Bourewa: Unearthing our heritage
2-Apr-2009
WE cannot escape history and neither can we escape our desire to understand it, however Fijians know little about their true past, about their ancestors and heritage.
Fiji is a country of mixed cultures, mixed ethnicity and mixed political stances, however, the history and heritage of the land that we live in, its first inhabitants and
how it differed from today’s landscape is all a bit of a blind spot in Fijian culture.
For many Fijians the concept of their history may well stem from stories and myths concocted by missionaries that arrived in Fiji over 200 years ago. The most innovative and geographically improbable is that of the ‘Kaunitoni myth’. According to the mythology, a canoe sailed to Fiji from Lake Tanganyika, Africa,(a distance of 14,812km, not taking into account the considerable obstruction of Indonesia and northern Australia!) carrying the ancestor gods Lutunasobasoba and Degei, who are variously, considered the founders of the Fijian race. The myth tells that the canoe landed in the western reef of Viti Levu, just north of the village of Viseisei, between Nadi and Lautoka, where First Landing Resort now resides. The Kaunitoni then sailed eastwards along the coast of Viti Levu under the leadership of Degei, landing at Rakiraki and going up to the Nakauvadra Mountains. However this myth allegedly sprung from an 1890 newspaper competition about the origins of the Fijian race, there is in fact no record
of it before that point.
These stories and countless others like them were used by missionaries to encourage natives towards the Christian Faith. For example in this story the idea of Africa as the starting point would have been a metaphor for the Garden of Eden. It is these colonial tales and missionary amalgamations that have partially erased the true folklore, of the Viti people. A six-year archaeological study by University of the South Pacific (USP) is nearing completion, and it is their hope to finally cast some definitive answers to the true origins of the Fijian race.
The search for the ancestors of the Pacific people started almost accidentally in 1953 when two American archaeologists discovered fine dentate stamped pottery in New Caledonia, when asking the natives if they new anything of the patterns they simply said xaapeta, (meaning ‘dig a hole’ in the native tongue) which was heard by the Americans as ‘Lapita’. The archaeologists realised that the pottery represented the first appearance of people on the islands. The Lapita people are therefore identified by their intricate pottery and are thought to have been the first people to stage a mass migration through the South Pacific. There is evidence of Lapita settlements, from Papua New Guinea in the West as far as Tonga and Samoa in the East.
The first Lapita pottery discovered in Fiji was in 1963, but no extensive research had been done, until in 2003 Professor Patrick Nunn of USP stumbled upon pieces of intricate Lapita pottery sticking out from the sand.
“We had some idea when we discovered the Bourewa site that it was a bit different,” he said.
The site is located in Nadroga, south west Viti Levu. It is around 45km from Nadi and around a kilometre from Natadola Beach. This year saw the completion of digging at the site following six years of work and the excavation of over 360 square meters of ground in 90 separate pits.
Bourewa is the biggest Lapita site excavated in Fiji if not the Pacific. Professor Nunn believes we can now verify theories about “What they ate, we can say what they brought with them, we can say how they lived in stilt houses over the reef.” The main groups of artefacts recovered where potteries both decorated and undecorated, Stone lithics and shell jewellery. Between 4000 and 5000 pieces of decorated potteries were found out of around 35,000 pieces of pottery recovered. This in its self is fascinating, for the high percentage of decorated shards found. At a separate Lapita site close to Bourewa there were only 97 pieces of decorated out of the 14,000 pieces recovered. The large numbers and intricate decorations of the pottery suggest that the site could have been a manufacturing centre for the decorated pottery, which may have been used for trade and bartering.
There is no way to radio carbon date pottery, however it is possible to carbon date charcoal fragments found in and around the pottery, tests are still ongoing but it is believed that they will validate the evidence that already points to Lapita settlers around 1200BC.
The Lapita people where also great craftsmen, producing what is thought of as shell jewellery or decorative ornaments, it is these intricacies that lead experts to believe the site maybe 200 years older than any other Lapita found in Fiji. From the evidence gathered it is obvious they ate a large seafood diet shown by the thick layer of seafood shells, deposited at around 40-70cm down in the pit, as after they ate they would just discard them as waste into the sea. Some of the clam shells found would be considered by today’s standards, massive, suggesting that the seafood inside and around the reef at the time of the settlement was far more abundant than in modern times. It may have been this abundance that gave them the time to create the intricate pottery however this can only be theorised.
Some of the most exciting evidence found shows a definitive link to those Lapita people who were present in the rest of the South Pacific. The hard shiny rock obsidian was found in several places at Bourewa. This is a rock that is not naturally present in Fiji. Therefore it must have been carried by boat with the nearest natural source of the rock is Papua New Guinea. The hard rock was used as a carving tool, along with other grinding stones and rock flakes, which would have been used to create the shell jewellery.
Although we can’t say for sure where the Lapita people disappeared to, it is possible they moved further inland to river deltas and moved into agriculture. However, this caused them to stop producing the detailed pottery that is an indicator of that time period and therefore no longer indicates Lapita. Many native Fijians could be descendants of the Lapita according to Professor Nunn, “There is no question about it, and many Fijians could be direct descendents”.
The site which is owned by Shangri La’s has been set aside, with plans to build a museum that would preserve the finds and educate the public. Professor Nunn is indebted to USP, Shangri La’s and Earthwatch institute for the funding of the project, which without their backing would not have been possible. Thanks also goes to his research assistants and the Fiji museum for their continued support.
WILL WILKIN |
