Christian Reepmeyer

Genomic insights into the peopling of the Southwest Pacific

The appearance of people associated with the Lapita culture in the South Pacific around 3,000 years ago marked the beginning of the last major human dispersal to unpopulated lands. However, the relationship of these pioneers to the long-established Papuan people of the New Guinea region is unclear. Here we present genome-wide ancient DNA data from three individuals from Vanuatu (about 3,100–2,700 years before present) and one from Tonga (about 2,700–2,300 years before present), and analyse them with data from 778 present-day East Asians and Oceanians. Today, indigenous people of the South Pacific harbour a mixture of ancestry from Papuans and a population of East Asian origin that no longer exists in unmixed form, but is a match to the ancient individuals. Most analyses have interpreted the minimum of twenty-five per cent Papuan ancestry in the region today as evidence that the first humans to reach Remote Oceania, including Polynesia, were derived from population mixtures near New Guinea, before their further expansion into Remote Oceania. However, our finding that the ancient individuals had little to no Papuan ancestry implies that later human population movements spread Papuan ancestry through the South Pacific after the first peopling of the islands.

Stone tools from the ancient Tongan state reveal prehistoric interaction centers in the Central Pacific

Significance The Tongan state was the only maritime polity in Oceania to encompass an entire archipelago and, through long-distance voyaging, to extend its influence to other island groups through political and economic exchanges. Stone tools recovered from the central places of the Tongan state were geochemically analyzed to provide the first archaeological assessment of maritime interaction in the Central Pacific, with a high proportion of tools (66%) identified as long-distance imports from Fiji, Samoa, and the Society Islands. Exotic lithics were an important source of political capital used by Tongan elites, and an important consequence of centralization was the development of interaction centers through which people, products, and information about political organizations reached many parts of the prehistoric Pacific. Tonga was unique in the prehistoric Pacific for developing a maritime state that integrated the archipelago under a centralized authority and for undertaking long-distance economic and political exchanges in the second millennium A.D. To establish the extent of Tonga’s maritime polity, we geochemically analyzed stone tools excavated from the central places of the ruling paramounts, particularly lithic artifacts associated with stone-faced chiefly tombs. The lithic networks of the Tongan state focused on Samoa and Fiji, with one adze sourced to the Society Islands 2,500 km from Tongatapu. To test the hypothesis that nonlocal lithics were especially valued by Tongan elites and were an important source of political capital, we analyzed prestate lithics from Tongatapu and stone artifacts from Samoa. In the Tongan state, 66% of worked stone tools were long-distance imports, indicating that interarchipelago connections intensified with the development of the Tongan polity after A.D. 1200. In contrast, stone tools found in Samoa were from local sources, including tools associated with a monumental structure contemporary with the Tongan state. Network analysis of lithics entering the Tongan state and of the distribution of Samoan adzes in the Pacific identified a centralized polity and the products of specialized lithic workshops, respectively. These results indicate that a significant consequence of social complexity was the establishment of new types of specialized sites in distant geographic areas. Specialized sites were loci of long-distance interaction and formed important centers for the transmission of information, people, and materials in prehistoric Oceania.

Sembiran and Pacung on the north coast of Bali: a strategic crossroads for early trans-Asiatic exchange

Abstract Studies of trade routes across Southeast Asia in prehistory have hitherto focused largely on archaeological evidence from Mainland Southeast Asia, particularly the Thai Peninsula and Vietnam. The role of Indonesia and Island Southeast Asia in these networks has been poorly understood, owing to the paucity of evidence from this region. Recent research has begun to fill this void. New excavations at Sembiran and Pacung on the northern coast of Bali have produced new, direct AMS dates from burials, and analytical data from cultural materials including pottery, glass, bronze, gold andsemi-precious stone, as well as evidence of local bronze-casting. This suggests strong links with the Indian subcontinent and Mainland Southeast Asia from the late first millennium BC, some 200 years earlier than previously thought.

Provenance and Technology of Lithic Artifacts from the Teouma Lapita Site, Vanuatu

Fifty-six obsidian artifacts and 141 non-obsidian artifacts were excavated in three field seasons at Teouma, Efate Island, central Vanuatu. Using LA-ICP-MS the majority of the obsidian artifacts were provenienced to the obsidian subsource of Kutau/Bao on West New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago, Papua New Guinea. This study is the first geochemical analysis of a significant assemblage of West New Britain obsidian south of the Solomon Islands. Moreover, this finding represents only the second sizable assemblage of West New Britain obsidian in Remote Oceania beyond the Reefs–Santa Cruz Lapita sites and further establishes Vanuatu as a key area in understanding the initial Lapita settlement of Remote Oceania. Six obsidian artifacts were sourced to the Banks Islands, northern Vanuatu, supporting the hypothesis that sources there were known and utilized from the initial colonization of the Vanuatu Archipelago. A single artifact from the West New Britain subsource of Mopir was found. This is the only Lapita-period Mopir obsidian artifact found so far outside the Bismarck Archipelago. The geochemical analysis was accompanied by a quantitative attribute analysis investigating the reduction technology of the flaked assemblage.

