Sentient Archaeologies: Global Perspectives on Places, Objects and Practice

By Courtney Nimura and Richard Bradley

Archaeology in the past century has seen a major shift from theoretical frameworks that treat the remains of past societies as static snapshots of particular moments in time to interpretations that prioritize change and variability. Though established analytical concepts, such as typology, remain key parts of the archaeologist’s investigative toolkit, data-gathering strategies and interpretative frameworks have become infused progressively with the concept that archaeology is living, in the sense of both the objects of study and the discipline as a whole. The significance for the field is that researchers across the world are integrating ideas informed by relational epistemologies and mutually constructive ontologies into their work from the initial stage of project design all the way down to post-excavation interpretation.

This volume showcases examples of such work, highlighting the utility of these ideas to exploring material both old and new. The illuminating research and novel explanations presented contribute to resolving long-standing problems in regional archaeologies across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Oceania. In this way, this volume reinvigorates approaches taken towards older material but also acts as a springboard for future innovative discussions of theory in archaeology and related disciplines.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Jul 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781789259339

Book preview

1

Living Archaeology

Rebecca O’Sullivan, Courtney Nimura, and Richard Bradley

A major trend in archaeology over the last century has been the increasingly rapid departure from theoretical frameworks that treat the remains of past societies as static snapshots of particular moments in time. The move towards interpretations that prioritise change and variability as factors influencing the formation of the archaeological record has been notable, due in no small part to the work of Chris Gosden (Fig. 1.1).¹ Chris has at no point limited himself to one or two perspectives, engaging at various times with artefact biographies, cognition, creativity, social identity, and technology. Though seemingly abstract, Chris emphasises ideas and the best ways to use them, and these theories have underpinned his highly influential work and collaborations on various subjects, such as colonialism, magic, monumental architecture, and prehistoric art (see Selected Works appended). This approach has served to position the living world at the fore of archaeological investigation, a stark contrast from focusing on disembodied relics, casting archaeology in the role of creative process² as opposed to a set of fixed methods and approaches.

Though established analytical concepts, such as typology, remain key parts of the archaeologist’s investigative toolkit, data-gathering strategies and interpretative frameworks have become infused progressively with the concept that archaeology – both in the sense of its objects of study and the discipline as a whole – is living, thus it is continually sensitive to developments in the immediate environment. The title of this volume, Sentient Archaeologies, reflects this concept and acknowledges the significant number of researchers across the world who are integrating ideas informed by relational epistemologies and mutually constructive ontologies into their work, from the initial stage of project design all the way down to post-excavation interpretation. The volume showcases examples of such work, highlighting the utility of these ideas to exploring material both old and new. The theories and methods used are as wide-ranging as Chris’s own writings and share the same concern with illuminating the experience of past people.

The chapters are organised into three broad themes: 1) People & Places; 2) Form & Flow; and 3) History & Heritage. The themes are intentionally broad to capture the diversity of theories and approaches being used across the world, a choice that was made to reflect the breadth of Chris’s own research, which has ranged from Oceania to Europe and covered vast regions, such as northern Eurasia. Refusing to confine himself to a single specialism has contributed much to archaeology, and the discipline is better for it. The 29 chapters that follow share Chris’s intellectual ambition and attempt to follow his aspiration – so often successfully achieved – of revitalising the discipline of archaeology.

Figure 1.1 Professor Chris Gosden (Photo: Ian R. Cartwright).

Figure 1.2 (a) Chris on Malai Island, Siassi District, Papua New Guinea 1984 (Photo: Ian Lilley); (b) Chris in the regalia of Peter Pasio, the Big Man of Iangpun village, Apugi Island, New Britain, Papua New Guinea, 2003 (Photo: Jim Specht © The Australian National Museum); (c) Chris in lower right-hand corner of a water-logged trench at the Makekur Lapita site on Adwe Island, Arawe Islands, New Britain, Papua New Guinea (Photo: Jim Specht © The Australian National Museum); (d) Chris explaining the stratigraphy while standing in a waterlogged test pit of the Makekur Lapita site on Adwe Island, Arawe Islands, New Britain, Papua New Guinea, 1992 (Photo: Jim Specht © The Australian National Museum); (e) Chris breaks ground at a Peking University-excavation in the Zhouyuan, Shaanxi, PR China, 2014 (Photo: Rebecca O’Sullivan); (f) Chris admiring the great tapestry from Pazyryk, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Photo: Courtney Nimura).

Section 1: People & Place (Chapters 2–10) is concerned with the relationship between past societies and the places they have inhabited, with a focus on the mutually constructive nature of interactions. Fieldwork has always played a part in Chris’s research, and many of the authors in this section have been with him on the sites presented in these chapters. Chapters 2 (Summerhayes), 3 (Specht & Torrence), and 4 (Sand & Allen) explore concepts of distance and diversity, social and technological change, and cultural connections in Oceania. Borneo, Libya, and Iraqi Kurdistan are the focus of Chapter 5 (Barker & Hunt), in which the very question of what it is to be human and how this is expressed in the landscape is addressed. Cultural connections are also the subject of Chapter 6 (Rawson), which presents a study of several centuries of burial practices in China and Siberia in the 1st millennium BC. Moving from East to western Asia and the Mediterranean, Chapter 7 (Bogaard) considers the impact of process on the development of agriculture and the creation of agricultural places. Persistent places in the landscape are also the subject of Chapters 8 (Lock & Raven), 9 (Olivier), and 10 (Bradley), which present case studies from Europe. Chapter 8 focuses on long-term activity at a single site, while Chapters 9 and 10 exemplify the power of landscapes to shape human behaviour.

Section 2: Form & Flow (Chapters 11–21) concentrates on the role of intangible socio-cultural processes in shaping/producing the material objects visible today, and the theoretical implications of this for archaeological study. Chris has often focused on the big picture, drawing on the material culture evidence to understand how people and ideas moved around the world. Methods for how this type of research can be undertaken is the subject of Chapter 11 (Nimura, O’Sullivan & Hommel), which centres on the rock art of Eurasia. Chapters 12 (Downum & Garrow), 13 (Moffett), and 14 (Talbot) tell detailed stories of artefacts from Iron Age and Roman Britain, from the regionality of style and material in so-called ‘Celtic Art’ to the magical and religious nature of jet objects to the production and circulation of Iron Age coins. Chapter 15 (Pollard) focuses on the form and flow of archaeological thought through a travelogue of conversations had ‘on the road’ in China. Technological change, object biographies, and materials and materialities are explored in Chapters 16 (Li) in China, 17 (Chirikure) on the African continent, and 18 (Fullagar, Hayes & Pardoe) in Oceania. This section continues in Oceania, where issues of cultural change and continuity are explored in Chapters 19 (Cosgrove), 20 (Allen), and 21 (Morphy & Morphy).

