Ancient site · Settlement
Lapita type site (Site 13, Foué)
The Lapita culture is named after Site 13 on the Foué peninsula of Grande Terre, New Caledonia, excavated in 1952 by Edward W. Gifford and Richard Shutler Jr.
The name came from mishearing a local Haveke word meaning 'the place where one digs'. The site's finely decorated pottery, stamped with toothed tools in geometric patterns, was dated to about 800 BCE. More than 200 Lapita sites are now known from the Bismarck Archipelago to Samoa, and this pottery style became the marker for the first settlers of the remote Pacific.
- Dates
- dated to c. 800 BCE
- Still standing
- No, or only traces
- Location
- 21.12° S, 164.80° E
How we know
No writing existed; the settlement and its pottery were dated by radiocarbon after the 1952 excavation.
Nearby sites
- Teouma c. 1100–900 BCE (about 3,000 years old)
- Nukuleka founded c. 888 BCE; occupied for about 250 years
- Wairau Bar settled c. 1288–1300 CE (later than this atlas's ancient period)
- Kuk Swamp drainage from c. 7000 BCE (about 9,000 years ago)
- Budj Bim eel traps from at least c. 4600 BCE (6,600 years ago)
- Nan Madol megalithic building from c. 1180–1200 CE; capital until c. 1628 (later than this atlas's ancient period)
Related
- Lapita culture archaeological culture
- The world in 1000 BCE: Out of the Collapse chapter