Work

Phylogenetic analyses of Lapita decoration do not support branching evolution or regional population structure during colonization of Remote Oceania

Year: 2010

Type: article

Abstract: Intricately decorated Lapita pottery (3100-2700 BP) was made and deposited by the prehistoric colonizers of Pacific islands, east of the main Solomon's chain. For decades, analyses of this pottery have focused on the ancestor-descendant relationships of populations and the relative degree of interaction across the region to explain similarities in Lapita decoration. Cladistic analyses, increasingly used to examine the evolutionary relationships of material culture assemblages, have not been conducted on Lapita artefacts. Here, we present the first cladistic analysis of Lapita pottery and note the difficulties in using cladistics to investigate datasets where a high degree of horizontal transmission and non-branching evolution may explain observed variation. We additionally present NeighborNet and phenetic distance network analyses to generate hypotheses that may account for Lapita decorative similarity.

Source: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0091

Authors: Ethan E. Cochrane, Carl P. Lipo

Institutions: Arts and Humanities Research Council, International Archaeological Research Institute, California State University, Long Beach

Language: English

Topic: Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies

Subfield: Geography, Planning and Development

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W2131044121

FWCI: 21.71

Cites: 77

Cited by: 64

Related to: 10