What is southeast Asian about Lapita?

Abstract The linkage between the spread of the Lapita cultural complex from Melanesia into western Polynesia, and the spread of Austronesian languages was first sug gested in the 1970s (Shutler and Marek 1975; Bellwood 1978). That this spread was linked to a dispersal of Mongoloid peoples out of Asia, through southeast Asia into Polynesia was explicit in these formulations. Indeed, an ultimately Asian origin for Polynesians was postulated in the European voyages of explora tion to the Pacific in the eighteenth century (Cook 1784, Vol. III, p. 125). The foundations of Polynesian languages and cultures go back to the exten sion of Lapita into a previously uninhabited region. That the immediate Lapita ‘homeland’ is further west in the Bismarck Archipelago is also well accepted. It is also generally agreed that Austronesian languages, whether in Polynesia or the Bismarcks, are derived from even further to the west, from Taiwan. The process that took these languages fr m Taiwan to island Melanesia and Polynesia should leave archaeological traces. The obvious trace, no later than about 3000 BP-the initial settlement of Polynesia-is Lapita in island Melanesia and Polynesia.