Reconstruction
At Teouma on Efate, people associated with the Lapita cultural complex established one of the earliest known communities in Vanuatu. Archaeologists found a settlement midden, an extensive cemetery and finely made pottery bearing patterns impressed with toothed stamps. Bayesian analysis places the most likely beginning of the Lapita deposits around 970–920 BCE, with occupation continuing into approximately the ninth or eighth century BCE. Teouma belonged to a rapid maritime expansion that carried people, objects and food-producing practices from Near Oceania into islands that had not previously supported permanent human populations.
Food was obtained through a flexible mixture of foraging, fishing, cultivation and animal husbandry. Human bone isotopes indicate diets combining marine and terrestrial resources rather than dependence on a single staple. Fish, shellfish and other wild fauna occur in the archaeological deposits, while bones of introduced pigs and chickens demonstrate that voyagers transported living animals. Isotopic evidence suggests that these animals consumed foods from terrestrial environments and may sometimes have foraged freely. Dental calculus from people buried at Teouma also preserved plant microparticles, including evidence of banana use and substantial interaction with forest trees and shrubs. Taro, yams and other transported crops are securely documented at related Lapita sites, although their precise contribution at Teouma should not be assumed without direct identification.
Pottery added storage, serving and cooking possibilities to this mixed economy. Plain vessels were likely better suited to ordinary preparation, but the function of elaborately decorated pots was more specialized. Lipid analysis of eight decorated and two plain Teouma sherds found that the decorated vessels held broadly similar contents. The residues could represent plants, non-ruminant terrestrial animals or freshwater resources, but they could not be identified more narrowly. Marine foods, despite being prominent in the wider diet, were not the dominant contents. This supports—but does not prove—the interpretation that decorated vessels were reserved for regulated, ceremonial or otherwise exceptional occasions, including mortuary activity.
The significance of Teouma lies in the whole transported food system rather than any single meal. Ocean crossings required knowledge of navigation, seasonal provisioning and the care of viable plants and animals. On arrival, colonists combined this portable food package with unfamiliar reefs, forests and freshwater habitats. Pottery designs and imported stone also reveal contacts extending beyond one island, although archaeology cannot by itself identify every voyage or exchange relationship.
Many foods involved—banana, root crops, pig, chicken, fish and shellfish—remain important across the Pacific. Modern practices cannot simply be projected back three millennia, and continuous descent for particular recipes is unproven. Nevertheless, Teouma documents an early foundation of the Pacific's transported landscapes: cultivated and domestic species established alongside intensive use of island and coastal ecosystems.
Historical context
Around the tenth to ninth centuries BCE, permanent settlement was extending into Remote Oceania. Lapita communities had moved from the Bismarck Archipelago through the Solomon Islands to Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji and western Polynesia within only a few centuries, linking islands across roughly 4,000 kilometres. Teouma then stood beside a coastal bay; tectonic uplift has since left it about 800 metres inland. Contemporary societies elsewhere included Iron Age communities in the eastern Mediterranean and Zhou-period states in China, but the Lapita achievement was distinctive for repeated open-water colonization and the establishment of food-producing communities on previously uninhabited islands.
Evidence
Archaeological
StrongExcavated cemetery and midden deposits, dentate-stamped and plain pottery, tools and faunal remains directly establish an early Lapita community at Teouma.
Archaeobotanical
ModeratePlant microparticles in Teouma dental calculus directly support consumption or handling of banana and other tree or shrub resources. Specific root-crop packages are better documented at other Lapita sites and remain less certain at Teouma.
Zooarchaeological
StrongBones from pigs, chickens, fish, shellfish and diverse wild animals directly document introduced domesticates and broad-spectrum exploitation.
Residue chemical
ModerateAbsorbed lipids show that sampled pottery held food-related substances and that marine resources were unlikely to have been their dominant contents, but the analysis could not distinguish reliably among plants, non-ruminant animals and freshwater foods.
Food identification
ModeratePigs, chickens and many aquatic animals are securely identified from skeletal remains, and banana is supported by dental-calculus microfossils. The exact foods placed in decorated pottery remain unidentified.
Dating
StrongMultiple radiocarbon determinations assessed through contextual screening and Bayesian modeling place the most likely start of Lapita deposits around 2920–2870 cal BP and their end around 2870–2750 cal BP.
Preparation method
LimitedPottery demonstrates container technology, but surviving evidence rarely identifies whether particular foods were boiled, baked, stored, displayed or served. Proposed distinctions between plain cooking vessels and decorated special-purpose vessels remain partly inferential.
Geographic attribution
StrongThe excavated site is securely located at Teouma on southern Efate, Vanuatu, adjacent to an ancient shoreline.
Historical interpretation
ProbableThe interpretation of Teouma as an early colonizing community within the Lapita expansion is strongly supported. Linking Lapita material culture broadly with Austronesian-language dispersal draws additionally on linguistic and biological evidence and is not established by pottery alone.
Visual reconstruction
InterpretiveReconstructions of boats, meals, horticultural plots, clothing and ceremonial service require comparison with regional archaeology, experimental voyaging or later Pacific traditions; such details were not directly observed at Teouma.
Sources
- 1.Stuart Bedford, Matthew Spriggs, Ralph Regenvanu (2006). The Teouma Lapita site and the early human settlement of the Pacific Islands. Antiquity 80(310): 812–828. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00094448Primary archaeology
- 2.Fiona Petchey, Matthew Spriggs, Stuart Bedford, Frédérique Valentin (2015). The chronology of occupation at Teouma, Vanuatu: Use of a modified chronometric hygiene protocol and Bayesian modeling to evaluate midden remains. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 4: 95–105. doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.08.024Scientific literature
- 3.Rebecca Kinaston, Hallie Buckley, Frédérique Valentin, et al. (2014). Lapita Diet in Remote Oceania: New Stable Isotope Evidence from the 3000-Year-Old Teouma Site, Efate Island, Vanuatu. PLOS ONE 9(3): e90376. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0090376Scientific literature
- 4.Mathieu Leclerc, Karine Taché, Stuart Bedford, et al. (2018). The use of Lapita pottery: Results from the first analysis of lipid residues. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 17: 712–722. doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.12.019Scientific literature
- 5.Monica Tromp, Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith, Rebecca Kinaston, et al. (2020). Exploitation and utilization of tropical rainforests indicated in dental calculus of ancient Oceanic Lapita culture colonists. Nature Human Behaviour 4: 489–495. doi:10.1038/s41562-019-0808-yScientific literature
- 6.Alice A. Storey, Matthew Spriggs, Stuart Bedford, et al. (2010). Mitochondrial DNA from 3000-year old chickens at the Teouma site, Vanuatu. Journal of Archaeological Science 37: 2459–2468. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2010.05.006Scientific literature
Limitations
- moderatedate start
The supplied range begins around 1100 BCE, but Bayesian modeling places the most likely start of the Teouma Lapita deposits at 2920–2870 cal BP, approximately 970–920 BCE. A broader maximum range permits earlier possibilities, but 1100 BCE should not be presented as the best-supported settlement date.
