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New Lapita find re-dates known Hiji settlers

A biological anthropologist excavates a skeleton after archeologists discovered a 3,000-year-old cemetery in Vanuatu in August, holding secrets about the first humans to colonize the South Pacific. A shard of pottery showing a human face, pre-dating any other Lapita pottery in Fiji, has now been found and hailed a s a significant discovery. PHOTO: AFP

Staring out from an ancient piece of pottery, the mysterious face of a bearded man has given scientists a unique glimpse of what the first settlers of Fiji may have looked like.

Researchers say the "extraordinary discovery" is a vital clue in mapping out how the South Pacific came to be inhabited some 3,000 years ago, suggesting the first direct link to islands some thousands of kilometers away.

Thought to be the work of the Lapita people -- a long-lost race which originated near modern-day Taiwan then migrated to Polynesia -- the fragment is also at least 200 years older than any other piece found in Fiji.

"This is the first time that a clearly recognizable face design made in three dimensions on a piece of Lapita pottery has been found in Fiji," said a statement from the University of the South Pacific, based in the archipelago.

Preliminary analysis shows that the eerie-looking face consists of a prominent raised nose, the left eye and what might be eyelashes, said Roselyn Kumar of the University of the South Pacific's Institute of Applied Sciences.

`It could go some way towards settling the long archaeological debate on the settling of Polynesia.'

There are also designs that suggest what might be head-hair, and crescent shapes on the base which were possibly intended to represent beard-hair.

The find therefore gives researchers an opportunity to gaze on the countenance of Fiji's first inhabitants, from whom modern Polynesians are believed to be descended.

But equally significant is that it is the first time that a facial design has been found on Lapita pottery outside a group of islands north of Papua New Guinea -- which are some 3,400km away from Fiji.

"As such it represents an extraordinary discovery," the university said.

The find made it possible to conclude that the early people of Fiji had at some stage come from the far-off island chain, named the Bismarck Archipelago, Geography Professor Patrick Nunn said.

It could go some way towards settling the long archaeological debate on the settling of Polynesia -- a vast triangle of islands from Hawaii in the north, to New Zealand in the south-east and Rapanui or Easter Island in the east.

The new face fragment was found near Natadola Beach, west of the Fijian capital Suva, in the tourist area of Viti Levu island.

Around 60 pottery pieces were found during excavations and radiocarbon dating established the shard with the face design was 3,260 years old -- whereas Fiji's next oldest-known Lapita settlement goes back only 3,000 years.

It was possible that Natadola was the first place of human settlement in Fiji, Nunn said.

He added that the analysis suggested that the designs were made using the unique Lapita technique of pot decoration known as dentate stamping, whereby lines are made from a series of tiny regularly-spaced dots applied to the pottery before it was fired.

"It was a very time-consuming and precise technique used to create intricate designs, perhaps associated with ancestor worship," he said.

More than 100 Lapita sites have been located over an area from New Guinea to western Polynesia, a distance of over 4,000km.

US archaeologist Edward Gifford gave the race their name after mishearing the indigenous name of a site in New Caledonia where he was working in 1952.

He had found shards of distinctive pottery there and recognized a link to similar finds to the north in New Guinea.
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