Section 3: History & Heritage (Chapters 22–30) turns to current themes concerning archaeology as practice, delving into the discipline’s origins and history to evaluate its structure, as well as its applicability to global heritage. The relationship of archaeology to anthropology, the focus of Chris’s 1999 book, is revisited in Chapter 22 (Malafouris). This sets the stage for this section, in which many chapters grapple with big ideas, such as the nature of ontologies discussed in Chapter 23 (Robb). Archaeology’s critical relationships with anthropology and philosophy also extend to the politics of heritage, which is the difficult topic addressed in Chapter 24 (Lilley). Relatedly, Chapter 25 (Edwards) presents a study on how commercial markets for heritage affected archaeological practice in the early phase of the discipline’s development. From field archaeologist to museum curator, Chris’s research engaged with many disciplines and a diverse suite of material culture. Chapters 26 (Pikirayi) and 27 (Knowles) both focus on the museum space and the importance of critical practices of collecting and curating. The section ends with three reflections on British archaeology in Chapters 28 (Hey), 29 (Evans), and 30 (Meskell).

Taken together, Sentient Archaeologies, seeks not only to pay homage to a scholar who has greatly influenced the direction of global archaeology, it aims to challenge established theories concerning past societies on a global scale. The illuminating research and novel explanations presented in this volume contribute to resolving long-standing problems in regional archaeologies and reinvigorate approaches taken towards older material.

Acknowledgements

The editors would like to wholeheartedly thank: the anonymous peer reviewers, who gave their time and thoughtful criticism to the chapters in this book; Molly Masterson, who cast her eagle eye over the entire manuscript; Miranda Creswell, who generously provided permission to reproduce her painting ‘Waterland’ on the cover; Anwen Cooper, who helped shape the author list; an anonymous donor, who subsidised the colour images in this book; and the editors and staff at Oxbow for their guidance throughout this process. We are indebted to Jane Kaye for her advice on all things Gosden and her support for this project from its inception. Though the final list of authors included in this book reflects merely a fraction of the masses of current and former students, colleagues, and friends whose careers and lives have been positively impacted by Chris, we hope it is at least partly representative.

Notes

1.(1979–1983) PhD, University of Sheffield; (1984–1985) Visiting Fellow, Australian National University; (1986–1992) Lecturer, La Trobe University; (1992–1993) Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University; (1994–2006) University Lecturer in World Archaeology/Curator of Archaeology, Pitt Rivers Museum/Fellow, St Cross College, University of Oxford; (2004–2006) Professor of Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology/Dean, St Cross College, University of Oxford; (2006–2023) Professor of European Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology/Fellow, Keble College, University of Oxford; (2008–2023) Chairman of Trustees, Oxford Archaeology; (2009–2014) Member, Arts & Humanities Research Council Academic Advisory Board; (2010–2020) Trustee, The Art Fund; (2014–2019) Chair, Visitors of the Pitt Rivers Museum; (2018–2021) Chair, Section H7, British Academy; (2018–2022) Trustee, British Museum. (2004) Elected Fellow, Society of Antiquaries, London; (2005) Elected Fellow, The British Academy; (2016) Elected Corresponding Fellow, Australian Academy of Humanities.

2.This creative process is introduced through the volume cover, which features a painting by Miranda Creswell, whom Chris secured as the first Artist-in-Residence at the School of Archaeology at Oxford.

Selected Works by Chris Gosden

2025

Humans: The First Seven Million Years. Harmondsworth: Penguin Viking.

2023

Pollard, A. M. & Gosden, C. (2023) An Archaeological Perspective on the History of Technology. CUP Elements. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

2021

Gosden, C. (2021) The History of Magic: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present. London, Penguin Books.

Gosden, C. & Pollard, M. (2021) Is the universe sentient? What implications might this have for archaeology? In M. J. Boyd & R. C. P. Doonan (eds), Far from Equilibrium: An Archaeology of Energy, Life and Humanity, 313–24. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Gosden, C., Green, C., Cooper, A., Creswell, M., Donnelly, V., Franconi, T., Glyde, R., Kamash, Z., Mallet, S., Morley, L., Stansbie, D. & ten Harkel, L. (2021) English Landscapes and Identities: Investigating Landscape Change from 1500 BC to AD 1086. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Iorga, A., Gosden, C., Lock, G. & Schulting, R. (2021) Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis and Romano-British animal management along the Ridgeway, Oxfordshire. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 40(a), 103254.

Malafouris, L., Gosden, C. & Bogaard, A. (2021) Process archaeology. World Archaeology 53(1), 1–14.

Sainsbury, V. A., Bray, P., Gosden, C. & Pollard, A. M. (2021) Mutable objects, places and chronologies. Antiquity 95(379), 215–27.

2020

Gosden, C. & Knowles, C. (2020) Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial Change. London, Routledge.

Gosden, C. (2020) Art, ambiguity and transformation. In Nimura et al. (2020a), 9–22. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Gosden, C., Chittock, H., Hommel, P. & Nimura, C. (2020) Introduction: Context, connections and scale. In Nimura et al. (2020a), 1–8.

Grainger, A., Summerhayes, G. R. & Gosden, C. (2020) Investigating the nature of mobility patterns and interaction: Ceramic production at the Late Lapita site of Amalut, Papua New Guinea. Australian Archaeology 87(1), 93–104.

Hommel, P., Kovaleva, O., Whitlam, J., Amzarakov, P., Pouncett, J., Lim, J., Petrova, N., Gosden, C. & Esin, Y. (2020) ‘Monumental myopia’: Bringing the later prehistoric settlements of southern Siberia into focus. Antiquity 94(373), E2.

Malafouris, L. & Gosden, C. (2020) Mind, time, and material engagement. In I. Gaskell & S. A. Carter (eds), The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture, 105–122. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Monteith, F., Liu, R., Pollard, A. M. & Gosden, C. (2020) Chaîne opératoire and the construction of Buddhist cave temples in Northwestern China. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 35(1), 44–56.

