M Spriggs
Biographic Data
| ID | 25944 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Spriggs |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Spriggs |
| SIGNATURE | SPRIGGS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Australian National University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7293-6778 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 113 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1005 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 113 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 20 |
The emergence of pottery-using communities in Lautem District, Timor Leste
The initial use of pottery in Island Southeast Asia has been a much-debated topic prompting researchers to highlight various characteristics to explain its uneven temporal and spatial distribution throughout the region. Many scholars identify the Neolithic associations of pottery and highlight diagnostic qualities such as red-slipping, while others point out that pottery first occurs at many locations during the Metal Age and is characterised by …
Frederick James Allen, 11 September 1938–19 November 2025
Archaeologist F. James Allen, known universally as Jim, died at Moruya Hospital after a short illness on 19 November 2025, aged 87.1 He remained an active scholar to the end with a significant co-a...
Manuscript XLV
J.H.F. (Frits) Sollewijn Gelpke (1922–2013) was a Dutch civil servant in Nederlands-Nieuw-Guinea from 1945 to 1962, ending his administrative career as appointed chairman of the short-lived self-governing Nieuw-Guinea Raad (Council), following open elections in January 1961. After his retirement, he brought multilingual scholarship and deep familiarity with places, Indigenous people, and their toponyms to the history of West New Guinea, the Raja …
Modelling of Epidemics Suggests Over 96 per cent Population Loss on Aneityum, Vanuatu, Following European Contact
The impacts of European contact on Pacific Islands populations are widely recognized, yet the mechanisms and scale of depopulation are not fully understood. Historical records of disease outbreaks and mortality have, with good cause, been treated with some scepticism, while estimates of population size prior to European contact are scarce and rely on potentially biased archaeological evidence. For the island of Aneityum, Vanuatu, we have used bas…
Manuscript XLV
J.H.F. (Frits) Sollewijn Gelpke (1922–2013) was a Dutch civil servant in Nederlands-Nieuw-Guinea from 1945 to 1962, ending his administrative career as appointed chairman of the short-lived self-governing Nieuw-Guinea Raad (Council), following open elections in January 1961. After his retirement, he brought multilingual scholarship and deep familiarity with places, Indigenous people, and their toponyms to the history of West New Guinea, the Raja …
Jack Golson
Emeritus Professor Jack Golson – known simply and universally as Jack – was a true pioneer in the study of Pacific archaeology, whose legacy through teaching, mentoring, and research remains immens
Ancient mitogenomes of Lapita pigs confirm continuity of the Pacific Clade in Remote Oceania
Kuwae, Epi and Tongoa Islands
This paper presents a detailed overview of archaeological research undertaken on Epi and Tongoa, in central Vanuatu. These islands were previously connected to one another and respectively formed the western and eastern portions of Kuwae, one of the largest islands in the Vanuatu archipelago, until the catastrophic Tombuk volcanic eruption separated them in the mid‐fifteenth century AD. Oral traditions and insights drawn from previous ethnographi…
Putting the involvement of Indigenous Australians back into Indigenous Australian archaeology
Adna, ethnography, and facial approximations of the Teouma Lapita burials (c. 3000BP)
Although ancient DNA (aDNA) cannot predict the facial appearance of skeletal human remains, knowing which extant populations are most closely related to the deceased has proven to be invaluable in rectifying two early facial approximations (popularly known as facial reconstruction) undertaken 15 years ago. These concerned two of the crania excavated from the Lapita burial site at Teouma on the island of Efate, and are associated with the first hu…
The intentional variability of Lapita pottery fabrics
Results from petrographic and chemical analysis of decorated Lapita pottery from Vao, Vanuatu show that the majority was manufactured locally but that several variations of local raw materials were used. This indicates that temper material was collected from a range of settings, most of them accessible locally on Malakula. Two samples have temper corresponding with raw materials expected from the island of Efate in central Vanuatu where other sig…
Grassroots badly burnt
Here we salute the exceptional contributions of five ni-Vanuatu, who passed away over the last year, to the archaeological understanding of Vanuatu and the wider Pacific over a 50-year period. They were all at one time members of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre’s unique network of Filwokas (fieldworkers) who are involved in protecting, promoting and preserving the country’s cultural heritage. Their careers spanned the pre and post-Independence (1980)…
