Table of Contents

List of Plates. List of Figures and Tables. Preface. 1. This Island Melanesian World. Introduction: An Archaeological View. Island Melanesian Language. The Island Melanesian People. A Lapita and Post-Lapita "Community of Culture". The Island Melanesian World. Conclusions. 2. Early Settlement: 40,000 to 20,000 Years Ago. Early Settlement in Island Melanesia: Who and When. Voyaging. Settlement and Subsistence Prior to 20,000 years ago. Early Settlement of Vanuatu and New Caledonia? 3. Settling In: 20,000 to 6000 Year Ago. Seal Level Changes. The Archaeological Sites. Cultural Changes. Economic Change: 20,000 to 6000 BP. Early Island Melanesians. 4. The World Turned Upside Down: 6000 to 3000 Years Ago. The Lapita Cultural Complex. Sites of the Immediately Pre-Lapita Period. The Argument for Continuity. The Agricultural Question. Lapita Discontinuities. The Origins of the Lapita Culture. A Lapita Language? A Lapita People?: The Evidence from Genetics. How Southeast Asian is Lapita? Lapita Social Organisation. The Structure of the Lapita Migration. Lapita Origins Revisited. 5. Success and Failure of Lapita: 3000 to 2000 Years Ago. The Bismarcks. The Solomons. Vanuatu. New Caledonia. Contemporary Non-Lapita Sites. The Micronesian Connection. The Lapita Legacy. 6. The Making of Traditional Island Melanesian Cultures: 2000 to 750 Years Ago. The End of Lapita. Investigating Alternatives. The Bismarcks. The Solomons. Vanuatu. New Caledonia. The Legacy of Polynesian Contact. 8. Ships from the West: Island Melanesians Encounter the Europeans. The Conquest of the Conquistadors, 1528-1606 AD. Fleeting Glimpses, 1616-1722 AD. The Major European 'Discoveries', 1767-1774. Final First Meetings, 1781-1850 AD. Legacies of Contact. 9. Custom and Continuity in Island Melanesian Cultures. The Impact on Population. Impact on Settlement Pattern. Subsistence Change. Environmental Degradation. Mobility. Challenges to Authority Structures. The Position of Women. Directions and Constraints from the Past. 10. An Island Melanesian Future? Index.

About the Author

Matthew Spriggs is of Cornish descent. He is Professor of Archaeology at the Australian National University in Canberra, from where he has conducted research on Island South-East Asia and the Pacific since 1987. He was formerly Senior Fellow in Oceanic Archaeology in the Division of Archaeology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. Between 1981 and 1987 he was a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii. He has published extensively on the archaeology and the anthropology of Melanesia and the Pacific, as well as maintaining a research interest in the history of Cornish. He is married to Ruth Vatoa Saovan, an Island Melanesian, and drinks kava every Friday evening.