Lapita and non-Lapita ware during New Caledonia's first millennium of Austronesian settlement

New Caledonia forms the southernmost archipelago of the Melanesian chain. Its importance in the understanding of the peopling of the south-western Pacific has over the last 40 years been conducive to the development of archaeological research projects focusing for the most part on the characterisation of the first human colonisation of this region. The first dating of a site containing a characteristic dentate-stamped decoration was run after the excavation of a seaside site on the west coast of the Grande Terre (Mainland) of the archipelago, in a place called M Lapita >> by American archaeologists E. Gifford and R. Shutler (1956). The discovery of large tumuli, dated between 13,000 and 4000 BP, was at the same time seen as indication of an old settlement of southern Melanesia by modern humans (Shutler and Shutler 1975).