chosen because inland areas – for example in New Guinea – were already settled by other peoples. Or they may have been chosen in order to avoid areas inhabited by mosquitoes carrying malaria microbes, against which Lapita people likely had no immune defence. Some of their houses were built on stilts over large lagoons. In New Britain, however, there were inland settlements; they were located near obsidian sources. And on the islands at the eastern end of the archipelago, all settlements were located inland rather than on the beaches – sometimes fairly far inland.

Distribution[edit]

 

Jack Golson excavation site in Vailele with a visit from a Samoan family, 1957

Lapita pottery has been found in Near Oceania as well as Remote Oceania, as far west as the Bismarck Archipelago, as far east as Samoa, and as far south as New Caledonia.[3][4] Excavation at a site in the village of Mulifanua in Samoa uncovered two adzes that strongly indicate Lapita influence. Carbon dating of material found with the adzes suggests there was a Lapita settlement at this site in roughly 1000 BCE.[16] Radio carbon dating of sites in New Caledonia suggest there were Lapita settlements there as early as 1,110 ago.[17] The dates and locations of more northerly Lapita-influenced settlements are still largely up for debate.[3]

Language[edit]

Linguists and other researchers theorize that the people of the Lapita cultural complex spoke a proto-Oceanic language, which is a branch of the Austronesian language family widely distributed in Southeast Asia today.[18][19] However, the particular language or languages spoken by the Lapita is unknown. The languages spoken in the region today derive from a number of different ancient languages, and material culture uncovered by archaeology does not generally provide clues to the language spoken by the makers of the artifacts.[18]

Origin[edit]

The Lapita complex is part of the eastern migration branch of the Austronesian expansion, which started from Taiwan[20] between about 5,000 and 6,000 years ago. Some of the emigrants reached Melanesia. There are different theories about the route they took to get there. They may have gone through the Marianas Islands, or through the Philippines, or both.[2] The strongest support for the theory that the original people of the Lapita culture were Austronesian is linguistic evidence showing very considerable lexical continuity between Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (presumably spoken in the Philippines) and Proto-Oceanic (presumably spoken by the Lapita people). In addition, the patterns of linguistic continuity correspond to patterns of similarity in material culture.[15][21]

 

Chronological dispersal of Austronesian peoples across the Indo-Pacific[22]

In 2011, Peter Bellwood proposed that the initial movement of Malayo-Polynesian speakers into Oceania was from the northern Philippines eastward into the Mariana Islands, then southward into the Bismarcks. An older proposal was that Lapita settlers first arrived in Melanesia via eastern Indonesia. Bellwood’s proposal included the possibility that both migration patterns happened, with different migrants taking different routes.[23] Bellwood’s proposal is supported by the pottery evidence: Lapita pottery is more similar to pottery recovered from the Philippines (at the Nagsabaran archaeological site on Luzon Island) than it is to pottery discovered anywhere else. Other evidence suggests that the Luzon area may have been the original homeland of the stamped pottery tradition that is carried forward in Lapita culture.[24]

Archaeological evidence also broadly supports the theory that the people of the Lapita culture are of Austronesian origin. On the Bismarck Archipelago, around 3,500 years ago, the Lapita complex appears suddenly, as a fully-developed archaeological horizon with associated highly developed technological assemblages. No evidence has been found on the archipelago of settlements in earlier developmental stages. This suggests that the Lapita culture was brought in by a migrating population, and did not – as had been proposed in the 1980s and 1990s by scholars like Jim Allen and J. Peter White – evolve locally.

There is evidence that western Melanesia was continuously occupied by indigenous Papuans beginning between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago. That evidence includes recovered artifacts. But those remnants of the older material culture are far less diverse than the relics dating from after the Lapita horizon. The older material culture appears to have contributed only a few elements to the later Lapita material culture: some crops and some tools.[21][25]

The vast majority of the Lapita material-culture elements are clearly Southeast Asian in origin. These include pottery, crops, paddy field agriculture, domesticated animals (chickens, dogs, and pigs), rectangular stilt houses, tattoo chisels, quadrangular adzes, polished stone chisels, outrigger boat technology, trolling hooks, and various other stone artifacts.[21][25][23] Lapita pottery offers the strongest evidence of an Austronesian origin. It has very distinctive elements, like the use of the red slips, tiny punch marks, dentate stamps, circle stamps, and a cross-in-circle motif. Similar pottery has been found in Taiwan, the Batanes and Luzon islands of the Philippines, and the Marianas.[24]

The orthodox view, advocated by Roger Green and Peter Bellwood, and accepted by most specialists today, is the so-called "Triple-I model" (short for “intrusion, innovation, and integration"). This model posits that the Early Lapita culture arose as the result of a three-part process: “intrusion” of the Austronesian peoples of the islands of Southeast Asia (and their language, materials, and ideas) into Near Oceania; “innovation” by the Lapita people, once they reached in Melanesia, in the form of new technologies; and “integration” of the Lapita peoples into the pre-existing (non-Austronesian) populations.[26][24]

In 2016, DNA analysis of four Lapita skeletons found in ancient cemeteries on the islands of Vanuatu and Tonga showed that the Lapita people had descended from inhabitants of Taiwan and of the northern Philippines.[27] This evidence of the Lapita peoples’ migration route was corroborated in 2020 by a study that did a complete mtDNA and genome-wide SNP comparison of the remains of early settlers of the Mariana Islands with the remains of early Lapita individuals from Vanuatu and Tonga. The results suggest that both groups had descended from the same ancient Austronesian source population in the Philippines. The complete absence of "Papuan" admixture in these remains suggest that the voyages of the migrants bypassed eastern Indonesia and the rest of New Guinea. The study authors noted that their results also support the possibility that early Lapita Austronesians were direct descendants of the early colonists of the Marianas (who preceded them by about 150 years); this idea is also consistent with the pottery evidence.[28]

Recent DNA studies show that the Lapita people and modern Polynesians have a common ancestry with the Atayal people of Taiwan and the Kankanaey people of the northern Philippines.[29]

Lapita in Polynesia[edit]

As the archaeological record improved in the 1980s and 1990s, the Lapita people were found to be the original settlers in parts of Melanesia and Western Polynesia.[30] Many scientists believe Lapita pottery in Melanesia to be proof that Polynesian ancestors passed through this area on their way into the central Pacific. The earliest archaeological site in Polynesia is in Tonga.[31]

Other early Lapita discovery sites dating back to 900 BCE are also found in Tonga and contain the typical pottery and other archaeological "kit" of Lapita sites in Fiji and eastern Melanesia of about that time and immediately before.[32][33]

Anita Smith compares the Polynesian Lapita period with the later Polynesian Plainware ceramic period in Polynesia:

"There do not appear to be new or different kinds of evidence associated with plain-ware ceramics (& lapita), only the disappearance of a minor component of material culture and faunal assemblages is apparent. There is continuity in most aspects of the archaeological record that appears to mimic post Lapita sequences of Fiji and island Melanesia (Mangaasi and Naviti pottery).”[33]

Plainware pottery is found on many Western Polynesian islands and marks a transitional period between when only Lapita pottery was found and a later period before the settlement of Eastern Polynesia when the Western Polynesians of the time had given up pottery production altogether. Archaeological evidence indicates that plainware pottery ceases abruptly in Samoa around 0.

According to Smith:

"Ceramics were not manufactured by Polynesian societies at any time in East Polynesian prehistory".[33]

Matthew Spriggs stated: "The possibility of cultural continuity between Lapita Potters and Melanesians has not been given the consideration it deserves. In most sites there was an overlap of styles with no stratigraphic separation discernible. Continuity is found in pottery temper, importation of obsidian and in non-ceramic artefacts".[34]

See also[edit]

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The Lapita culture is the name given to the artifactual remains associated with the people who settled the area east of the Solomon Islands called Remote Oceania between 3400 and 2900 years ago.

 

The earliest Lapita sites are located in the Bismarck islands, and within 400 years of their founding, the Lapita had spread over an area of 3,400 kilometers, stretching through the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia, and eastward to Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. Located on small islands and the coasts of larger islands, and separated from one another by as much as 350 kilometers, the Lapita lived in villages of stilt-legged houses and earth-ovens, made distinctive pottery, fished and exploited marine and aquacultural resources, raised domestic chickens, pigs and dogs, and grew fruit- and nut-bearing trees.

 

Lapita Cultural Attributes

Lapita Pottery Workshophttps://identity.flickr.com/panda.html" data-component="link" data-source="inlineLink" data-type="externalLink" data-ordinal="1">Gérard</a>" data-caption="Pottery making workshop demonstrating Lapita pottery styles as part of Heritage Month 2017 in New Caledonia." data-expand="300" data-tracking-container="true" />
 Pottery making workshop demonstrating Lapita pottery styles as part of Heritage Month 2017 in New Caledonia. Gérard

Lapita pottery consists of mostly plain, red-slipped, coral sand-tempered wares; but a small percentage are ornately decorated, with intricate geometric designs incised or stamped onto the surface with a fine-toothed dentate stamp, perhaps made of turtle or clamshell. One often-repeated motif in Lapita pottery is what appears to be stylized eyes and nose of a human or animal face. The pottery is built, not wheel thrown, and low-temperature fired.

 

Other artifacts found at Lapita sites include shell tools including fishhooks, obsidian, and other cherts, stone adzes, personal ornaments such as beads, rings, pendants and carved bone. That artifacts are not completely uniform throughout Polynesia, but rather seem to be spatially variable.

 

Tattooing

The practice of tattooing has been reported in ethnographic and historical records throughout the Pacific, by one of two methods: cutting and piercing. In some cases, a series of very small cuts is made to create a line, and then pigment was rubbed into the open wound. A second method involves the use of a sharp point which is dipped into the prepared pigment and then used to pierce the skin.

 

Evidence for tattooing in Lapita cultural sites has been identified in the form of small flake points made by alternating retouch. These tools sometimes categorized as gravers have a typically square body with a point raised well above the body. A 2018 study combining use-wear and residue analysis was conducted by Robin Torrence and colleagues on a collection of 56 such tools from seven sites. They found a considerable variation across time and space as to how the tools were used to intentionally introduce charcoal and ochre into wounds to create a permanent mark on the skin.

 

Origins of the Lapita

Young men in canoes in Northwest Malakula, Vanuatu.
 Young men in canoes in Northwest Malakula, Vanuatu.  Russell Gray & Heidi Colleran (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History)

In 2018, a multidisciplinary study of DNA by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History reported support for ongoing multiple explorations of greater Oceania beginning about 5,500 years ago. The study led by Max Planck researcher Cosimo Posth looked at the DNA of 19 ancient individuals across Vanuatu, Tonga, French Polynesia and the Solomon islands, and 27 inhabitants of Vanuatu. Their results indicate that the earliest Austronesian expansion began 5,500 years ago, starting from modern-day Taiwan, and ultimately carrying people as far westward as far as Madagascar and eastward to Rapa Nui.

 

About 2,500 years ago, people from the Bismarck archipelago began arriving on Vanuatu, in multiple waves, marrying into the Austronesian families. The continual influx of people from the Bismarcks must have been fairly small, because islanders today still speak Austronesian, rather than Papuan, as would be expected, given that the initial genetic Austronesian ancestry seen in the ancient DNA has been almost completely replaced in the modern residents. 

 

Decades of research have identified obsidian outcrops used by the Lapita in the Admiralty Islands, West New Britain, Fergusson Island in the D’Entrecasteaux Islands, and the Banks Islands in Vanuatu. Obsidian artifacts found in datable contexts on Lapita sites throughout Melanesia have allowed researchers to refine the previously established massive colonization efforts of the Lapita sailors.

 

Archaeological Sites

Lapita, Talepakemalai in the Bismarck Islands; Nenumbo in the Solomon Islands; Kalumpang (Sulawesi); Bukit Tengorak (Sabah); Uattamdi on Kayoa Island; ECA, ECB aka Etakosarai on Eloaua Island; EHB or Erauwa on Emananus Island; Teouma on Efate Island in Vanuatu; Bogi 1, Tanamu 1, Moriapu 1, Hopo, in Papua New Guinea

 

Sources

 

 
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Lannie avatar
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Around 3,500 years ago the earliest ancestors of many Pacific people and Māori – the people provisionally named Lapita – appeared in Oceania. Records of the Lapita people and the way in which they lived – theirculture – have been recorded across 200 sites.

The Lapita people are of interest to those looking at human migration anddispersalacross the globe and down into Oceania and the Pacific. Theremnantsof theircultureis referred to as the Lapita cultural complex. The Lapita name comes from one of the first places in which a distinctive pottery related to theculture was discovered.

Lapita pot with detente stamping on white background.
Rights: ANU Press,CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Teouma Pot 2

Lapita pot with detente stamping, excavated from burial site in Teouma on Efate Island.

Image fromOceanic Explorations: Lapita and Western Pacific Settlement, by Stuart Bedford, Christophe Sand and Sean P. Connaughton. 2007 Publisher:ANU PressSeries:Terra Australis.

What evidence do we have?

The earliest appearance of the Lapita is dated to between 1500 and 1300 BC. The earliest sites with records of the Lapita are found around the Bismarck Archipelago on the northwestern edge of the Oceania region. Later dates show a spread of the Lapita from this area out to what is now Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and then down to New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.

Lapita culture

Learn about the earliest people to migrate into Oceania and the secrets of these people that scientists are starting to unlock.

Selecthereto view video transcript, questions for discussion and copyright information.

How do we know that the Lapita appeared around 1300 BC and that later related Polynesian people arrived in Hawai’i, Tahiti andAotearoa(among other places) between 1190 and 1290 AD? Predominantly, theevidencecomes from ancient archaeological sites with artefacts.

The Lapita sites excavated to date have revealed artefacts including pottery, stone tools, human burial sites andmiddens. Scientists, archaeologists and historical linguists (experts who study the development of languages) among others are helping anthropologists to reveal the story of the Lapita.

Bone, charcoal and other remains such as shells in middens and decorative items or tools like fish hooks made from bone are able to be radiocarbon dated. Amongst archaeologists, there isdebate about the timing of settlementfor different islands, and some issues arise from the complexities ofradiocarbon datingartefacts.

Sherdsof Lapita pottery have a distinctstyleof decoration that was eventually replaced by plain, less-decorative pottery.

Lapita pottery

Close-up of two pot rims from pots reassembled from sherds.
Rights: ANU Press,CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Detente stamping on Lapita pottery

Close-up of two pot rims from pots reassembled from sherds. The left-hand image is a close-up ofTeouma Pot 2.

Pottery – low firedearthenware– is one of the oldest human technologies.

Lapita pottery, also referred to as lapitaware, has unique patterns and designs imprinted on the surface by ‘dentate stamping’. Dentate stamping is where a pattern is applied by a tool, for example, a shell with small grooves cut in it. Some archaeologists have theorised that the patterns may also have been pressed into theclayby tapa cloth or woven materials.

Designelements evolvedbut retained commonalities and are able to be traced from the earliest Lapita settlements through to later settlements in Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa.

The Lapita also produced plain pottery that was used for cooking and food. Some of the decorated pottery has been found containing human remains, leading archaeologists to infer that decorative pots may have been used in rituals around burials and other practices. It is not known if the decorative pieces were used for food storage or cooking.

Lapita pottery production appears to have stopped in Samoa by about 2,800 years ago and in Tonga by about 2,000 years ago. Lapitaware is followed by the Polynesian plainware period. This period is considered to mark the onset of ancestral Polynesian society, including forebears totangata whenuain Aotearoa today.

How did the Lapita live?

Lapita burial sites have been unearthed – these sites offer up answers as to how the Lapita people lived and died.

Chemical analysis ofcarbon,nitrogenand sulphurisotoperatios from the bonecollagenof Lapita people revealed they ate reef fish, marine turtles, fruit bats, pigs and chickens. Analysis of the teeth and material found in the tartar show a diet that included seeds and bananas. Bananas, taro, yam, breadfruit and coconut were likely transported across the region by people.

Artefacts support these findings – these include implements and tools for fishing and cooking such as fish hooks made from shell, nets, spears and different types of stone adzes.

The analysis also shows that males had greater access than women toproteinfrom tortoises, pigs and chicken. It is difficult to infer what this means – it could suggest men had higher status in Lapita society, but it may alternatively mean that men were the main hunters with more ready access to protein.

The burial sites also offer tantalising glimpses into Lapitaculture. For example, how they laid out their dead, the use of decorative pots to hold certain remains and the way bones were laterreinterredsuggests aculturewith distinct rituals and beliefs around death.

Lapita burial site archaeological excavation.
Rights: ANU Press,CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Lapita site excavation

Archaeologist Dr Frédérique Valentin and illustrator Fidel Yoringmal work on a Lapita burial site at Teouma Bay on the island of Efate in Central Vanuatu. Teouma Pot 2 had already been partially excavated from the middle of this plot.

This image is of a burial site. Vanuatua gave permission for the public dissemination of these images. We acknowledge the people laid to rest and honour their lives and their living descendants today.

Image fromOceanic Explorations: Lapita and Western Pacific Settlement, by Stuart Bedford, Christophe Sand and Sean P. Connaughton. 2007 Publisher:ANU PressSeries:Terra Australis

Lapita and migration

The migration of peoples across Oceania is not linear.Geneticscience hints at different waves of travel at different times and the admixture – interbreeding of two or more previously isolatedpopulations– at different times.