In Memoriam Emeritus Professor John Dominic Lynch (8 July 1946 – 25 May 2021)
The descriptive and historical linguist, John Lynch, died in Port Vila, Vanuatu, aged 74 in May 2021. His linguistic lineage was a particularly distinguished one. He was proud to say that as an undergraduate at Sydney University from 1964-8 he had been the final student of Pacific and Australian language scholar Arthur Capell (1902-1986), gaining from him a particular appreciation for the languages of southern Vanuatu, and writing an obituary upo…
The Development (and Imagined Reinvention) of Australian Archaeology in the Twentieth Century
Most histories of Australian archaeology written in the past three decades imagine that the discipline came of age in (approximately) the year 1960. We are led to believe that systematic archaeological research, nuanced interpretations, and advocacy for the conservation of Aboriginal cultural heritage all date to the post-1960 era. Yet archaeological research in Australia has a lengthier and more complex genealogy. Here we use a series of case st…
Intégration polynésienne au Vanuatu (Mélanésie)
Certaines sociétés humaines modernes de l’archipel du Vanuatu (Mélanésie) présentent des traits culturels polynésiens et parlent des langues polynésiennes. Ces caractéristiques diffèrent de celles des autres sociétés présentes dans l’archipel qui sont apparentés aux influences mélanésiennes régionales. On suppose que des migrations polynésiennes auraient particulièrement contribué à la formation de ces sociétés « polynésiennes » du Vanuatu lors d…
Debates and emerging issues in 2021
‘Death and his body-servant’
Remaining healthy was a major consideration for both indigenous and European peoples in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) during early contact. While local communities were often devastated by introduced disease, new missionaries sought practical ways to overcome the impact of tropical ailments that they considered to undermine the effectiveness of their activities. From the early 1850s onwards, Presbyterian missionaries in the southern New Hebrides…
Encounters with stone
A fundamental goal of Christian missionaries in the Pacific was to depose indigenous deities and substitute them with Christian beliefs. Hence, they were constantly battling indigenous idolatry and idols. The islands of the southern New Hebrides were the first locations in Melanesia where missionisation was attempted with strategies and philosophy heavily influenced by the practices of the London Missionary Society in Polynesia. On the island of …
Casey did very good work for Wheeler and you are lucky to have him’
Dermot Casey (1897–1977) is known in Australian archaeology, if he is remembered at all, for being someone who assisted the premier prehistorian of Australia, John Mulvaney, in his excavations of the late 1950s and 1960s and whose collaboration Mulvaney greatly valued. But when Casey began his collaboration with Mulvaney he was already 58 years old and had had a continuing and significant archaeological career, involving work in England and South…
Everything You’ve Been Told About the History of Australian Archaeology is Wrong
This paper challenges the oft-repeated conventional story of the beginning of ‘modern’ Australian archaeology, seen as the era of the professional archaeologist that succeeded an undisciplined phase of indiscriminate collecting of skulls and stone artefacts by ‘amateurs’ who, on the whole, believed that Indigenous Australians had arrived on the continent so recently that any excavation of archaeological sites would be pointless. Cambridge-trained…
Exploitation and utilization of tropical rainforests indicated in dental calculus of ancient Oceanic Lapita culture colonists
A 1980 Attempt at Reviving Ancient Irrigation Practices in the Pacific
The author was project leader on an attempt to revive ancient irrigation practices on Aneityum Island (Vanuatu, S. Pacific) in 1980, based on his archaeological and ethnoarchaeological research on the island. Here he tries to reconstruct the context and his rationale for instigating such a project. While successful in a technical sense—abandoned irrigation systems were indeed brought back into use as planned—the project was set up in the absence …
Assessment of the technological variability in decorated Lapita pottery from Teouma, Vanuatu, by petrography and LA-ICP-MS
Freshwater fishing among Lapita people
Manufacture and Use of Lapita Conus Multi-Segment Broad Rings
Material culture associated with the Lapita Cultural Complex has been commented on for more than 100 years. Discussion and focus, however, have overwhelmingly concentrated on the distinctive dentate-stamped pottery. In this paper we highlight a very particular shell artifact form, examples of which were found in burial contexts at the Teouma Lapita site, Efate, Vanuatu. Here termed Conus Multi-Segment Broad Rings, each ring consists of three to f…
