The reconstructed environment and absolute dating of SE-SZ-8 Lapita site on Nendo, Santa Cruz, Solomon Islands

The SE-SZ-8 site of Nanggu is a large Lapita site in the Reef/Santa Cruz group of the Southeast Solomon Islands. This paper provides a detailed discussion of its geomorphological and environmental context on Santa Cruz and the within site position of four marine shell dates from it, followed by a Bayesian analysis of the radiocarbon dating of the site. The analysis includes, two new marine shell dates on additional species to overcome possible problems due to species selected for dating. Together these data indicate that despite recent critique of the sequence of the three excavated decorated Lapita sites (SE-SZ-8, SE-RF-2, SE-RF-6) proposed by Green (1991 a) for the Reef/Santa Cruz Group there is little basis to suggest the Nanggu site is not both the oldest dated Lapita site in the sequence, but also earlier than any other so far identified within the period of early Lapita colonization of Remote Oceania.