Re: Lapita & continuity in the archaeological record.....

From: benlizross (benlizro_at_ihug.co.nz)
Date: 08/30/04 

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 00:45:55 +1200

Jacques Guy wrote:
>
> Qiwi wrote:
>
> > This is absolute crap....
> > and as usual it is P.V.Kirch who is hopelessly confused...
>
> Hopelessly confused, I don't know about that. Hopefully
> publicity-seeking, rather. I just hold him for another
> Carl Sagan. This is what I wrote two and half years ago
> (and which got published):
>
> >Kirch sees a Lapita culture on Aneityum island in Vanuatu,
> >where there is no trace of it whatsoever: "Although no Lapita
> >occupation sites were discovered on Aneityum, a pollen core...
> >exhibits a clear signal of human arrival on the island around
> >900 B.C., believed to reflect a Lapita colonization."
>
> The quote is out of Kirch's book "On the Road of the Winds"
> or something like that.
>
> Admire the logic of it.

I don't get your logic. Given that Lapita pottery is found in the
earliest sites on Malo, Efate, New Caledonia at around the same period,
is it unreasonable that the earliest occupation of Aneityum should be
"believed to reflect a Lapita colonization"? Who would you expect,
Sumerians?

Ross Clark