The largest island of southwest Melanesia, with an Austronesian-speaking population and an archaeological record going back to La pita settlement, about 1300 bc. Settlement before this date remains hypothetical but probable. The island is well known for its prehistoric and ethnographic systems of terraced wet taro cultivation, and also has the richest assemblage of rockcarvings in Oceania. New
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied