The University of Queensland has been selected as part of a major international archaeological study in the South Pacific, funded by the French Government.
Associate Professor Ian Lilley, of UQ’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, is one of only three non-French archaeologists of the more than 30 taking part in the multi-component project, with UQ the only non-French institution listed as a principal partner.
Dr Lilley will work in New Caledonia. In addition to the recently-announced major grant, he and colleagues in Paris and Nouméa have won almost $20,000 in pilot grants from the French Government and associated agencies including its Australian Embassy to examine pottery and other finds up to 3000 years old in the Loyalty Islands, an eastern New Caledonian province.
He and a group of French and New Caledonian archaeologists will focus on the island of Tiga to locate and excavate sites containing human skeletal remains as well as Lapita pottery — a beautiful, intricately chiselled, usually red-washed ware found throughout the south-west Pacific from the islands off New Guinea to Samoa and Tonga.
Lapita’s designs in combination with carbon-dating of organic materials found with it provide vital clues about the colonisation of the Pacific from 3300 years ago by peoples of mixed Melanesian and south-east Asian origin, according to Dr Lilley.
Although people had settled out as far as the Solomon Islands at least 30,000 years ago, “Lapita people” and their descendents were the first humans to colonise the remote Pacific.
“Lapita remnants found on the remote Willaumez Peninsula in New Britain suggest these people arrived shortly after a nearby volcano, Witori, erupted to devastating effect. Stone tools and other remains beneath a thick layer of volcanic ash suggest the original inhabitants of the area had lived on the Peninsula for more than 35,000 years. However, they seem to have been wiped out by the catastrophe because the only items found directly above the ash layer are Lapita pottery and things commonly linked with it,” Dr Lilley said.
“The colonisers may have then settled on the Peninsula because it was a good source of a scarce volcanic glass known as obsidian, highly prized for use as spearheads, shaving implements and ceremonial items.
“Lapita is the key to demonstrating that all South Pacific islanders — whether they be Melanesian or Polynesian— share a common ancestry, a fact that could become a catalyst to closer links in the region but which can be unpopular among nationalist political groups.
“The very similar way Lapita is decorated right across the south-west Pacific tells us about the extent of contact between early settlements. As time went on, contact with people on other islands often decreased and the designs and overall look of the pottery drifted apart.”
It was thought the early colonisers set sail in substantial canoes from their homes in the Bismarck Archipelago near New Guinea, colonising the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and American Samoa over the next 500 years or so, Dr Lilley said.
Their descendents, by then recognisably “Polynesian”, later colonised virtually all the islands between Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand between 1000 and 1500 years ago.
Interestingly, the fact that the creators of the imposing statues on far-flung Easter Island are descendants of the so-called “Lapita people” is hinted at by the startling resemblance between the monoliths and faces etched into the much earlier pottery.
Dr Lilley and renowned New Caledonian archaeologist and good friend Dr Christophe Sand will also investigate evidence of the housing, crops, food, and ceremonial activities of the colonisers and more recent peoples.
Their Parisian colleague Dr Frédérique Valentin, a highly-respected biological anthropologist and Director of the overall South Pacific project, will handle the excavation and analyses of human remains.
Dr Sand’s most spectacular New Caledonian Lapita finds have been discovered eroding out of a sand-dune wall on the main island, Grande Terre. These huge whole pots have now been cleaned and restored, and are on display in the New Caledonian Museum.
Media contact: Dr Ian Lilley (telephone 07 3365 7051, mobile 0408 012
748 or email i.lilley@uq.edu.au) or Shirley Glaister at UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 3374 or email s.glaister@uq.edu.au).
