Of what significance is the pottery that gave its name to the culture?
Lapita pottery [pdf] is interesting because it is poorly made and not very useful. It was always made from local materials, with a distinctive high proportion of filler, usually coral sand, to clay. The coral sand could not be fired to a temperature where the pot would be hard enough to hold water, and the pots crumbled easily – which is perhaps why Lapita pottery is mostly sherds, not whole pots. Later, modern, potters have found that adding sea-water to this mix and choosing firing materials more selectively enabled the pots to be taken to a higher temperature which resulted in more useful pots. But the Lapita potters did not – unlike every other ancient potter – learn from trial and error, and instead, their decorated ware was quickly replaced by plain ware or wooden containers.
Hence, the people who brought or made this decorated ware were not experienced potters, so where did they get the idea to make pottery like this? Was it only the decorative style using stamps that was passed on?
Since far more plain
ware than decorated ware has been found, and
since it continued to be used after Lapita decorated ware ceased to
be made, it must have been made from a stronger mix of clay and
filler. So why did they not decorate these pots? Was the decorated
ware purely non-functional, perhaps an exchange or ceremonial item?
Does the fact that it died out mean it had no significance other than
decorative? The lack of repeated patterns and the non-reuse of stamps
does imply that no meaning was attached to particular designs.
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