Headless bodies to provide Pacific migration clues

Details of 70 headless bodies, seven skulls and five rare pots unearthed at the oldest cemetery in the Pacific will be revealed by the ANU archaeologist who codirected the dig team, in a public lecture tonight.

Professor Matthew Spriggs was part of a research team that excavated a 3200 to 3000-year-old Lapita cemetery at Teouma in Vanuatu. The Lapita people are believed to be the very first colonists of Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. They are thought to have migrated from South East Asia, but this is in dispute.

The finds at the Vanuatu cemetery are likely to yield some significant clues to the Lapita people’s origins. “Currently the bones of the 70 headless bodies we’ve uncovered are in labs in New Zealand where colleagues there are attempting to extract DNA. Once we have DNA, we’ll be able to get a much clearer idea of where the Lapita people originally came from,” Professor Spriggs said.

The team, including codirectors Dr Stuart Bedford of ANU and Ralph Regenvanu, from the Vanuatu National Cultural Council, excavated Teouma in three stages. The third stage of the project was funded by National Geographic and the Australian Research Council.

In the final stage undertaken in July last year, they added another 35 headless bodies and a fifth complete Lapita pot. This pot is currently being restored by the Head of Conservation at the Australian Museum, Colin Macgregor. The pots include the earliest burial jars to be found so far in the Pacific Islands, but similar burial jars were used around 4000 years ago in Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Adding to the evidence that the Lapita people settled the Vanuatu archipelago from the direction of Southeast Asia, Professor Spriggs and his team also discovered sharp tools of obsidian, a rare type of stone from the island of New Britain in PNG.

One of the most striking aspects of the Lapita cemetery is the variety of the burial practices, according to Professor Spriggs. “The further we dug, the greater the variety of burials became. The only common theme was that all of the bodies were headless, and that the heads had been removed after burial. Otherwise, there was little similarity.

“Among the most interesting finds were two bodies each buried with three skulls, none of which belonged to the bodies. It indicated to us that these people weren’t from the islands, but they were special in some way – voyaging ancestors perhaps.”

The number three was likely important to the Lapita culture, Professor Spriggs said. “Aside from the bodies buried with the three skulls, we also found a pile of bones buried with three human jaws. The fifth pot also has an unusual design with three ‘lugs’ – like little handles – on either side. What this grouping of three represents we don’t know yet, but it must’ve been the magic number for the Lapita people.”

More information: Amanda Morgan, ANU Media Office, 02 6125 5575 / 0416 249 245