The dating of the Island Southeast Asian Neolithic
As with conventional definitions of the Neolithic anywhere, the concept in this region relies on there being an agricultural economy, the traces of which are largely indirect. These traces are artefacts interpreted as being linked to agriculture, rather than direct finds of agricultural crops, which are rare in Island Southeast Asia. This definition by artefacts is inevitably polythetic, particularly because many of the sites which have been inve…
Political Economy in Prehistory
Development of strong leaders and social stratification in prehistory is suitable for a political economy approach to the longue durée. Our goal is to encourage archaeologists to formulate prehistoric research that draws on historical materialism, the Marxist reasoning for understanding political economy. Three prehistoric cases from the Pacific (Lapita, Vanuatu, and Hawai'i) help us evaluate the steps required to do this. Most importantly, we id…
Political Economy in the Archaeology of Emergent Complexity
Excavation at Lene Hara Cave establishes occupation in East Timor at least 30,000-35,000 years ago
Reinvestigations of the cave of Lene Hara in East Timor have yielded new dating evidence showing occupation from before 30,000 BP. These will further fuel the debates on early colonization of the region
Pleistocene human occupation of the Solomon Islands, Melanesia
Pleistocene dates from a rockshelter on Buka Island at the northern end of the Solomons Chain demonstrate human settlement by 28,000 b.p., some 25,000 years earlier than previously reported for this island group
Ethnographic parallels and the denial of history
An ever more Pacific-looking past of Britain and other parts of Europe is being constructed by archaeologists. Melanesian anthropology is being continually mined for supposed ethnographic parallels to elucidate the European Neolithic with its 'Big Man' societies and 'dividual' individuals. Although this Melanesian turn in European archaeology is fuelled by a detailed poring over of the minutiae of Pacific and other Third and Fourth World ethnogra…
Direct evidence for human use of plants 28,000 years ago
The excavation of Kilu Cave and the discovery of a Pleistocene prehistory for the Solomon Islands have already been reported in ANTIQUITY by Wickler & Spriggs (62: 703-6). Residue analysis of stone artefacts from the site now provides the earliest direct evidence for the prehistoric use of root vegetables, in the form of starch grains and crystalline raphides identifiable to genus. The direct microscopic identification of starch grains opens new …
Lapita subsistence strategies and food consumption patterns in the community of Teouma (Efate, Vanuatu)
Radiocarbon dating of burials from the Teouma Lapita cemetery, Efate, Vanuatu
Investigating foetal and perinatal mortality in prehistoric skeletal samples
Northern Vanuatu as a Pacific Crossroads
Northern Vanuatu is a significant crossroads region of the Southwest Pacific. This paper outlines current archaeological research being undertaken in the area, focusing on defining initial human settlement there some 3000 years ago and subsequent cultural transformations which led to the establishment of the ethnographic present. The study to date has contributed to a more detailed picture of inter- and intraarchipelago interaction, settlement pa…
Continuity in Tropical Cave Use
The Aru Islands and East Timor fall within the biogeographic region known as Wallacea and have lain within the tropics for the known history of human occupation. Recent research has identified archaeological sequences that parallel the older radiocarbon chronologies from Australia. Terminal Pleistocene huntergatherer assemblages recovered from at least six caves register the introduction of a Neolithic technocomplex after ca. 4000 B.P. in the for…
Lapita Migrants in the Pacific's Oldest Cemetery
Teouma, an archaeological site on Efate Island, Vanuatu, features the earliest cemetery yet discovered of the colonizers of Remote Oceania, from the late second millennium B.C. In order to investigate potential migration of seventeen human individuals, we measured isotopes of strontium (87Sr/86Sr), oxygen (δ18O), and carbon (δ13C), as well as barium (Ba) and strontium (Sr) concentrations, in tooth enamel from skeletons excavated in the first two …
The Teouma Lapita site and the early human settlement of the Pacific Islands
The Teouma site, on Efate in central Vanuatu, was uncovered during quarrying in 2003 and has proved to be one of the most significant discoveries to date for the colonisation of Remote Oceania. Not only did it bring to light a fine assemblage of the famously diagnostic Lapita ceramics, but a cemetery of more than 25 individuals along with the pots. The skeletons offer an opportunity to investigate the origins of the 'Lapita people' who first appe…
The Lapita cultural complex
(1984). The Lapita cultural complex: Origins, distribution, contemporaries and successors. The Journal of Pacific History: Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 202-223
