January 8, 2008

Vanuatu skull reveals past on Polynesians

by Brian Turner

A bizarre, 3,000-year-old burial site is providing rare insights into the lives of an ancient island culture.

The site in the South Pacific country of Vanuatu includes a skull in a jar and 60 headless skeletons—one of them with three skulls arrayed across its rib cage.

In 2003 construction workers at Teouma, an archaeological site on Éfaté Island, unearthed 60 skeletons. Their skulls had been taken away by mourners some time after burial.

But a new isotope analysis of teeth left behind has given researchers new clues to the lifestyle and origins of the mysterious Lapita people, ancestors of today’s Polynesians and Melanesians—roughly the peoples of the central and southeastern Pacific north and east of Australia.

Isotopes are elements that have different masses, and analyzing their signatures can reveal the makeup of chemical compounds.

“We’ve finally got a good sample of the population,” said excavation leader Stuart Bedford of the National University of Australia at Canberra.

He said the tests proved that four individuals were not born in the immediate area.

This supports evidence for a rapid Lapita expansion eastward from the island of New Guinea around 3,000 years ago.

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Vanuatu skull reveals past on Polynesians

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