Chapter 1: Rock-art and history in the western Pacific: a review
2.5 Indigenous or intrusionist? The La pita debate
2.5.2 The indigenists
The core of the indigenist argument is that certain features of the Lapita cultural complex already existed in one form or another in Island Melanesia before the emergence of Lapita sites around 3500 BP. The implication is that Lapita is not entirely an introduced
4Siight revisions to this chronology have been proposed more recently by Spriggs (1999: 22), who now places the break-up ofPMP at around 4000 BP, and ofPOC at around 3200 BP.
phenomenon, but rather represents a continuation of internal developments (e.g. White et al.
1988; Smith 1995; White 1999). For example, it is suggested that obsidian exchange, already in operation during the late Pleistocene, underwent a period of expansion after 3500 BP. Certain plant domesticates utilised during Lapita times also appear to have emerged from pre-existing Island Melanesian domesticates, such as Colocasia taro, Australimusa bananas, sugarcane, coconuts and breadfruit (Green 1994: 36; Yen 1990, 1991). Tridacna shell adzes, a component of the Lapita cultural complex, were already present in Island Melanesia by 7000 BP (e.g. in Manus) (Frederickson et al. 1993: 149). Earth ovens have been dated to 6200 BP in New Ireland, and shell beads and Trochus shell arm-rings occur in pre-Lapita sites on Guadalcanal (Green 1994: 31). On the Willaumez Peninsula (West New Britain), Lapita sites are located in areas where previous occupation also occurred (Specht et al. 1991), suggesting some sort of continuity from the previous obsidian stemmed-tool phase in that region.
Ambrose (1997) presents the major tenets of the indigenist perspective, arguing that the weak fabric of the early Lapita pottery found in the Bismarck Archipelago is consistent with experimental pottery-making by groups perhaps only partially familiar with the craft (although see Summerhayes 2000a who suggests that multiple fabrics are associated with dentate-stamped ceramics). He states that the long history of sailing in the Bismarcks, which extends back into the Pleistocene (as evidenced by the region-wide transmission of obsidian), is testimony to the sailing and navigational skills of the Bismarck populations.
On this basis, he argues that local sldlled seafarers may themselves have propagated the development of pottery-making through contact with groups to the west, and suggests that the gradual improvement of pottery fabric over time, particularly with the emergence of more utilitarian wares (such as Podtanean in New Caledonia and later Mangaasi-like wares), could reflect the learning curve experienced by budding potters. Thus, according to Ambrose, the notion that skilled potters arrived from Southeast Asia, as advocated by the intrusionists, runs counter to the evidence. Instead, as Ambrose (1997: 535) argues, ' ...
sailing vessels were the signal innovation that led to other developments, including the incorporation of pottery into local Bismarck communities'.
Ambrose suggests that given the local development of sailing abilities over a very long period, by the time Lapita pottery was manufactured people probably favoured sheltered waters and areas of easy sea-access as settlement locations - the precise environmental conditions associated with Lapita sites. He further suggests that increases in such coastal settlement sites are indicative of a move from a pattern of dispersed settlement to one focussed on 'canoe-centred locations'. In response to the intrusionist claim for a rapid 26
exploitation of settlement locations by incoming Lapita agriculturalists (see above), Ambrose suggests that it is equally feasible that 'coastal land clearance, gardening concentration and increased soil instability' were precipitated by indigenous moves to coastal 'canoe-centred locations' (1997: 534).
Upon finding Talasea obsidian in Sabah on the island of Borneo, intrusionists have argued that Lapita colonists of the Bismarck region were maintaining links to their Southeast Asia homeland (Bellwood and Koon 1989). But, as Ambrose observed, the Sabah site is 500 to 1000 years later than the Bismarck Lapita sites, which would imply a scenario in which Bismarck Islanders fostered continued links with their western forebears. Ambrose (1997:
535) concludes by stating that,
no wave of migrants went out of Island South-east Asia to the Bismarck Archipelago with strong continuing links to a western La pita 'homeland'. The Bismarck Archipelago was a relatively self sufficient region where selective acquisition of items by its mobile islanders was the standard pattern.
Terrell et al. (1997; and more recently Terrell et al. 2001) are equally critical of the intrusionist stance, not so much in terms of their notion that people entered from Southeast Asia around 3500 BP - indeed at least one of the authors suggests that a more balanced approach to the events of this time is required- but in terms of their research program for the Pacific. Terrell et al.' s (1997) primary criticism concerns the intrusionists' emphasis on origins and 'branching patterns', which, they say, has dominated the agenda of Pacific prehistory for decades. They trace this back to 'the myth of the primitive isolate' which, they suggest, has captured the imagination of Pacific archaeologists and led them to assume that the convergent distributions of languages, genes and customs can be mapped, and thus the prehistory of the Pacific understood. Terrell et al. (1997) wish to tell a story of Pacific prehistory that questions the need to explain the emergence of Austronesian languages in the Pacific through migration. Instead, they are keen to explore the role of interaction in cultural, linguistic and genetic diversification across the Pacific. More importantly, they are wary of the ability claimed by archaeologists to differentiate between similarity as explained by shared ancestry or as a result of social interaction (Terrell et al. 1997: 175):
[w]e should adopt as a working hypothesis the universality of contact and influence as a fundamental feature of human existence. We should think of social life and human history as a time and space continuum of human association, a weblike field of social relations, a social field ...
Commenting on Irwin's (1992) concept of a 'voyaging corridor', Terrell et al. (1997) propose that the development of Austronesian languages within the region was the result of contact and language convergence. However, this proposal is rejected outright by nearly all linguists (e.g. Ross 1988, 1997; Pawley and Ross 1995) who argue that the similarities between Austronesian languages can only be explained through shared ancestry.