Lapita pottery and the initial settlement of Remote Oceania

Record summary

Lapita archaeological research examined the spread of dentate-stamped ceramics, villages, shell ornaments, obsidian and changing subsistence practices across the western Pacific. Work in the 1990s and 2000s refined models of movement from the Bismarcks into Remote Oceania and debated whether expansion involved rapid voyaging, staged colonization or interaction with earlier populations. The lead matters because it connects material culture, radiocarbon chronology, seafaring and language dispersal. The exact tempo, demographic scale and relationship between pottery styles and migrating peoples remain disputed.