"Ex Oriente Lux": Recent Data from Lapita Culture Sites Bearing on the Autronesian Diaspora within Island Southeast Asia

Abstract

I use the Latin phrase Ex Oriente Lux or "Light from the East" not in its conventional sense of a source for civilization - conventionally from the Middle East spreading into "Barbarian" Europe during the Neolithic or Bronze Age (cf. Childe 1929; 1934) - but in terms of a source of novel insights into Austronesian colonization revealed by recent archaeological research on the Lapita culture in Vanuatu and elsewhere in the South Pacific (Kirch 1997 remains a useful overview of Lapita). These insights concern the chronology and speed of spread of Austronesian-speaking (henceforth AN) groups in the region, aspects of political economy and ideology including details of burial practices, sociolinguistic processes, and also aspects of biology investigated through craniometric and genetic analyses of Ancient DNA (aDNA).