@article{ef18060ace4d4f218354934173c467bd,
title = "Petrographic and chemical analyses of sherds from the Kurin Lapita site (Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia), ca. 3000–2700 BP",
abstract = "As part of a wider study of the transfer of Lapita pottery into and within New Caledonia, we studied a sample of Lapita sherds from the site of Kurin on Mar{\'e}, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia. The Loyalty Islands lie between the Vanuatu island chain and the rest of New Caledonia, so it has been suggested that they may have been the first part of New Caledonia to have been colonized during the initial Lapita expansion. We examined 28 sherds by optical petrography, and compared these to archived thin sections of Lapita pottery from the islands of Erromango and Efate in Vanuatu. We also made chemical analyses by neutron activation analysis (INAA) of 11 of these 28 sherds, and later reanalyzed these 11, and 12 more, by inductively-coupled plasma (ICP) analysis as part of the analysis of 329 sherds from throughout New Caledonia. We find no evidence in this sample for the transfer of Lapita pottery from Vanuatu to the Loyalty Islands; the only demonstrably exotic pots are 5 sherds from the main island (Grande Terre) of New Caledonia. Our results offer some support to the view that the initial Lapita expansion was not a continuous wave of advance, but a discontinuous “leapfrogging” process that initially bypassed some island chains. We also note evidence for the existence of at least two mutually exclusive networks of exchange of Lapita pottery in New Caledonia after the initial colonization of the region.",
keywords = "ICP-MS, INAA, Lapita pottery, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia, Petrography",
author = "Scarlett Chiu and David Killick and Christophe Sand and Su, {Yu yin} and Ferguson, {Jeffrey R.} and Chao, {Jiunn Hsing}",
note = "Funding Information: We want to express our gratitude to Dr. Pierre Maurizot, who kindly provided us detailed geological maps of New Caledonia, and to Dr. Jon Spencer for providing all of the petrographic reports of the late Prof. William Dickinson. We also thank Miss Charmaine Wong of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, USA, for loaning us Dr. Dickinson{\textquoteright}s thin sections of ceramics from Vanuatu. We also want to thank Prof. Eric Ferr{\'e} for discussing whether Yasur volcanic glasses could have reached Mar{\'e} in the past, and Miss Jia-Zhun Chang for drawing up the geological map of Kurin for this publication. This project has been funded by the National Science Council (Taiwan, ROC) ( NSC-6-2628-H-001-043 , NSC-101-2410-H-001-038 ), the Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan, ROC) (104-2628-H-001-006-MY2), and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (Taiwan, ROC) ( RG006-D-14 ). This project was also supported in part by a National Science Foundation grant (USA) ( BCS-1912776 ) to the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor. Scarlett Chiu and Yu-yin Su thank the School of Anthropology, University of Arizona , for hospitality while undertaking the petrographic analyses. The excavation of the Kurin site in 1997 was allowed by the Loyalty Island Province and the local land owners. Funding Information: We want to express our gratitude to Dr. Pierre Maurizot, who kindly provided us detailed geological maps of New Caledonia, and to Dr. Jon Spencer for providing all of the petrographic reports of the late Prof. William Dickinson. We also thank Miss Charmaine Wong of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, USA, for loaning us Dr. Dickinson's thin sections of ceramics from Vanuatu. We also want to thank Prof. Eric Ferr? for discussing whether Yasur volcanic glasses could have reached Mar? in the past, and Miss Jia-Zhun Chang for drawing up the geological map of Kurin for this publication. This project has been funded by the National Science Council (Taiwan, ROC) (NSC-6-2628-H-001-043, NSC-101-2410-H-001-038), the Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan, ROC) (104-2628-H-001-006-MY2), and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (Taiwan, ROC) (RG006-D-14). This project was also supported in part by a National Science Foundation grant (USA) (BCS-1912776) to the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor. Scarlett Chiu and Yu-yin Su thank the School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, for hospitality while undertaking the petrographic analyses. The excavation of the Kurin site in 1997 was allowed by the Loyalty Island Province and the local land owners.",
year = "2020",
month = oct,
doi = "10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102542",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "33",
journal = "Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports",
issn = "2352-409X",
publisher = "Elsevier BV",
}