Lapita pottery

Type Object Region Pacific Islands Time c. -1600–500

Lapita pottery is incised and stamped ware produced by the Lapita culture from about 1600 BCE to 500 CE, distributed from around New Guinea to Remote…

Timeline

c. -1600–-800Bismarck Archipelago–Vanuatu · MelanesiaLapita pottery is characterized by dentate-stamped and incised decoration and spread eastward with inter-island migration to Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, becoming a key archaeological marker of Remote Oceania colonization.
c. 1051–1060Fiji–Tonga–Samoa · PolynesiaBy the eleventh century, the western Polynesian islands still retained plainware and incised pottery influenced by Lapita; though decoration was simplified, the early pottery technological chain continued, bound up with contemporaneous social hierarchy and feasting rituals.
c. 500–1950Sites across Remote Oceania · PacificLapita pottery production gradually gave way to undecorated ware or ceased firing in most island groups, until twentieth-century scholars such as G. V. Golson systematically named and dated it, making it a cornerstone artifact type for Pacific prehistory research.

Sources

On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands Before European Contact — Patrick Vinton Kirch (2017)
Lapita and Its Transformations in Near Oceania — Matthew Spriggs (1997)