Persistence and transformation in Ancestral Oceanic Society: the archaeology of the first 1500 years in the Vanuatu archipelago

Utilising large-area excavation the project will undertake the first systematic multi-site, multi-period archaeological investigation of Lapita and Post-Lapita settlements and cemeteries (3000-1500 years ago) for any archipelago in the western Pacific. The aim is to examine the internal settlement layout and social structures of the initial colonising groups, and their transformations and/or persistence during the first 1500 years of settlement of Vanuatu. In this way archaeology will contribute to further elucidation of what has been labelled Ancestral Oceanic Society, from which much of the diversity in present-day Pacific Island cultures derives.