Islands in the Bismarck Archipelago and date to around 3350e3500
years BP (Kirch, 2001; Summerhayes et al., 2010b). They are identified
by the unique red-slipped, dentate stamped pottery along
with a range of other artifacts, the appearance of new domesticated
plants and animals, and the earliest village settlements in the region,
with stilt-structures built out over the reefs. It is generally
accepted that the appearance of Lapita sites in Oceania is associated
with the Neolithic population expansions from Southeast Asia into
the islands and the subsequent spread of the Austronesian languages
through Island Southeast Asia and into the Pacific. While
there is no obvious single source location that can be identified as
the likely origin of the Lapita culture, based on archaeological data,
linguistic evidence suggests that Taiwan is the origin of the
Austronesian languages and therefore the likely origin of the Lapita
culture is postulated to be somewhere between Taiwan and the
Bismarck Archipelago (Blust, 1996). This has led to much debate
about the origins of the Lapita culture and even more debate about
the origins of the people who are associated with the spread of
Lapita.