Hopes Lapita scholars will explore Fiji further after find

Transcript

A chance find of Lapita pottery in Fiji's north last month is expected to spark further interest in the ancient people who settled islands in the Pacific.

A field officer with the Fiji Museum, Sepeti Matararaba mutter-rah-rumba, says the decorated shard he and fellow archaeologist Patrick Nunn discovered last month in Bua province will encourage more exploration of the island of Vanua Levu.

He spoke to Sally Round as he was piecing together the fragments of the 3-thousand year old pottery back at the museum in Suva.

SEPETI MATARARABA: Because Bua province hasn't been researched properly by anybody, that is the archaeological research work, we decided to go to Bua and see what Bua can offer in terms of the early migration in the early settlement of Bua province.

SALLY ROUND: Did you have any idea of where to start your work?

SM: No, No. The archaeological work in Fiji, it's just by chance that we come across a site which contains a Lapita dentate pottery shard. We were working around visiting hill forts, visiting coastal flats and on the 19th of Jan we found this piece of dentate pottery on the coastal flat. That was the only piece that we found. We didn't have enough time so we conducted only two test pits on a nearby coastal flat which contained a lot of shell medium but I think we were digging on the wrong site altogether because we found this piece of dentate pottery about 50 or 100 metres away from there.

SR: So what does this find suggest to you about the settlement of that area?

SM: Well to me, and this is very important, because the other two sites on Vanua Levu, I found these two sites way back in 2010 and Bua was left out because we haven't done any real good archaeological research work on Bua and when we found this I was really happy that we managed to find a Lapita site on this part of the island . There are still areas that have to be covered. If time permits and funding comes through then we can cover a bit more of the Vanua Levu island as a whole.

SR: If you just came across this by chance, there could be much more Lapita pottery out there. There could be many more artefacts and evidence of wider settlement by the Lapita people?

SM: Yes, what we have been able to confirm is that these Lapita people are really good sailors. They sailed around a lot. They are used to eating shellfish and fish and that's why they usually go for broad fringing reefs so they can do their fishing  and this is what happened on that certain coastal flat on Vanua Levu.

SR: And what do you think your find will mean for global research into the Lapita people?

SM: Well that puts another light on to the early migration of these Lapita people. On our research that has been done in previous years we have visited the outlying islands. Viti Levu ... we have almost covered the whole island on the coast and in Vanua Levu, we still have a lot to do on Vanua Levu. I think that will really put foreign scholars on alert. They can come to Fiji and research and work and find more archaeological sites that contain Lapita pottery.