Nimura, C., Gosden, C., Hommel, P. & Chittock, H. (eds) (2020a) Art in the Eurasian Iron Age: Context, Connections and Scale. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Nimura, C., Hommel, P., Chittock, H. & Gosden, C. (2020b) Collecting Iron Age art. In Nimura et al. (2020a), 23–36. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

2019

Gosden, C., Hommel, P. & Nimura, C. (2019) Making mounds: Monuments in Eurasian prehistory. In T. Romankiewicz, M. Fernández Götz, G. Lock & O. Büchsenschütz (eds), Enclosing Space, Opening New Ground: Iron Age Studies from Scotland to Mainland Europe, 141–52. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Schulting, R. J., le Roux, P., Gan, Y. M., Pouncett, J., Hamilton, J., Snoeck, C., Ditchfield, P., Henderson, R., Lange, P., Lee-Thorp, J., Gosden, C. & Lock, G. (2019) The ups & downs of Iron Age animal management on the Oxfordshire Ridgeway, south-central England: A multi-isotope approach. Journal of Archaeological Science 101, 199–212.

Specht, J. & Gosden, C. (2019) New dates for the Makekur (FOH) Lapita pottery site, Arawe Islands, New Britain, Papua New Guinea. In S. Bedford & M. Spriggs (eds), Debating Lapita: Distribution, Chronology, Society and Subsistence. Terra Australis 52, 169–202. Canberra, Australian National University Press.

2018

Gosden, C. (2018) Prehistory: A Very Short Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Gosden, C. (2018) Trade and exchange. In C. Haselgrove, K. Rebay-Salisbury & P. S. Wells (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the European Iron Age [online]. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

2017

Ten Harkel, L., Franconi, T. & Gosden, C. (2017) Fields, ritual and religion: Holistic approaches to the rural landscape in long-term perspective (c. 1500 BC–AD 1086). Oxford Journal of Archaeology 36(4), 413–37.

2016

Barker, G., Hunt, C., Barton, H., Gosden, C., Jones, S., Lloyd-Smith, L., Farr, L., Nyiri, B. & O’Donnell, S. (2016) The ‘cultured rainforests’ of Borneo. Quaternary International 448, 44–61.

Green, C., Gosden, C., Cooper, A., Franconi, T., ten Harkel, L., Kamash, Z. & Lowerre, A. (2016) Understanding the spatial patterning of English archaeology: Modelling mass data, 1500 BC to AD 1086. Archaeological Journal 174(1), 244–80.

Specht, J., Gosden, C., Lentfer, C., Jacobsen, G., Matthew, P. J. & Lindsay, S. (2016) A pre-Lapita structure at Apalo, Arawe Islands, Papua New Guinea. The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 12(2), 151–72.

Specht, J., Gosden, C., Pavlides, C., Richards, Z. & Summerhayes, G. R. (2016) Exploring Lapita diversity on New Britain’s south coast, Papua New Guinea. Journal of Pacific Archaeology 7(1), 20–29.

2015

Bray, P., Cuénod, A., Gosden, C., Hommel, P., Liu, R. & Pollard, A. M. (2015) Form and flow: The ‘karmic cycle’ of copper. Journal of Archaeological Science 56, 202–9.

Cunliffe, B., Renfrew, C., Gosden, C. & Geake, H. (2015) The British Museum at 250. Antiquity 77(298), 828–33.

Gosden, C. (2015) Possession, property or ownership? In A. Klevnäs & C. Hedenstierna-Jonson (eds), Own and be Owned: Archaeological Approaches to the Concept of Possession, 215–21. Stockholm, Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University.

Gosden, C. (2015) What use is the Palaeolithic in promoting new prehistoric narratives? In F. Coward, R. Hosfield, M. Pope & F. Wenban-Smith (eds), Settlement, Society and Cognition in Human Evolution: Landscapes in Mind, 1–14. New York, Cambridge University Press.

Gosden, C. & Malafouris, L. (2015) Process archaeology (p-arch). World Archaeology 47(5), 701–17.

Hamilton, D. W., Haselgrove, C. & Gosden, C. (2015) The impact of Bayesian chronologies on the British Iron Age. World Archaeology 47(4), 642–60.

Pollard, A. M., Bray, P., Gosden, C., Wilson, A. & Hamerow, H. (2015) Characterising copper-based metals in Britain in the first millennium AD: A preliminary quantification of metal flow and recycling. Antiquity 89(345), 697–713.

Specht, J., Lentfer, C., Gosden, C., Jacobsen, G. & Lindsay, S. (2015) Pre-Lapita decorated wood from Apalo, West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Archaeology in Oceania 50(2), 105–10.

2014

Chippindale, C., Gosden, C., James, N., Pitts, M. & Scarre, C. (2014) New era for Stonehenge. Antiquity 88, 644–57.

Gosden, C. (2014) Cognitive landscapes: The origins of the English village. Pragmatics and Cognition 22(1), 93–108.

Gosden, C. (2014) Commentary: The archaeology of the colonized and global archaeological theory. In N. Ferris, R. Harrison & M. V. Wilcox (eds), Rethinking Colonial Pasts Through Archaeology, 476–82. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Gosden, C., Crawford, S. & Ulmschneider, K. (2014) Celtic Art in Europe: Making Connections. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Gosden, C., Crawford, S. & Ulmschneider, K. (2014) Introduction to Celtic Art in Europe: Making Connections. In Gosden et al. 2014, 1–5.

Malafouris, L., Gosden, C. & Overmann, K. A. (2014) Creativity, cognition, and material culture: An introduction. Pragmatics and Cognition 22(1), 1–4.

Morrison, W., Thomas, R. & Gosden, C. (2014) Laying bare the landscape: Commercial archaeology and the potential of digital spatial data. Internet Archaeology 36. doi:10.11141/ia.36.9.

Pollard, A. M., Bray, P. & Gosden, C. (2014) Is there something missing in scientific provenance studies of prehistoric artefacts? Antiquity 88(340), 625–31.

2013

Gosden, C. (2013) Extended and condensed relations: Bringing together landscapes and artefacts. In A. Meirion Jones, J. Pollard, J. Gardiner & M. J. Allen (eds), Image, Memory and Monumentality: Archaeological Engagements with the Material World, 127–35. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Gosden, C. (2013) Fields. In S. Bergerbrandt & S. Sabatini (eds), Counterpoint: Essays in Archaeology and Heritage Studies in Honour of Professor Kristian Kristiansen, 111–17. Oxford, BAR International Series 2508.

Gosden, C. (2013) Humanized Environments. In M. I. J. Davies & F. N. M’Mbogori (eds), Humans and the Environment: New Archaeological Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century, 277–84. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Gosden, C. (2013) Landscapes and scale: Some introductory thoughts. Landscapes 14(1), 3–6.

