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Article Excerpt
Abstract
This paper describes a decorated carinated vessel excavated at the Teouma Lapita site, on the south coast of Efate, central Vanuatu. The vessel contained human bones and, following reconstruction, was found to have had four modelled birds on its rim. The incidence and dating of other burial pot assemblages is examined to place the find in a wider context within the Island Pacific.
Keywords: Lapita, Teouma, modelled clay birds, pot burials.
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The Teouma Lapita site on the south coast of Elate, Central Vanuatu was uncovered through construction work in 2003. It is one of the earliest Lapita sites yet identified in Vanuatu, dating to c. 3200-3000 BP, and excavations in 2004 revealed it to be the site of the earliest cemetery yet found in the Pacific (Bedford et al. 2004, 2006). The well-preserved nature of the site and the identification of distinct activity areas provide a rare opportunity to define in detail Lapita ceramic function and use. This is particularly the case in the cemetery area where an assortment of decorated Lapita vessels was associated with burial ritual.
Amongst the sherds recovered in the cemetery area of the site in 2004 was a modelled clay bird's head (Figure 1) very similar to one found in the SZ-8 Lapita site on Nendo Island in the Reef-Santa Cruz Group of the Southeast Solomons (Green 1979b:41). Dentate decoration can be seen running from behind the neck to underneath the eye and again above the eye. The eyes are represented by impressed circles and further dentate-stamping appeared to define a wing. Initial interpretations, based entirely on conjecture, were that it may have been a handle of some kind.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
Investigations at Teouma in 2005 concentrated on the cemetery area alone, where some 100 square metres were excavated. The western edge of the 10 by 10 metre area was adjacent to the area where the bird's head had been uncovered. Clarification of the vessel form and function associated with the modelled head was soon revealed, although some radical reinterpretation of the handle hypothesis was required. Vessel association was initially hinted at by a number of rim sherds from a carinated vessel decorated with a dentate-stamped face motif. On the inside of the rim of three sherds were signs that something had once been attached. This was confirmed when an almost whole bird was recovered, still attached to a rim sherd of the same vessel (Figure 2). The bird, it was revealed, was not remotely handle-like but rather positioned on the inside of the rim, fulfilling a symbolic and decorative role, with its head orientated towards the centre of the vessel (Figure 3). The three rim sherds with signs of once having had a bird attached, along with the more intact example, indicate a minimum of four birds on the rim.
[FIGURES 2-5 OMITTED]
The decorated sherds of this vessel were spread primarily over four square metres through different spits of the lowest cultural layer, although the largest concentrations were found in only two adjacent square metres. The basal part of the pot, largely still in situ, contained a collection of assorted human bone. The upper part of the pot had been broken and scattered in antiquity as a result of disturbance from later burials in the same area of the site.
The recovery and reconstruction of this carinated pot with modelled birds on the rim adds a further very distinctive vessel form to the Lapita repertoire. However, the accumulated evidence of 50 years of research, along with the recovery of only a single example to date from the extensive excavations at Teouma, suggest that it will remain an extremely rare find. Its association with human remains both highlights and confirms the ceremonial nature of these decorated vessels generally and this form in particular. At the same time it indicates variation in burial practice and ritual at the site. This pot, along with another containing a skull (Bedford et al. 2006) from Teouma, provides the earliest evidence for pot or jar burials in the Pacific, a practice that has close parallels to burial ritual in Neolithic Island Southeast Asia including Taiwan (Bellwood 1997:220-1,240-1,272; Bintarti 2000; Chazine 2005; Harrisson 1974; Thiel 1986-7).
Modelling
Amongst the tens of thousands of decorated sherds that have been recovered through archaeological excavation, survey and avocational collection across the Lapita distribution there are very rare reports of modelled clay anthropomorphic figures, faces and heads. Those that are decorated with dentate-stamping include a possible modelled human figure with decoration on the buttocks from site RL-6 in the Reef Islands of the southeast Solomons (Green 1979a: 16), a clay head from Kamgot, on Babase Island, New Ireland (Summerhayes 1998:100) and three faces from Boduna Island, West New Britain (Torrence and White 2001). A further, somewhat ill-defined modelled object with dentate-stamping, has been recovered from the Lau Islands in Fiji (O'Day et al. 2004). Another clay modelled head, without dentate decoration was found at NKM001 in New Caledonia (Frimigacci 1981; Sand 1996:122) and a moulded face, of somewhat uncertain provenance, has been found at Naigani in Fiji (Best 1981:11). A further modelled clay figure, of the avian variety, is the already-mentioned dentate-stamped bird head from SZ-8 in the Reef-Santa Cruz Group (Green 1979b:41).
Across the Pacific, archaeologically recovered clay modelled faces or figures of any form that post-date the Lapita period, are very rare. Some of the few examples identified to date are those from the Mangaasi site, also on Efate. They included a number of animal-like handles and an animal head (Garanger 1971:Figs 2 and 9) dating to around 2000 BE Undated excavated assemblages containing pottery vessels with modelled human faces and heads and bird's heads are known from Selesmilage sites 3 and 4 in the Makbon area of the Bird's Head of western New Guinea, and turtle heads were found...
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