A pot with a name
The name comes from a site called Lapita in New Caledonia, where this pottery was first described. Its makers pressed a toothed tool into wet clay to leave rows of tiny dots, a technique called dentate stamping, building up bands, zigzags and even stylised faces.
Before and after the ash
In the Willaumez region the story is written in layers. Beneath the ash of the Witori eruption, about 3,300 years ago, archaeologists find large obsidian tools that had been made here for at least 3,000 years. Above it, those tools disappear, and Lapita pottery appears. One idea is that the disaster opened space for new leaders and new ways of doing things.
Sailing into the unknown
The people who made Lapita pottery were extraordinary sailors. From the Bismarck Archipelago, of which New Britain is part, their descendants sailed east across open ocean to islands no one had ever lived on: Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, in only a few centuries.
They carried everything a new home needed: pigs, dogs and chickens, yams and taro, and the paper mulberry tree, whose bark became the barkcloth of the Pacific. Many people in Polynesia today can trace their ancestry back along this route.
Questions and answers
What is Lapita pottery?
Lapita pottery is decorated by pressing a toothed tool into wet clay, a technique called dentate stamping. It is named after a site in New Caledonia.
When did Lapita pottery appear in West New Britain?
In the Willaumez region it appears after the Witori eruption of about 3,300 years ago.
Where did the Lapita people go?
Their descendants settled Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa within a few centuries.