Re: LAPITA CEMETERY......

qiwi wrote:
>
> I dont think we should lose sight of the importance of the Teouma
> burial site......In the article in the Pacific edition of 'Time'
> magazine entitled 'Riddle of the Bones'the discovery of this 'Lapita'
> cemetery is described as "...one of the most important archaeological
> finds the South Pacific has yet seen."
> Matisoo-Smith describes it as "...the site we have all been looking
> for, the site we were hoping might exist."
> Without a doubt it is of huge importance because if it turns out that
> these 'Teouma/Lapita' people were not proto-Polynesian as many have
> claimed then the 'orthodox' theory collapses.... the reason being that
> there is clear evidence of pottery being manufactured in theTonga/Samoa
> region up until around 0 a.d. and yet by this time the Marquesas,
> thousands of miles to the east was already settled by a people who were
> unquestionably Polynesian.
> We know this because all of the proto-type fishhook and adze styles
> recovered from the earliest sites there are unmistakably the handiwork
> of 'Polynesians'....
> The same does not apply in Samoa and Tonga where the earliest artefacts
> show no similarity to any known Polynesian assemblage...
> Indeed the earliest identifiable 'Polynesian' artefacts from Samoa and
> Tonga dont appear in the archaeological record until after 100 a.d. or
> even later.

It's nice to have the Teouma site because there was so little Lapita
skeletal material before. Not to mention the interesting light on burial
practices etc.
But the rest of it hinges mainly on your own idiosyncratic definition of
"Polynesian" and "Proto-Polynesian", to say nothing of your ever-hopeful
reading of the Marquesan settlement date.

Ross Clark
.