Obsidian Source Use in Tongan Prehistory: New Results and Implications

ABSTRACT The article presents results of an obsidian sourcing study on artifacts from Tonga and Fiji. New LA-ICPMS data on obsidian source locations on Tafahi in northern Tonga are discussed in relation to inter-island mobility during two important phases in the Central Pacific: the late-Lapita phase in Fiji-West Polynesia at 2700–2600 cal. BP and during the time of the rise of Polynesian chiefdoms at ∼1000–400 cal. BP. The sourcing results indicate that two sources of obsidian were exploited during Tongan prehistory. It is suggested that different modes of interaction were responsible for obsidian movement during the early and late phases of Tongan prehistory.

Pigment geochemistry as chronological marker: The case of lead pigment in rock art in the Urrmarning ‘Red Lily Lagoon’ rock art precinct, western Arnhem Land

Abstract This paper presents selected results of an experimental study using portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) for the non-destructive analysis of rock art pigments in northern Australia. During two weeks of fieldwork in the dry season of 2011 at the Red Lily Lagoon area in western Arnhem Land, 32 rock art motifs in four rockshelter sites were analysed. A total of 640 analyses were undertaken, including of white, red, black, yellow and blue pigments from both early and contact art motifs. This paper discusses the geochemical analysis of one particular motif painted with black pigment. It was determined that processed metal lead was the most likely pigment base. Contrary to previous stylistic analysis that suggested the motif had an old age, our analysis suggests that the motif was painted within the last 200–300 years.

Language continuity despite population replacement in Remote Oceania.

Recent genomic analyses show that the earliest peoples reaching Remote Oceania—associated with Austronesian-speaking Lapita culture—were almost completely East Asian, without detectable Papuan ancestry. However, Papuan-related genetic ancestry is found across present-day Pacific populations, indicating that peoples from Near Oceania have played a significant, but largely unknown, ancestral role. Here, new genome-wide data from 19 ancient South Pacific individuals provide direct evidence of a so-far undescribed Papuan expansion into Remote Oceania starting ~2,500 yr bp, far earlier than previously estimated and supporting a model from historical linguistics. New genome-wide data from 27 contemporary ni-Vanuatu demonstrate a subsequent and almost complete replacement of Lapita-Austronesian by Near Oceanian ancestry. Despite this massive demographic change, incoming Papuan languages did not replace Austronesian languages. Population replacement with language continuity is extremely rare—if not unprecedented—in human history. Our analyses show that rather than one large-scale event, the process was incremental and complex, with repeated migrations and sex-biased admixture with peoples from the Bismarck Archipelago.Genome-wide data from ancient and modern individuals in Remote Oceania indicate population replacement but language continuity over the past 2,500 years. Papuan migrations led to almost complete genetic replacement of in situ East Asian-derived populations, but not replacement of Austronesian languages.

The rapid emergence of the archaic Tongan state: the royal tomb of Paepaeotelea

Abstract New research indicates that the royal tomb Paepaeotelea was built c. AD 1300–1400, more than 200 years earlier than its traditional association with Uluakimata I, who ruled when the Tongan polity was at its greatest extent. The large and stylistically complex tomb marks a dramatic increase in the scale of mortuary structures. It represents a substantial mobilisation of labour by this early archaic state, while the geochemical signatures of stone tools associated with the tomb indicate long-distance voyaging. The evidence suggests that the early Tongan state was a powerful and geographically expansive entity, able to rapidly organise and command the resources of the scattered archipelago.

Conflict and State Development in Ancient Tonga: The Lapaha Earth Fort

ABSTRACT Warfare is often considered as a key factor in the formation complex societies, but in the Pacific archaeological evidence for inter-group conflict during political centralization is rare. Most earthwork forts in Tonga are assumed to have been built in the nineteenth century when the traditional system of rulership collapsed, yet few forts on Tongatapu have been excavated or 14C dated. A fort in the chiefly center of the ancient Tongan state was mapped with theodolite and LiDAR, and excavated. Radiocarbon and traditional history indicate the fort known as the Lapaha Kolotau was made in the fourteenth century AD at the same time that chiefly architecture was being built at an unprecedented scale at the new elite center. The construction of an earthwork fort provides the first evidence that political centralization in Tonga was likely to have been contested.

Contributions of LA-ICP-MS to Obsidian Sourcing in the Pacific

This chapter examines results from the application of LA-ICP-MS to the identification of sources of obsidian artifacts from the Western Pacific. More than 700 analyses of obsidian samples collected at the Australian National University over the past years provide an accurate geochemical dataset for major obsidian source regions in the Western Pacific unambiguously discriminating sources and sub-sources. This dataset is employed to analyze social interaction in the 3000-year timeframe of human occupation of the western Pacific as reflected by variations in lithic raw material sources. Albeit not non-destructive, the minimal sample size necessary, and the precision and accuracy of analysis for a wide range of major, minor, trace and rare earth elements enables LA-ICP-MS to not only geochemically fingerprint archaeological artifacts to known source locations, but also to provide information about general geological contexts from which these objects derived. These additional data have been successfully employed in the past to identify locations of high probability for undetected obsidian outcrops.