Gosden, C. (2013) Technologies of routine and enchantment. In L. Chua & M. Elliott (eds), Distributed Objects: Meaning and Mattering After Alfred Gell, 39–57. Oxford, Berghahn Books.

Lentfer, C., Matthews, P. J., Gosden, C., Lindsay, S. & Specht, J. (2013) Prehistory in a nutshell: A Lapita-age nut-cracking stone from the Arawe Islands, Papua New Guinea. Archaeology in Oceania 48(3), 121–9.

2012

Garrow, D. & Gosden, C. (2012) Technologies of Enchantment? Exploring Celtic Art: 400 BC to AD 100. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Gosden, C. (2012) Magic, materials and matter: Understanding different ontologies. In J. Maran & P. W. Stockhammer (eds), Materiality and Social Practice: Transformative Capacities of Intercultural Encounters, 13–19. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Gosden, C. (2012) On being more-than-one and doubts about mind. In N. Johannsen, M. Jessen & H. J. Jensen (eds), Excavating the Mind: Cross-sections Through Culture, Cognition and Materiality, 57–68. Aarhus, Aarhus University Press.

Gosden, C., Cooper, A., Creswell, M., Green, C., ten Harkel, L., Kamash, Z., Morley, L., Pybus, J. & Xiong, X. (2012) The English Landscape and Identities Project. Antiquity 86(332), http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/gosden332/.

ten Harkel, L., Gosden, C., Cooper, A., Creswell, M., Green, C. & Morley, L. (2012) Understanding the Relationship between Landscape and Identity: A Case Study from Dartmoor and the Tamar Valley, Devon, c. 1500 BC – AD 1086. Journal for Ancient Studies Special Volume 3, 181–88.

Wingfield, C. & Gosden, C. (2012) An Imperialist folklore? Establishing the folk-lore society in London. In T. Baycroft & D. Hopkin (eds), Folklore and Nationalism in Europe During the Long Nineteenth Century, 255–74. Leiden, Brill.

2011

Gosden, C. (2011) And your point is…? In J. Bate (ed.), The Public Value of the Humanities, 295–302. London, Bloomsbury Academic.

Gosden, C. (2011) The small worlds of the (pre-)Neolithic Mediterranean. In N. Phoca-Cosmetatou (ed.), The First Mediterranean Islanders: Initial Occupation and Survival Strategies, 173–6. Oxford, University of Oxford School of Archaeology Monograph 74.

Gosden, C. & ten Harkel, L. (2011) English landscapes and identities. The early medieval landscape: A perspective from the past. Medieval Settlement Research 26, 1–10.

2010

Gosden, C. (2010) The death of the mind. In L. Malafouris & C. Renfrew (eds), The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the Boundaries of the Mind, 39–46. Cambridge, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Gosden, C. (2010) When humans arrived in the New Guinea highlands. Science 330(6000), 41–2.

Gosden, C. (2010) Words and things: Thick description in archaeology and anthropology. In D. Garrow & T. Yarrow (eds), Archaeology and Anthropology, 110–16. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Kamash, Z., Gosden, C. & Lock, G. (2010) Continuity and religious practices in Roman Britain: The case of the rural religious complex at Marcham/Frilford, Oxfordshire. Britannia 41, 95–125.

2009

Barker, G., Barton, H., Boutsikas, E., Britton, D., Davenport, B., Ewart, I., Farr, L., Ferraby, R., Gosden, C., Hunt, C. O., Janowski, M., Jones, S. E., Langub, J., Lloyd-Smith, L., Nyíri, B., Pearce, K. G. & Uppex, B. (2009) The Cultured Rainforest Project: The second (2008) field season. Sarawak Museum Journal 86, 119–84.

Díaz-Andreu, M., Price, M. & Gosden, C. (2009) Christopher Hawkes: His archive and networks in British and European archaeology. The Antiquaries Journal 89, 405–26.

Garrow, D., Gosden, C., Hill, J. D. & Bronk Ramsey, C. (2009) Dating Celtic art: A major radiocarbon dating programme of Iron Age and Early Roman metalwork in Britain. Archaeological Journal 166(1), 79–123.

Gosden, C. (2009) The Pacific Islands. In Gosden et al. 2009, 898–925.

Gosden, C., Cunliffe, B. & Joyce, R. A. (2009) Introduction. In Gosden et al. 2009, xiii–xviii.

Gosden, C., Cunliffe, B. & Joyce, R. A. (2009) The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Gosden, C., Kamash, Z., Kirkham, R. & Pybus, J. (2009) Joining the dots: Exploring technical and social issues in e-Science approaches to linking landscape and artefactual data in British archaeology. In Proceedings of the 2009 5th IEEE, International Conference of E-Science Workshops, Oxford, UK, 171–4. Piscataway NJ, IEEE. doi:10.1109/ESCIW.2009.5407968.

Gosden, C., Larson, F. & Petch, A. (2009) Origins and survivals: Tylor, Balfour and the Pitt Rivers Museum and their role within anthropology in Oxford 1883–1905. In P. Rivière (ed.), A History of Oxford Anthropology, 21–42. Oxford, Berghahn Books.

2008

Garrow, D., Gosden, C. & Hill, J. D. (eds) (2008) Rethinking Celtic Art. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Gosden, C. & Hill, J. D. (2008) Introduction: Re-integrating ‘Celtic’ art. In Garrow et al. 2008, 1–14.

Gosden, C. (2008) Social ontologies. Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B 363(1499), 2003–10.

Gosden, C. (2008) The past and foreign countries: Colonial and post-colonial archaeology and anthropology. In L. Meskell & R. W. Preucel (eds), A Companion to Social Archaeology, 161–78. Oxford, Blackwell.

2007

Gosden, C. (2007) Holism, intelligence and time. In D. Parkin & S. Ulijaszek (eds), Holistic Anthropology: Emergence and Convergence, 182–93. Oxford, Berghahn Books.

Gosden, C., Hamerow, H., de Jersey, P. & Lock, G. (eds) (2007) Communities and Connections: Essays in Honour of Barry Cunliffe. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Gosden, C. & Larson, F. (2007) Knowing Things: Exploring the Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, 1884-1945. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

2006

Edwards, E., Gosden, C. & Phillips, R. (eds) (2006) Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture. London, Routledge.

Edwards, E., Gosden, C. & Phillips, R. (2006) Introduction. In Edwards et al. 2006, 1–34. London, Routledge.

Gosden, C. (2006) Material culture and long-term change. In C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Küchler, M. Rowlands & P. Spyer (eds), Handbook of Material Culture, 425–42. London, Sage.

Gosden, C. (2006) Warfare and colonialism in the Bismarck Archipelago, Papua New Guinea. In T. Otto, H. Thrane & H. Vandkilde (eds), Warfare and Society: Archaeological and Social Anthropological Perspectives, 201–10. Aarhus, Aarhus University Press.

Gosden, C. (2006) Race and racism in archaeology: Introduction. World Archaeology 38(1), 1–7.

Gosden, C. & Kirsanow, K. (2006) Timescales. In G. Lock & B. L. Molyneaux (eds), Confronting Scale in Archaeology: Issues of Theory and Practice, 27–37. Springer.

Gosden, C. & Lock, G. (2006) The aesthetics of landscape on the Berkshire Downs. In C. Haselgrove (ed.), The Earlier Iron Age in Britain and the Near Continent, 279–92. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Robson, E., Treadwell, L. & Gosden, C. (eds) (2006) Who Owns Objects? The Ethics and Politics of Collecting Cultural Artefacts. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

2005

Gosden, C. (2005) Comments III: Is science a foreign country? Archaeometry 47(1), 182–5.

Gosden, C. (2005) What do objects want? Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 12, 193–211.

Lock, G., Gosden, C. & Daly, P. (2005) Segsbury Camp: Excavations in 1996 and 1997 at an Iron Age Hillfort on the Oxfordshire Ridgeway. Oxford, University of Oxford School of Archaeology Monograph 61.

2004

DeMarrais, E., Gosden, C. & Renfrew, C. (2004) Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World. Cambridge, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Gosden, C. (2004) Aesthetics, intelligence and emotions: Implications for archaeology. In DeMarrais et al. (2004), 33–42.

Gosden, C. (2004) Archaeology and Colonialism: Cultural Contact from 5000 BC to the Present. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Gosden, C. (2004) Grid and group: An interview with Mary Douglas. Journal of Social Archaeology 4(3), 275–87.

Gosden, C. (2004) Shaping life in the late prehistoric and Romano-British periods. In R. M. Rosen (ed.), Time and Temporality in the Ancient World, 29–44. Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Knowles, C. & Gosden, C. (2004) A century of collecting: Colonial collectors in southwest New Britain. Records of the Australian Museum, Supplement 29, 65–74.

2003

Gosden, C. & Lock, G. (2003) Becoming Roman on the Berkshire Downs: The evidence from Alfred’s Castle. Britannia 34, 65–80.

Gosden, C. & Lock, G. (2003). Frilford: A Romano-British ritual pool in Oxfordshire? Current Archaeology 184(4), 156–9.

Miles, D., Palmer, S., Lock, G., Gosden, C. & Cromarty, A. M. (2003). Uffington White Horse and its Landscape: Investigations at White Horse Hill, Uffington, 1989-95, and Tower Hill, Ashbury, 1993–4. Oxford, Oxford Archaeology.

2001

Gosden, C. (2001) Making sense: Archaeology and aesthetics. World Archaeology, 163–7.

Gosden, C. (2001) Postcolonial archaeology: Issues of culture, identity, and knowledge. In I. Hodder (ed.), Archaeological Theory Today, 251–66. Cambridge, Polity Press.

2000

Brown, A., Coote, J. & Gosden, C. (2000) Tylor’s tongue: Material culture, evidence, and social networks. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 31(3), 257–76.

Gosden, C. (2000) On his Todd: Material culture and colonialism. In M. O’Hanlon & R. L. Welsch (eds), Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s–1930s, 227–50. Oxford, Berghahn Books.

Gosden, C. (2000) Varieties of colonial experience: Material culture and colonialism in West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. In A. Anderson & T. Murray (eds), Australian Archaeologist: Collected Papers in Honour of Jim Allen, 161–70. Canberra, The Australian National University.

Knowles, C., Gosden, C. & Lienert, H. (2000) German collectors in south-west New Britain, 1884–1914. Pacific Arts 21/22, 39–52.

1999

Gosden, C. (1999) Anthropology and Archaeology: A Changing Relationship. London, Routledge.

Gosden, C. (1999) Prehistory: A Very Short Introduction. 1st ed. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Gosden, C. (1999) The organization of society. In G. Barker (ed.), Companion Encyclopedia of Archaeology. London, Routledge.

Gosden, C. & Hather, J. G. (eds) (1999) The Prehistory of Food: Appetites for Change. London, Routledge.

Gosden, C. & Head, L. (1999) Different histories: A common inheritance for Papua New Guinea and Australia? In Gosden & Hather 1999, 227–45.

Gosden, C. & Marshall, Y. (1999) The cultural biography of objects. World Archaeology 31(2), 169–78.

1998

Gosden, C. & Lock, G. (1998) Prehistoric histories. World Archaeology 30(1), 2–12.

Summerhayes, G. R., Bird, J. R., Fullagar, R., Gosden, C., Specht, J. & Torrence, R. (1998) Application of PIXE-PIGME to archaeological analysis of changing patterns of obsidian use in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. In M. S. Shackley (ed.), Archaeological Obsidian Studies, 129–58. Springer.

1997

Gosden, C. (1997) Iron Age landscapes and cultural biographies. In A. Gwilt & C. Haselgrove (eds), Reconstructing Iron Age Societies, 303–7. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Gosden, C. (ed.) (1997) Special issue: Culture contact and colonialism. World Archaeology 28(3).

Matthews, P. J. & Gosden, C. (1997) Plant remains from waterlogged sites in the Arawe Islands, West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea: Implications for the history of plant use and domestication. Economic Botany 51, 121–33.

Specht, J. & Gosden, C. (1997) Dating Lapita pottery in the Bismarck Archipelago, Papua New Guinea. Asian Perspectives 36(2), 175–99.

Terrell, J. E., Hunt, T. L. & Gosden, C. (1997) Human diversity and the myth of the primitive isolate. Current Anthropology 38(2), 155–95.

1996

Allen, J. & Gosden, C. (1996) Spheres of interaction and integration: Modelling the culture history of the Bismarck Archipelago. In J. Davidson, G. Irwin, F. Leach, A. Pawley & D. Brown (eds), Oceanic Culture History: Essays in Honour of Roger Green, 183–97. Dunedin, New Zealand Journal of Archaeology Special Publication.

