HONIARA (SIBC/PINA) — Solomon Islands has accepted an invitation to attend celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the first excavation of Lapita pottery in New Caledonia.
These discoveries played a major role in helping track the passage of early people into the Pacific islands.
The occasion will be celebrated on Aug. 1 at the site of the excavation and with a week-long international conference July 31-Aug. 7.
The head of Department of Archeology with the New Caledonia Museum, Christophe Sand, is currently in Honiara with the invitation to Solomon Islands.
Sand said chiefs and traditional leaders of New Caledonia wanted to share the occasion with representatives from countries where Lapita pottery has been found.
These include Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and Wallis and Futuna. The name Lapita is derived from the site in New Caledonia where in 1952 American archaeologists found what became known as Lapita pottery.
According to the book “Man’s Conquest of the Pacific: The Pre-history of Southeast Asia and Oceania,” the Lapita discoveries helped track highly mobile groups of seaborne colonists.
These people expanded rapidly through Melanesia in the mid-late second millennium B.C. and on into Polynesia.
