INDIGENOUS ARCHAEOLOGY
I 'm standing at an archaeological dig at Pang Pang, Vanuatu. About a dozen people are hard at work under the dappled light of the forest, sifting through soil, scrubbing at bits of shells and bone, and painstakingly digging in square pavilions, neatly marked with bright yellow string. One of the locals has hooked up his phone to a speaker, and now a steady pulse of reggae and pan-pipes accompanies the sound of scraping dirt and chatter among the team. The site could be easily lost in the dense green foliage - only a large banyan tree marks the entrance from the main road. To get there, my guide and I had to clamber under its roots and then follow a winding trail that cut past the riverbank. The canopy then opens to small flat hills, about a metre or so tall, upon which all the activity is taking place.
One of the workers pulls four recently-found pottery shards, each about the size of a postage stamp, out of a ziplock bag and lays them flat on his palm for me to see. To an untrained eye, they don't look like much. Under a crust of dirt, the deep orange clay peeks out. Each piece is marked with
