Sélectionnez votre langue
Sélectionnez votre langue
For 50 years or more scholars have speculated on the origins of the bearers of the Lapita culture, seen as the ancestors of all Polynesians and seemingly ancestral as well to the inhabitants of many of the islands in Melanesia. But this speculation has been conducted largely in the absence of any actual Lapita people, in the form of their skeletons. The discovery of the Teouma Lapita cemetery on the island of Efate in Vanuatu late in 2003 has given us a unique window onto the life of early Lapita populations. Although individual Lapita skeletons and a single Late Lapita cemetery site (c. 8 individuals) had earlier been found, this was the first time a substantial number of Early Lapita skeletons have been found in what constitutes the oldest cemetery site in the Pacific Islands. Excavations in 2004 to 2005 revealed some 36 individuals dating to about 3100-3000 years ago, and four near-complete Lapita pots. The National Geographic-funded third season almost doubled the size of the sample to around 70 individuals; revealed a further two complete Lapita pots; established that initial site use was only as a cemetery with no associated settlement; and found evidence of a second cemetery perhaps associated with a Late Lapita/early Erueti phase village on top of the original cemetery site. The 2006 season confirmed the Teouma site as among the most significant archaeological finds ever made in the Pacific Islands.