Three-thousand-year-old jar-burials at the Teouma cemetery (Vanuatu): A Southeast Asian - Lapita connection?

In this paper, we describe the Teouma Lapita jar-burials within the wider context of the funerary protocol reflected at the cemetery, and we investigate further the relationship between the Lapita and the contemporary or earlier Island Southeast Asia Jar Burial tradition (Bellwood 1997 (2007), see also Solheim II 1961, Solheim II 2002) or traditions (Lloyd-Smith 2009, Lloyd-Smith and Cole 2010). We define jar-burial minimally as the placement of human remains inside pottery containers as part of funerary practices. Where an entire corpse has been placed in a pottery container, resulting in a complete skeleton in articulation, the association is quite clear, but there are cases where only a few bones are found inside a pot. In these cases, when the remains are incomplete or broken in situ, it may be that their presence is incidental rather than deliberate. We include such cases here as possible jar-burials, but are aware of problems with their status as associated with funerary behavior