The Lapita Peoples

This is the first account of the Lapita peoples, the common
ancestor of the Polynesians, Micronesians, and
Austronesian-speaking Melanesians who over the last 4000 years
colonized the islands of the Pacific, including New Zealand and
territories as far afield as Fiji and Hawaii. Its purpose is to
provide answers to some of the most puzzling archaeological and
anthropological questions: who were the Lapita peoples? what was
their history? how were they able to travel such great distances?
and why did they do so? Recent discoveries (several by the author
of this book) have begun at last to yield a coherent picture of
these elusive peoples.

Professor Kirch takes the reader back many thousands of years to
the earliest evidence of the Lapita peoples. He describes the
research itself and conveys the excitement of the first discoveries
of Lapita settlements, tools and pottery. He then traces the
remarkable cultural development and spread of the Lapita peoples
across the unoccupied islands of Eastern Melanesia, Micronesia and
Western Polynesia. He shows how they became the progenitors of the
Polynesian and Austronesian-speaking Melanesian peoples.

The author describes Lapita sites, communities and landscapes,
the development of their decorated ceramics, and their shell-tool
industry. He reveals the means by which they accomplished such
prodigious voyages and explains why they undertook them. He
illustrates his account with specially drawn maps and with a wide
range of photographs, many published for the first time.

Drawing on the latest research in archaeology, anthropology,
biology and linguistics, and written in clear, non-specialized
language, this is an outstanding book of great importance to the
history of South-East Asia and the Pacific.