| Abstract: |
What happens to Lapita in Melanesia depends on what Lapita is. While earlier simplistic views of Lapita being a totally intrusive culture or a totally indigenous one have recently been abandoned, there is still a reluctance to address what the pottery and associated artifacts represent in historical terms. At least five possibilities have been considered in the literature: 1. Lapita as an exchange network of goods produced by specialist centres, 2. affective links to a homeland by settlers continuing to import goods long after local supplies were available, 3. a new economic system involving improved subsistence gardening, domesticated animals, and new cooking and food preparation technologies utilising pottery containers, 4. a shared religious ideology and social system, and 5. language and ethnicity shared by an initially endogamous, genetically distinct group intrusive into an already settled area and speaking an Austronesian language. Given these possibilities, a further five models are put forward to explain the changes which can be detected towards the end of the Lapita culture. They are: A. trade system concentration/specialization, B. local adaptation, C. sociopolitical transformation, D. absorption, and E. secondary migration. In examining these models it might appear that there is a serious equifinality problem, different processes leading to the same archaeological outcome. The problem, however, is more likely a simple lack of information at the current stage of research, and the limitations of traditional archaeological research procedures.
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