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The Vanuatu National Library has taken delivery of a book ‘Debating Lapita: distribution, chronology, society and subsistence‘.
The book was received by George Wilbur of the Public Library on behalf of Chief Librarian, Margaret Terry, who was away on an official visit to Banks and Torres.
Stuart Bedford and Matthew Spriggs who are Honorary Curators of Archaeology at the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta wrote some of the chapters in the book.
They also edited it.
Two other authors of the book, Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta Director, Richard Shing, and VKS archaeologist, Edson Willie also attended the handover ceremony last Thursday.
‘Debating Lapita‘ resulted from one of the largest non-government international conferences held in Vanuatu, the July 2015 Eighth International Lapita Conference or ‘Lapita 8’.
Almost 100 overseas visitors and many local participants attended.
The Conference was supported by many local businesses, The Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, the Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat and the High Commissions and Embassies of Australia, France and New Zealand.
Lapita 8 was meant to have been held in the Malvatumauri Chiefs’ Nakamal but Cyclone Pam had damaged the building a few months before and so it was shifted to University of the South Pacific.
The Prime Minister of the time, Sato Kilman, opened the Conference at a reception and launch of the Lapita pottery exhibition at the National Museum.
His opening speech is also included in the book.
The Lapita Culture represents the pottery and culture of the first people to arrive in Vanuatu around 3000 years ago.
The book covers the archaeology of their village sites in PNG, Solomons, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Wallis and Futuna.
It deals with important issues such as how old the sites are, how the societies were organised and how they gained their food by a mixture of hunting, gathering and agriculture.
Research on Lapita in Vanuatu by the VKS, ANU and other collaborators such as Harvard University in the United States continues to reveal more about the ancestors of Ni-Vanuatu today. Important new results will be published in the next few months about where the Lapita people originally came from.
Photo supplied Caption: Professor Matthew Spriggs, Edson Willie, George Wilbur, Richard Shing and Stuart Bedford at the handover of the book to the National Library.
