Late Lapita occupation and its ceramic assemblage at the Sigatoka Sand Dune site, Fiji, and their place in Oceanic prehistory

The Sigatoka Sand Dune site on the island of Viti Levu, Fiji, has been continuously eroding over the past half century. Large-scale excavations here in the mid-1960s documented a Late Lapita ceramic horizon, one significantly including many restorable or diagnostically complete vessels. A 1998 discovery of an intact segment of this deposit led to renewed excavation and the recovery of additional vessels. The results of this excavation are presented and used to redress long-standing problems associated with the occupation and interpretation of the ceramic assemblage. Based on radiocarbon dates and geoarchaeological analysis, it is known that the ceramics originally were deposited and rapidly buried on a back beach sand flat over a very brief period of time ca. 2500 BP (ca. 2600 cal. BP). The distribution of ceramics, the relative absence of habitation features, non-ceramic artifacts and fauna, and shoreline characteristics suggest the locale was employed as a canoe-landing site. The temporal discreteness, and the completeness of ceramic vessels have made the collection a critical assemblage for comparative analyses in Oceanic prehistory. With only limited decoration applied to the vessels, the assemblage has been interpreted as a devolutionary stage, one intermediate between the complex and highly structured decorated vessels of the initial Lapita colonists and a sequent Plainware phase where decoration has all but disappeared. Rather than a devolutionary stage, the Sigatoka pottery represents a viable industry with functional if not social importance in late Lapita society.