The Lapita Peoples: Ancestors of the Oceanic WorldISBN: 978-1-57718-036-4
Paperback
376 pages
January 1997, Wiley-Blackwell
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Professor Kirch takes the reader back many thousands of years to
the earliest evidence of the Lapita peoples. He describes the
research itself and conveys the excitement of the first discoveries
of Lapita settlements, tools and pottery. He then traces the
remarkable cultural development and spread of the Lapita peoples
across the unoccupied islands of Eastern Melanesia, Micronesia and
Western Polynesia. He shows how they became the progenitors of the
Polynesian and Austronesian-speaking Melanesian peoples.
The author describes Lapita sites, communities and landscapes,
the development of their decorated ceramics, and their shell-tool
industry. He reveals the means by which they accomplished such
prodigious voyages and explains why they undertook them. He
illustrates his account with specially drawn maps and with a wide
range of photographs, many published for the first time.
Drawing on the latest research in archaeology, anthropology,
biology and linguistics, and written in clear, non-specialized
language, this is an outstanding book of great importance to the
history of South-East Asia and the Pacific.