Gosden, C. (1996) Can we take the Aryan out of Heideggerian? Archaeological Dialogues 3(1), 22–5.

Gosden, C. (1996) Transformations: History and prehistory in Hawaii. Archaeology in Oceania 31(3), 165–72.

Harris, D. & Gosden, C. (1996) The beginnings of agriculture in western Central Asia. In D. Harris (ed.), The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia, 370–89. Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press.

1995

Gosden, C. (1995) Long term trends in the colonisation of the Pacific: Putting Lapita in its place. In P. Bellwood (ed.), Indo-Pacific Prehistory 1990, Vol. 2, 333–38. Bundoora, La Trobe University.

Gosden, C. (1995) Arboriculture and agriculture in coastal Papua New Guinea. Antiquity 69(265), 807–17.

1994

Gosden, C. (1994) Social Being and Time. Oxford, Blackwell.

Gosden, C. & Head, L. (1994) Landscape: A usefully ambiguous concept. Archaeology in Oceania 29(3), 113–16.

Gosden, C. & Webb, J. (1994) The creation of a Papua New Guinean landscape: Archaeological and geomorphological evidence. Journal of Field Archaeology 21(1), 29–51.

Gosden, C., Webb, J., Marshall, B. & Summerhayes, G. R. (1994) Lolmo Cave: A mid- to late Holocene site, the Arawe Islands, West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. Asian Perspectives 33(1), 97–119.

Pavlides, C. & Gosden, C. (1994) 35,000-year-old sites in the rainforests of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Antiquity 68(260), 604–10.

Pavlides, C. & Gosden, C. (1994) Are islands insular? Landscape vs. seascape in the case of the Arawe Islands, Papua New Guinea. Archaeology in Oceania 29(3), 162–71.

1993

Harris, D. R., Masson, V. M., Berezkin, Y. E., Charles, M. P., Gosden, C., Hillman, G. C., Kasparov, A. K., Korobkova, G. F., Kurbansakhatov, K., Legge, A. J. & Limbrey, S. (1993) Investigating early agriculture in Central Asia: New research at Jeitun, Turkmenistan. Antiquity 67(255), 324–38.

Summerhayes, G., Gosden, C., Fullagar, R., Specht, J., Torrence, R., Bird, J. R., Shagholi, N. & Katsaros, A. (1993) West New Britain obsidian: Production and consumption patterns. In B. L. Fankhauser & J. R. Bird (eds), Archaeometry: Current Australasian Research, 57–68. Canberra, Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University.

1992

Enright, N. J. & Gosden, C. (1992) Unstable archipelagos – south-west Pacific environment and prehistory since 30,000 BP. In J. Dodson (ed.), The Naïve Lands: Prehistory and Environmental Change in Australia and the Southwest Pacific, 160–98. Melbourne, Longman Cheshire.

Gosden, C. (1992) Dynamic traditionalism: Lapita as a long term social structure. In J. C. Galipaud (ed.), Poterie Lapita et peiplement: Actes du Colloque Lapita, Nouméa, Nouvelle Calédonie, Janvier 1992, 21–7. Nouméa, Orstom Nouméa.

Gosden, C. (1992) Endemic doubt: Is what we write right? Antiquity 66(252), 803–8.

Gosden, C. (1992) Production systems and the colonization of the Western Pacific. World Archaeology 24(1), 55–69.

1991

Allen, J. & Gosden, C. (eds) (1991) Report of The Lapita Homeland Project. Occasional Papers in Prehistory 20. Canberra, The Australian National University.

Gosden, C. (1991a) Towards an understanding of the regional archaeological record from the Arawe Islands, West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. In Allen & Gosden 1991, 205–16.

Gosden, C. (1991b) Learning about Lapita in the Bismarck Archipelago. In Allen & Gosden 1991, 260–68.

Gosden, C. & Robertson, N. (1991) Models for Matenkupkum: Interpreting a late Pleistocene site from Southern New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. In Allen & Gosden 1991, 20–45.

Gosden, C & Specht, J. (1991) Diversity, continuity and change in the Bismarck Archipelago, Papua New Guinea. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 11, 276–80.

1990

Gosden, C. (1990) Archaeological work in the Arawe Islands, West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, December 1989–February 1990. Australian Archaeology, 37–44.

1989

Allen, J., Gosden, C. & White, J. P. (1989) Human Pleistocene adaptations in the tropical island Pacific: Recent evidence from New Ireland, a Greater Australian Outlier. Antiquity 63(240), 548–61.

Gosden, C. (1989) Debt, production, and prehistory. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 8(4), 355–87.

Gosden, C. (1989) Prehistoric social landscapes of the Arawe Islands, West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. Archaeology in Oceania 24(2), 24–58.

Gosden, C., Allen, J., Ambrose, W., Anson, D., Golson, J., Green, R., Kirch, P., Lilley, I., Specht, J. & Spriggs, M. (1989) Lapita sites of the Bismarck Archipelago. Antiquity 63(240), 561–86.

1988

Allen, J., Gosden, C., Jones, R. & White, J. P. (1988) Pleistocene dates for the human occupation of New Ireland, northern Melanesia. Nature 331, 707–9.

1985

Gosden, C. (1985) Gifts and kin in early Iron Age Europe. MAN 20(3), 475–93.

1984

Gosden, C. & Allen, J. (1984) The Lapita Homeland Project. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 5, 104–9.

1983

Gosden, C. (1983) Iron Age pottery trade in central Europe. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.

1982

Gosden, C. (1982) The recognition and interpretation of the exchange of pottery in the Baringo District of Kenya: Some preliminary results. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 1(2), 13–29.

2

Reflections on Populating the Western Pacific

Glenn Summerhayes

Archaeological excavations led by Chris Gosden during the mid–late 80s and early 90s in southwest New Britain, Papua New Guinea, uncovered evidence of human occupation from the mid-Holocene (Lolmo cave; Gosden et al. 1994). Of importance are major settlement sites spanning 800 years from 3300–2500 BP. These sites, known as Lapita settlements, provided glimpses into the Austronesian-speaking colonisation of the western Pacific and its movement eastwards over 4000 km from Papua New Guinea to Samoa. Occupation east of the Solomon Island Chain (Reef Islands and Santa Cruz, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa) was the first evidence of the peopling within this region. This paper will place Gosden’s excavations into a regional perspective, outlining the important role that the discoveries had for interpreting the major social and technological changes happening in the western Pacific during the Late Holocene.

Keywords: Lapita, Arawe Islands, Holocene, Pottery

Introduction

Lapita is the term coined for colonising populations that moved out of Near Oceania by 3100 cal BP (the area of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the main Solomon Island chain) into what is termed Remote Oceania (the areas to the east of the main island chain), to colonise for the first time the small islands known today as Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, and eventually Samoa by 2850 cal BP (see Fig. 2.1). The archaeological signature of this early colonisation is pottery known as Lapita, named after the site excavated in New Caledonia by Gifford and Shutler in the 1950s (Gifford & Shutler 1956). The term ‘Lapita’ has now also extended to the material cultural complex. The conundrum is that whilst Remote Oceania marked the initial footsteps of humanity into that region, Near Oceania had already been occupied for 50,000 years (Summerhayes et al. 2010). Modelling Lapita colonists’ movements into a new territory, previously unoccupied, is one thing, but understanding what Lapita was within a region that already had a deep human history is another thing entirely. Models to account for Lapita’s appearance ranged from an indigenous growth arising out of economic and social institutions with a deep past within the Bismarck Archipelago, to one of external colonising peoples from southeast Asia bringing a Neolithic way of life (Bellwood 2013).

In the mid–late 20th century, when archaeological programmes in the Pacific were first being developed, the problem in modelling Lapita in Near Oceania and elucidating its origins was the lack of archaeological research in the Bismarck Archipelago (see Fig. 2.2). The Lapita Homeland Project was set up in the 1980s to redress the imbalance by focusing on the Bismarck Archipelago region, the area where Lapita supposedly developed. Shortly after taking up fellowship at the Australian National University (ANU), Gosden was thrust into a managing role of the Lapita Homeland Project, led by Jim Allen then of the ANU, involving leading archaeologists of the day. Both Gosden and Allen moved to La Trobe University shortly afterwards and built an impressive research-led department known for its strength and leadership in New Guinea archaeology. Unfortunately, within ten years both Allen and Gosden had left La Trobe and Pacific archaeology ceased there. As part of the Lapita Homeland Project, Gosden conducted fieldwork in the Arawe island group, which had seen little previous archaeological work. Excavations and survey began in the region in 1985, with Gosden leading five further field seasons (1986–7; 1987–8; 1989–90, 1990–1, and 1991–2). This paper briefly reviews Gosden’s important role in Lapita studies by focusing on his field research and the development of models used to account for his material. This review is followed by more recent interpretations of the archaeology of this region based on subsequent research of Gosden’s excavated materials.

Figure 2.1 Spread of Lapita over the western Pacific.

Gosden and Lapita

Gosden’s fieldwork in the Arawe Islands was a landmark for Lapita studies. He excavated one of the most important Lapita areas known to date. Sites of Paligmete on Pililo Island, Apalo on Kumbun Island, Makekur on Adwe Island, and Amalut on the south coast opposite Pililo Island, yielded some of the richest archaeological deposits known. This remains the case. The pottery was excavated from waterlogged deposits in a freshwater ghyben-herzberg lens, resulting in remarkable preservation of material culture, including organics such as nut remains and wooded structures.

Faced with some of the richest sites known, it was a challenge to fit this into what was known at the time and to develop models to understand the material culture. Of Gosden’s many insights into Lapita studies, two stand out as significant.

1. Understanding Geomorphology

The first insight concerns understanding how the archaeological record was created in context of its preservation and relationship to past landscapes. Gosden (1991a, 205) noted that we ‘cannot understand an archaeological record unless we know the processes responsible for their formation’. He took the geomorphologist John Webb to the Arawes where they detailed the geomorphological history of the sites including major environmental changes that followed human occupation as outlined in their paper ‘The creation of a Papua New Guinean landscape: Archaeological and geomorphological evidence’ (Gosden & Webb 1994). As argued in his book Social Being and Time, the landscapes of the past were different to those witnessed today. Gosden (1994, 29) posited that human action during and after Lapita times created the landscape of the present day. Importantly, Gosden and Webb identified that the initial Lapita settlements were stilt houses located on reef flats in low energy environments. The sea was, at the time of early Lapita occupation, between 1.5 and 2 m higher than today. Over time the reef flats filled up with erosional material from the coast of the associated islands, and as the sea level dropped to modern levels, the earlier materials which were deposited directly into the underlying waters were subsequently covered, thus sealing with remarkable preservation some of the richest Lapita materials known.

Figure 2.2 Lapita sites in the Bismarck Archipelago.

Gosden laid out a methodology and basic description on the distribution of sites, with basic summaries of material classes published. He questioned previous interpretations that these sites were large, long-term, stable villages, arguing instead that these interpretations were based on an over emphasis of the rich cultural deposits. He noted that the rich Lapita material was more visible due to deposition from stilt houses (Gosden 1991b, 265; see also Gosden 1994, 29), and argued that discard rates were low and ‘there may not have been that many pots or stone tools in use at any one time’. Lastly, he posited that settlements were not settlements as we see today, but instead ‘spots on the landscape to which people return to on a regular basis’ (Gosden 1994, 29; Gosden & Pavlides 1994, 169).

2. Social Modelling – Making Sense of Lapita

The second crucial impact that Gosden made to Lapita studies was his attempt to understand what Lapita represented in terms of ‘social forms’. His 1991 article ‘Learning about Lapita’ (Gosden 1991b, 264) was an attempt to look at the ‘social forms’ of Lapita, noting that we may be witnessing something very different to the social dynamics of the recent ethnographic past. He even postulated that Lapita had been over emphasised and was not ‘necessarily directly ancestral to either Melanesian or Polynesian societies in the present’ (Gosden 1991b, 264). His early articles were an attempt to come to grips with, and make sense of, what he had found. What did he come up with?

As a starting point, Gosden assumed, firstly, that social groups of the Lapita period were different in their essentials to any groups in the present and, secondly, that the archaeological record is hard to understand and therefore ‘we need to develop methods which encompass a series of scales of analysis’ (Gosden 1991b, 267). To do this, he suggested a three-scale approach. First, begin at local level: ‘individual regions need to be understood as a totality’ looking at geomorphology, ‘and how far a distribution of artefacts is influenced by factors of preservation and destruction’ (Gosden 1991b, 267). Secondly, from this local landscape understanding, he suggested combining them into a broader social whole looking at differences throughout larger areas such as the Bismarck Archipelago (Gosden 1991b, 268). Thirdly, once this was done, one could then look at the western Pacific as a whole.