Lapita sites of the Bismarck Archipelago
The Lapita questionThe prehistory of the western Pacific has, for the last 30 years, been dominated by the problem of the origins of the present Polynesian and Melanesian cultures (Terrell 1988). In 1961 Golson drew attention to the distribution of highly decorated Lapita pottery, now known to date from between 3500 BP and 2000 BP, which crossed the present-day division between Melanesia and Polynesia. Furthermore, sites with Lapita pottery repre…
A short note on banana (Musa) phytoliths in Lapita, immediately post-Lapita and modern period archaeological deposits from Vanuatu
The Age of the Bellows Dune Site O18, O'ahu, Hawai'i, and the Antiquity of Hawai'ian Colonization
The Bellows Dune site was excavated more than three decades ago (Pearson et al. 1971), and has been generally considered one of the earliest settlement sites in the Hawaiian cultural sequence. More than ten years later, in the now-classic summary of Hawaiian archaeology, Kirch (1985) considered it to be one of only two sites firmly identified as belonging to the Colonization phase in Hawai'i. This status has remained largely intact. Working indep…
Birds on the rim
This paper describes a decorated carinated vessel excavated at the Teouma Lapita site, on the south coast of Efate, central Vanuatu. The vessel contained human bones and, following reconstruction, was found to have had four modelled birds on its rim. The incidence and dating of other burial pot assemblages is examined to place the find in a wider context within the Island Pacific
Cave Archaeology and Sampling Issues in the Tropics
New evidence from Lene Hara Cave, East Timor, demonstrates that it was first occupied by modern humans by 42,454±450 cal BP at approximately the same time as nearby Jerimalai shelter. Together these sites constitute the earliest evidence for modern human colonisation of Island Southeast Asia east of the Sunda Shelf. Here we report on the dating and stratigraphy from the 2000 and 2002 test excavations at Lene Hara, as well as new dates obtained by…
Lapita Burial Practices
Excavation of the 3,000-year-old Lapita cemetery of Teouma (Efate, Central Vanuatu) has allowed the first detailed investigation of mortuary practices of these initial colonizers of the Vanuatu archipelago. Focusing on one component of funerary practice
Possible obsidian sources for artifacts from Timor
Testing the human factor
The chronology of occupation at Teouma, Vanuatu
Evidence for Social and Cultural Change in Central Vanuatu Between 3000 and 2000 BP
In the southern Melanesian islands of Vanuatu, as in New Caledonia, Fiji, and West Polynesia, the archaeological record indicates significant shifts in aspects such as patterns of settlement and mobility, landscape use, and pottery production, some 500 years (2500 BP) after initial colonization. The relatively uniform Lapita Cultural Complex, the first manifestation of human activity on these islands, was transformed in each archipelago into vari…
A preliminary pollen sequence from Aneityum Island, southern Vanuatu
Archaeological research on Aneityum, southern Vanuatu, 1978-1979
Taro Cropping Systems in the Southeast Asian‐Pacific Region
The Role of Standing Water and Water‐logged Soils in Raised‐field, Drained‐field and Island‐bed Agriculture
The Lapita cultural complex
(1984). The Lapita cultural complex: Origins, distribution, contemporaries and successors. The Journal of Pacific History: Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 202-223
A school in every district’
(1985). ‘A school in every district’: The cultural geography of conversion on Aneityum, Southern Vanuatu. The Journal of Pacific History: Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 23-41
Marxist Perspectives in Archaeology
Part I. Introduction: 1. Another way of telling: Marxist perspectives in archaeology Matthew Spriggs Part II. Situating the Economic: 2. The economy and kinship: a critical examination of some of the ideas of Marx and Levi-Strauss C. A. Gregory 3. The motion of craft specialization and its presentation in the archaeological record of early states in the Turanian Basin Maurizio Tosi 4. Towards the quantification of productive forces in archaeology…
Social/Cultural Anthropology
Fragments of What? Thoughts on the ‘Pieces of Paradise’ Exhibition at the Australian Museum
After reading the exhibition catalogue (text by Jim Specht) and visiting the exhibition itself I felt defeated: I knew it must be about something but I never did discover precisely what while I was in there. There were hints, rich veins of meaning to be mined if one had the time, but the impression was of missed connections. Individual parts of the exhibition made sense, but the whole thing didn't hang together
A previously unreported bronze kettledrum from the Kai Islands, Eastern Indonesia
Holocene mammal faunas from archaeological sites in island Melanesia
Faunal remains from archaeological sites on Buka, Nissan, and Tikopia Islands. