Investigating the raw materials used for Lapita and post-Lapita pottery manufacturing: a chemical characterisation of ceramic collections from Vanuatu

Abstract

The Lapita pottery displaying dentate stamped decorations is at the core of our actual understanding of the human colonisation of Oceania about 3000 years ago. One of the ways to extract information about these past societies is by characterising the ceramic collections and examining the chemical compositions of the various vessels. This project examines the compositional similarities and dissimilarities of early pottery assemblages in Vanuatu. Connecting the technological styles with contextual cultural information, such as decorations or vessel forms, lead to a better understanding of the technological choices faced during pottery production. These decisions are taken following the culturally accepted rules embodied in the production process and consequently, this study allows a better understanding of significant parts of the socio-political and economic aspects of Lapita and post-Lapita societies.

Results show that the vast majority of the Lapita and post-Lapita ceramic vessels analysed were produced locally. The homogeneity of the dentate-stamped decorations across Lapita sites reveals that ideas were transferred more than objects and that the ideological signification of these vessels was more important than their economic value.

It is also evident from the results that the compositional variability observed in earlier Lapita ceramic collection is much more significant than what is observed from the more recent assemblages. This variability of technological styles for Lapita pots is generally seen as a consequence resulting from mobile settlement patterns. However, the important natural variability of the raw materials used to produce pottery demonstrates that this mobility is generally restricted to a relatively small-scale since not much movement or geographical distance would be required to produce compositional profiles corresponding to the results. From a political economy perspective, the significant variability of Lapita technological styles demonstrates that there wasn’t any apparent control or imposed limitations over access to the raw materials used to produce pottery and that there was no specialised production. It also suggests that a technological exploratory phase probably followed the arrival of Lapita potters on previously unoccupied islands with unfamiliar raw materials.

The important decrease in varieties of technological styles between Lapita and immediately post-Lapita assemblages combined with the almost exclusive usage of local materials by post-Lapita potters support the idea that a general regionalisation process was occurring at the time when dentate stamped pottery stopped being produced. The almost systematic absence of decoration and the technological homogeneity in immediately post-Lapita ceramic collections are in such contrast with Lapita decorations and the fracture between both so clean that it should be seen as a strategy to differentiate the subsequent cultural production from the former Lapita political, economic and religious structures. Overall, the combined modification of both the decorative and technological style between Lapita and immediately post-Lapita indicates that some major social transformation occurred, as has been already suggested by others.

In terms of methodological contribution, this study shows that LA-ICP-MS represents an excellent analytical technique to gather bulk compositional profiles of ceramic assemblages and that it represents a viable alternative to petrography. Show more