"By all means let us complete the exercise ": the 50 year search for Lapita on Aneityum, southern Vanuatu comes to a conclusion.

Summary

Archaeological research on the island of Aneityum, the southern-most inhabited island of the Vanuatu archipelago (the former New Hebrides) began in 1964 under the direction of Richard and Mary Shutler. It was soon after this that William Dickinson first began analysing pottery sherds from various sites across the archipelago. Since those early beginnings he has studied 100s of samples including 112 samples from the single site of Teouma. Early pottery sites remained elusive on the southern islands for decades and particularly on Aneityum. More recent assessments of its geomorphology, a key aspect regularly emphasised by Dickinson, along with some serendipitious test-pitting led to the discovery of a Lapita site on the island. Dickinson’s petrographic expertise was once again called on some 50 years after research first started on the island.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• An Archaeologist’s Geologist: A Symposium in Honor of William R. Dickinson   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage