ANCIENT FILE: Coral tools like this one helped David Burley and his colleagues estimate the date that Tonga was settled by ancient people from Papua New Guinea. Note the back side of the file (bottom), worn down by use.IMAGE BY CHICHI LAMAbout 3,000 years ago, inhabitants of New Guinea set their sights east and headed out to sea, sparking an expansion of humanity across thousands of miles to islands scattered across the South Pacific. Archaeologists have been able to track the migration of these pioneers, a group called the Lapita, by their distinctive pottery. But now, researchers are using advanced chemistry involving the coral tools used by these early explorers to more accurately reconstruct their maritime peregrinations.
The first stop the Lapita made in Polynesia was the settlement of Nukuleka in the Kingdom of Tonga, but “like anything, there’s a lot of debate about the origins of the Polynesians,” says David Burley, a professor of archaeology at Simon Fraser University in Canada. In particular, the date that the Lapita made landfall on different islands has proved impossible to nail down.
Potsherds found around the midden pile and burial ground at Nukuleka are of an early variant not found elsewhere in Tonga. The pottery contains temper—an additive such as sand—that did not originate on the island. “Wherever it came from, we think it’s a far distance,” says Burley. These observations point to Nukuleka as the founding settlement on Tonga, he adds, “but we ...
