Lapita Culture: Pottery and the First Settlers of Remote Oceania

The Lapita culture was a seafaring society that emerged in the Bismarck Archipelago, north-east of New Guinea, around 1500–1300 BC and spread across thousands of kilometres of open ocean as far as Tonga and Samoa. Its people were the first humans to settle the islands of Remote Oceania, carrying crops, animals and a distinctive stamped pottery with them. Their descendants became the ancestors of the Polynesians and of many other Pacific peoples.

Background: Near and Remote Oceania

Humans reached New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and the main Solomon Islands more than 40,000 years ago, crossing short sea gaps when sea levels were lower. Archaeologists call this region Near Oceania. Beyond the end of the main Solomons chain, however, the islands are separated by wider stretches of sea, and for tens of thousands of years no one crossed them.

This region, Remote Oceania, includes Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and the rest of Polynesia and Micronesia. The term was proposed by the archaeologist Roger Green in 1991 to replace older racial categories such as “Melanesia” with a geographic division based on human settlement history.

The first people to cross that boundary were the makers of Lapita pottery. Their expansion is one of the most rapid and far-reaching migrations in human prehistory.

Origins of the Lapita people

The Lapita people spoke early languages of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family, which today includes Fijian, Samoan, Tongan, Maori and Hawaiian. Austronesian languages originated in Taiwan and spread through the Philippines and Indonesia from around 3000 BC, carried by farmers and seafarers.

Lapita culture appears suddenly in the Bismarck Archipelago, with pottery, settlement patterns and tools that have parallels in Island Southeast Asia. Yet it also incorporated local elements, such as the use of obsidian from Talasea on New Britain and plants domesticated in New Guinea. Roger Green described this as a combination of intrusion, innovation and integration.

Ancient DNA has sharpened the picture. A study published in 2016 analysed skeletons from Teouma in Vanuatu and from Tonga and found that the first settlers had almost entirely East Asian ancestry. Papuan ancestry, common in Vanuatu today, arrived through later movements and intermarriage. Earlier debates had contrasted a fast “express train” from Taiwan with slower, more mixed models; the genetic evidence supports a rapid movement of people, with complex interaction afterwards.

Lapita pottery

The hallmark of the culture is its pottery. Lapita potters shaped vessels by hand and decorated many with dentate stamping, pressing a toothed tool, like a fine comb, into the wet clay to create rows of tiny dots. Combined with incised lines, these formed intricate geometric bands, motifs and stylised human faces with eyes and noses.

The impressions were often filled with white lime, making the designs stand out against the red or brown clay. Common forms include flat-based dishes, cylinder stands, bowls and tall carinated pots. Decorated pots seem to have had ceremonial or social roles, while plainer wares were used for cooking and storage.

Designs were remarkably consistent across thousands of kilometres, suggesting continued contact between communities in the early centuries. Over time decoration became simpler, and in many places dentate stamping disappeared by about 500 BC, replaced by plain pottery.

Voyaging and settlement

Lapita sites are usually small hamlets on beach terraces or offshore islets, sometimes with houses on stilts over lagoons. Their position by the sea reflects a way of life combining fishing, collecting shellfish and gardening.

From the Bismarcks, Lapita settlers spread to the Santa Cruz Islands in the south-east Solomons, crossing a sea gap of about 350 kilometres. They then reached Vanuatu and New Caledonia, and by around 1000 BC Fiji. Tonga was settled around 900–850 BC; the site of Nukuleka on Tongatapu is among the oldest known there. Samoa followed shortly afterwards, as shown by the drowned Lapita site at Mulifanua.

The whole expansion, from the Bismarcks to Samoa, a distance of about 4,500 kilometres, may have taken only a few centuries. Archaeologists believe the voyagers used sailing canoes with outriggers or double hulls, steering by stars, swells and birds. The prevailing easterly winds meant that sailing east, upwind, was harder going out but made returning home easier, a strategy that may have reduced risks.

How the Lapita people lived

Lapita settlers brought a portable economy. They carried pigs, dogs and chickens, though not every animal reached every island, and the Pacific rat travelled with them. They planted taro, yams, bananas, breadfruit and other tree crops domesticated in New Guinea and Island Southeast Asia.

On newly reached islands they also exploited untouched wildlife. Early sites contain bones of turtles, large fruit bats and many birds, including species that soon became extinct. The arrival of humans and their animals had a lasting impact on fragile island ecosystems.

Exchange linked communities across the region. Obsidian from Talasea on New Britain was carried as far as Fiji, and pottery, shell ornaments and stone adzes moved between islands. Such networks helped spread marriage partners, ideas and crops, and maintained a shared identity in the early phases of settlement.

Teouma: a Lapita cemetery

One of the most important Lapita sites is Teouma, on Efate in Vanuatu, discovered in 2003. It is the oldest known cemetery in Remote Oceania, dating to about 3,000 years ago. Excavations revealed dozens of burials and complex funerary rites.

Many skulls were removed after death and treated separately; some were placed in decorated pots or arranged with other remains. One burial contained three skulls laid on the chest of a headless body. Large decorated pots, including one topped with modelled birds, were found with the burials. The site has provided the ancient DNA, diet evidence and skeletal data that underpin much modern research on the first settlers.

From Lapita to Polynesia

In Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, Lapita culture gradually changed into what archaeologists call Ancestral Polynesian culture. Pottery became plainer and eventually ceased to be made in Tonga and Samoa during the first millennium AD. Over these centuries the shared ancestral language, Proto-Polynesian, developed, along with institutions such as chiefly titles and sacred places.

After a long pause, Polynesians began a new wave of voyaging, settling the central and eastern Pacific from around AD 1000. The settlement of Tonga and Samoa thus formed the bridge between the Lapita world and the later Polynesian voyages into East Polynesia, which reached as far as Hawaii, Rapa Nui and New Zealand.

Myths and facts

Myth: Pacific islands were settled by people drifting by accident. In the mid-20th century some writers argued that the islands were reached by canoes blown off course. The speed and direction of the Lapita expansion, the carrying of crops and animals, and the return movement of obsidian and pottery all point to deliberate, planned voyages, a view supported by computer simulations and modern experimental voyaging.

Myth: the Polynesians came from the Americas. Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947 popularised the idea of a South American origin. Archaeology, linguistics and genetics all show that the ancestors of the Polynesians came from the west, through the Lapita world, although later contact between Polynesians and South Americans did take place.

Fact: Lapita pottery is not found everywhere Lapita people went. Pottery-making declined over time and was eventually abandoned in western Polynesia, which is why later Polynesian settlers of the eastern Pacific did not carry pottery with them.

By the numbers

Discovery and research

Distinctive stamped sherds were first noticed on Watom Island, off New Britain, by a missionary, Father Otto Meyer, in the early 20th century. The name comes from the site of Lapita on the Foué Peninsula in New Caledonia, excavated by Edward W. Gifford and Richard Shutler Jr. in 1952. They recognised that pottery found across the western Pacific belonged to one cultural complex.

In the following decades, archaeologists including Roger Green, Patrick Kirch, Jim Allen, Matthew Spriggs, Christophe Sand and Stuart Bedford excavated sites across the region. Radiocarbon dating has been refined repeatedly; some early dates have been revised to later ages, and uranium-series dating of coral tools has helped date the first settlement of Tonga with unusual precision.

Timeline

• c. 1500–1300 BC: Lapita culture appears in the Bismarck Archipelago.
• c. 1200 BC: Lapita settlers reach the Santa Cruz Islands, crossing into Remote Oceania.
• c. 1100–1000 BC: Settlement of Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji; burials begin at Teouma.
• c. 900–850 BC: First settlement of Tonga, at Nukuleka on Tongatapu.
• c. 800 BC: Lapita settlers present in Samoa.
• c. 500 BC: Dentate-stamped decoration largely disappears; Ancestral Polynesian culture develops.
• AD 1952: Gifford and Shutler excavate the Lapita site in New Caledonia.
• AD 2003: The Teouma cemetery is discovered in Vanuatu.

Why it matters

The Lapita expansion was the first human settlement of Remote Oceania and one of the boldest feats of exploration in prehistory, achieved centuries before the classical civilisations of the Mediterranean. Lapita voyagers laid the foundations for the peoples, languages and cultures of much of the Pacific, and their story remains central to understanding how humans came to inhabit the last great uninhabited regions of the world.