AncientDNAanalysis –palaeogenomics– involves the sequencing of ancient DNA and comparison with the genomes of modern people. Usually, bones found in tropical and wet climates are too degraded to sample DNA from. Fortunately, in the fast moving field of palaeogenomics, a scientist identified the inner ear bones – the petrous – as a good source due to thedensityof the bones. With permission from the local people, DNA was sampled and analysed from skulls and teeth from some of the remains. Analysis shows a relationship with early people from the modern day Taiwan and northern Philippines area, indicating the first wave of the Lapita came from Southeast Asia.

Genetic evidence shows a mix of Lapita and other peoples across Oceania at later dates. In turn, these people can be traced spreading down into Hawai’i, the Cook Islands and Aotearoa.

Oceania & Pacific Map and timeline of human migration
Rights: Crown copyright © Crown 2019

Figuring out Oceania migration timeline

Map and timeline of human migration into and around Oceania and the Pacific. As noted on the image, not all researchers agree with the dates on this timeline. Researchers likeDr Fiona Petcheyare working on the science to refine dates for human migration.

Map by Simon Waterfield, background texture by George Frost and text by Dr Amber Aranui. FromThe Long Pause,Connected2019 Level 3 – Shifting Views.

 

 

Many questions remain as to when different populations interbred and journeyed out to new locations, and debate among experts is robust. Some experts argue that the lack of ancient DNA samples in Oceania means that we have to be careful not to read too much from what presently exists.Currentideas are based on analysis of DNA from burials in Vanuatu and Tonga.

What experts do agree on is that Aotearoa was one of the last areas to be settled in the region.

The excavation, conservation and reconstruction of Lapita burial pots from the Teouma site, Efate, Central Vanuatu from Oceanic Explorations: Lapita and Western Pacific Settlement on JSTOR

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Rick Cool
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@meleona I want to see the research of the Lapita people in New Zealand. Good Job Face

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@meleona , the section "How did the Lapita live?" says that men had more access to protein than women.  They provide a couple of explanations, but in general men do need more protein than women.  From what I've seen, men eat more protein than women regardless of what culture they belong to.  Men need it to build muscle and testosterone.  I'm not a biochemist or anything like that.

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Lannie avatar
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@prau123 Men are hunters and gatherers by nature

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@meleona

 

 

In schools, we were taught that men were hunters and women were gatherers.

 

 

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A design grammar

The decoration of the pottery consists of stamped and incised motifs that adhere to a very regular, structured, and repeated set of specific patterns. The motifs were applied to the surface of the vessel with a small dentate (tooth-like) stamp and/or drawn free-hand with a sharp edge of some sort. The pattern stamps used included both linear and curved shapes of various lengths, as well as round forms. Once a pot was decorated, a paste of white coral lime was applied to the pattern which had the effect of making the delicate patterning stand out against the reddish-brown clay. Types of patterns range from simple to complex geometric forms, and include anthropomorphic face designs (image, top of page) found on Talepakemalai in the Mussau island group (see map above). The anthropomorphic pattern was a characteristic of early Lapita pottery, and is not present on pottery found in the upper (and therefore newer) archaeological layers of sites further east in Polynesia.

Archaeologists contend that those responsible for decorating the pots used a very restricted range of motifs and combined these in specific ways on particular areas of the pots. In other words, the ancient people who decorated the pots followed the rules of a defined design system. As Kirch notes “although we may never know what was in the minds of those potters and design-makers, we can understand in a more formal or structural sense their system of art and design, and use this as a tool for tracing the history of Lapita pottery in time and space.”3

Painted Barkcloth (Masi kesa), late 19th–early 20th century, Lau Islands, Fiji, 85.1 x 419.1 cm, According to The Met "The repeating geometric motifs of many tapa cloths at times resemble those seen on pottery produced by the Lapita peoples, who were the ancestors of present-day Polynesians."

Painted Barkcloth (Masi kesa), late 19th–early 20th century, Lau Islands, Fiji, 85.1 x 419.1 cm (Metropolitan Museum of Art) “The repeating geometric motifs of many tapa cloths at times resemble those seen on pottery produced by the Lapita peoples, who were the ancestors of present-day Polynesians.” (object page)

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James avatar
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Finally, Pinoys who don't claim I am 15% Spanish. 15% Portuguese 😆 🤣  

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