An attempt at understanding a local landscape was made in his 1989 paper, ‘Prehistoric social landscapes of the Arawe Islands’ (Gosden 1989). Here he used the term ‘social construct’, where social groups operated in a landscape to sustain and provide a social environment (Gosden 1989, 45). He was adventurous and used the concept of ‘debt’ as an explanatory device to understand the archaeological record. Such a term was based on social anthropological models developed in select modern Papua New Guinea societies, but although relevant in assessing modern configurations of trade in southwest New Britain and mainland New Guinea (Gosden 1989, 48), it was limited when applied to Lapita studies.

Gosden did attempt to place the Arawe Islands into both a regional and Pacific-wide framework based on the distribution of dentate-stamped pottery and the broader processes of colonisation. In his ground-breaking article with Christina Pavlides on whether islands were insular, they argued for the development of social strategies that connected large regions as part of the process of colonisation (Gosden & Pavlides 1994, 162). Gosden and Pavlides argued against viewing the sea as an isolating barrier between societies. It begs the question: how much physical isolation was accountable for cultural divergence? They drew on the important work of Terrell (1986) who made the argument that it is not only physical distance that leads to isolations, as ‘communities can become relatively isolated within a dense set of connections, making the general point that we need an idea of the processes by which connections are maintained or broken’ (Gosden & Pavlides 1994, 162). From this point of the argument, they use observations derived from understanding site depositional history and low discard rates at Arawe Lapita sites and argue that these places are not settlements identical to coastal villages today, but ‘spots on the landscape to which people returned on a regular basis’ (Gosden 1994, 29; Gosden & Pavlides 1994, 169). That is – Lapita people were mobile.

Gosden and Pavlides (1994, 168) reiterated that the similarities in dentate-stamped pottery across the Lapita distribution were representative of a social universe where similarities were maintained over time by contemporaneous changes in a widely distributed cultural region. Here they refer to Kirch’s (1990, 121–23) observation of gross changes in Lapita from complex dentate decorations to simpler decoration. What these technological changes over time meant for these societies was never discussed or outlined in any detail.

One of the major limitations on the research of this time was the focus on ‘Lapita groups’ and dentate-stamped pottery, which are viewed as a homologous whole – a single social universe (see Gosden 1989, 52). He, and others at the time, focused on modelling the meaning of pottery defined by dentate-stamping. There was a lack of understanding of what made up a Lapita ceramic assemblage. Another problem was looking at changes within the Arawe sites in terms of only gross changes, such as between mid-Holocene occupation to late Holocene Lapita occupation and then to post-Lapita societies, rather than changes within Lapita itself. Yet, the term social landscape is an important one, and the true value of Gosden’s theoretical concepts were only realised after detailed archaeological analysis of the assemblages from the Arawes and other regional sites, such as those from the St Matthias Group excavated by Pat Kirch and the Anir Islands by Glenn Summerhayes. As outlined in Gosden’s three-scale approach to Lapita studies, only once a regional understanding of spatial and temporal changes was developed could larger inferences be made on the colonisation process and subsequent changes to Lapita in the western Pacific.

New Perspectives on Lapita and its Place in the Western Pacific

Over the last 30 years, the assemblages excavated by Gosden have been re-analysed from many angles, adding much to his earlier observations. These analyses have allowed the identification of, firstly, a temporal change in pottery vessel form, decoration, and production within the Arawe assemblages. It gave a time depth to archaeological sequences allowing comparisons between the assemblages in the Bismarck Archipelago (Mussau and Anir) and those in Remote Oceania.

These new data allow a new look at the nature of the society that colonised the western Pacific in the 2nd millennium BC. Pottery, in particular dentate-stamped pottery, has held primacy in developing models to account for this expansion. The riddle that confronts archaeologists is the so-called rapid disappearance of complex dentate-stamped designs after the initial introduction of pottery to areas east of the Solomon Islands chain. To model why dentate-stamping disappeared needs a fuller understanding of what makes a Lapita pot assemblage.

Pottery Diversity – What Was a Lapita Assemblage?

One of the problems in understanding Lapita has been the over emphasis on dentate-stamped pottery. Indeed, the Lapita assemblages contained rich material culture including obsidian, shell technology, fauna, and archaeobotanical remains. Yet, the focus of earlier research and indeed peoples’ perceptions of the Lapita material culture can be termed ‘dentate-centric’ (Summerhayes 2001, 54). Although much variation exists within a Lapita pottery assemblage, it is the complex patterns formed by dentate stamping that is often emphasised when describing the assemblages. Yet, after a detailed analysis of the Paligmete, Adwe, and Apalo pottery assemblages, a more complex picture emerged.

First, the dentate stamped sherds are only one component of the assemblages. Dentate-stamped vessels mostly consist of bowls and stands. The forms are also made primarily from a slab constructed technique, with thick vessel walls. Plain, undecorated vessels make up half the assemblage, while other types of decoration such as incision, punctation, and so on, make up the rest. These latter non-dentate-stamped vessels are mostly jars and globular pots, many having lip modification, and constructed using the coil-and-ring technique. Both dentate-stamped and non-dentate had been finished off with a paddle and anvil (for more detail see Summerhayes 2000a & b; 2001). The point made is that the assemblage was not just dentate-stamped forms, but many others that used different construction techniques. It is also clear that the functions of these pottery forms varied, with dentate-stamped vessel forms having a non-utilitarian social use, and the non-dentate vessels a more utilitarian use. The dentate designs have been interpreted as tattooing on the pot (Green 1979, 16; Kirch 1997, 142; Summerhayes 1998) – perhaps signifying clan/social markers (Summerhayes 2000b), or, as Chiu (2005) described them, as reflecting membership of house societies. Dentate marks were thus social/ideological signifiers that were socially active, conveying information and maintaining social boundaries. They fostered group identity.

Secondly, temporal changes can be seen in the assemblages, not only in the decoration conventions but also in how the proportion of vessel forms changed over time. Temporal trends were identified within the Arawe assemblage and the categories ‘Early Lapita’, ‘Middle Lapita’, and ‘Late Lapita’ were defined as heuristic devices to help model the changes (Summerhayes 2000a). Summerhayes (2001) noted that Early Lapita had a higher proportion of dentate-stamped bowls and stands. Middle and Later Lapita, on the other hand, had fewer bowls and stands and have a slightly higher proportion of dentate-stamped jars. The rest of the assemblage in terms of vessel forms remains the same (Summerhayes 2000a, chapter 10). The dentate-stamped decoration, as well, becomes less complex and a coarse open design over time (see Figs 2.3 and 2.4). Different rates of change are seen in the two sets