Echoes from a distance: research into the Lapita occupation of the Rove Peninsula, southwest Viti Levu, Fiji

Abstract

There is much remaining to be discovered about the first people in the western tropical Pacific Islands, particularly where and when they settled particular island groups, how they lived and interacted. The period of interest, constrained by the manufacture of distinctively decorated Lapita ceramics, is approximately 3050-2500 BP in Fiji. The Fiji Islands are a mixed group of islands, dominated by the two largest - Viti Levu and Vanua Levu - which are surrounded by subgroups of volcanic islands in the west (Yasawa), centre (Lomaiviti), and south (Kadavu and Yasayasamoala). The scattered Lau group of eastern Fiji comprises mostly smaller limestone islands (Figure 1). Until the Bourewa site on the Rove Peninsula was first discovered in December 2003, the earliest human settlements in the Fiji Islands appeared to be on Naigani and Moturiki Islands in the central part of the group, both perhaps established around 2900-2850 BP (Best 2002; Nunn et al. 2007). Other Lapita sites in the group, particularly that at Natunuku, have been shown to have been dated unsatisfactorily but probably postdated those in the central group (Anderson and Clark 1999). The possible corollary - that the central group was colonised first via the reef-free Bligh Water - appears to have been challenged by the late date for the Lapita occupation of Yadua Island (Nunn et al. 2005a). The pattern of dates and other chronological indicators suggests that the Lapita colonisation of the Fiji group was broadly from west to east (Clark and Anderson 2001), although there is a possibility that the Tongan archipelago to the east of Fiji was colonised before the Lau group of eastern Fiji (Burley and Clark 2003).