Evidence for Social and Cultural Change in Central Vanuatu Between 3000 and 2000 BP: Comparing Funerary and Dietary Patterns of the First and Later Generations at Teouma, Efate

Abstract

International audienceIn the southern Melanesian islands of Vanuatu, as in New Caledonia, Fiji, and West Polynesia, the archaeological record indicates significant shifts in aspects such as patterns of settlement and mobility, landscape use, and pottery production, some 500 years (2500 BP) after initial colonization. The relatively uniform Lapita Cultural Complex, the first manifestation of human activity on these islands, was transformed in each archipelago into various distinctive cultural entities.Using dietary (δ13C and δ15N values measured in collagen) and mortuary data recorded in 43 Lapita and seven immediately Post-Lapita adult burials from the site of Teouma (Efate, Vanuatu), we demonstrate that these medium-term, transformative processes also affected the economic component of the social system as well as its symbolic andreligious structures. Evolutionary change adapting to changing local conditions is envisioned as the likely dominant factor influencing this cultural trajectory, while environmental/climatic change, secondary migration, and internal social changes unrelated to adaptive processes could have interacted to produce the recorded patterns

Early Lapita skeletons from Vanuatu show Polynesian craniofacial shape: Implications for Remote Oceanic settlement and Lapita origins

“…Earlier there were suggestions of a post-Lapita secondary migration from Near Oceania into western parts of Remote Oceania, supposedly associated with the spread of incised and applied relief pottery of the Mangaasi style (54). However, the end of the Lapita period is marked by a major decrease in mobility indicated by cessation of obsidian long-distance exchange (22,50), by the divergence and ultimate end of production of Lapita pottery itself, and by radical changes in dietary and funerary practices as observed at the Teouma site (31).…”

“…Large-scale excavations at the Teouma site have revealed a Lapita cemetery with 68 burial features where adults were preferentially treated by inhumation (30). However, inhumation was temporary; bones, including skulls and mandibles, were removed from burials postdecomposition and redeposited at the site but in a much smaller number than the incomplete inhumations recovered to date (31). The extant cranial elements consist of seven skulls in secondary deposits (B10 cache, B17, and B30) (Fig.…”

Multi-isotopic analysis of first Polynesian diet (Talasiu, Tongatapu, Kingdom of Tonga)

“…Stable isotope studies, applied to skeletal remains of early Pacific populations, have shown a trend toward a horticultural diet with temporal variation in response to local environmental conditions (Field et al, 2009;Kinaston and Buckley, 2013;Valentin et al, 2010Valentin et al, , 2014Kinaston et al, , 2015Kinaston et al, , 2016. As a consequence, human groups associated with the late-Lapita/immediately post-Lapita period are expected to have stable isotope ratios indicating that fewer marine resources were consumed compared with the first Lapita colonizers.…”

Biological Anthropology in the Indo-Pacific Region: New Approaches to Age-Old Questions

“…This may be related to differential access to resources between males and females during the initial colonisation phase (Kinaston et al, 2014b). Comparison to later Lapita sites is also beginning to allow the assessment of changes to health and diet as people become established in Vanuatu (Kinaston et al, 2014b;Valentin et al, 2014). There is also palaeopathological evidence for dietary insufficiencies in both the children and adults of founding Lapita populations, indicating that resource instability negatively affected health, resulting in scurvy or vitamin C deficiencies .…”

“…However, recent excavations and analysis of human skeletal samples from Lapita contexts and post-Lapita cemetery sites are beginning to build a picture of early settler health, diet and adaptation (Horrocks et al, 2014;Kinaston et al, 2014aKinaston et al, , 2014bKinaston et al, 2016;Valentin et al, 2010;Valentin et al, 2014). The Lapita colonists travelled with an agricultural package including tuberous crops, pigs, dogs, and chickens to new island environments where they also took advantage of diverse indigenous plants and animals.…”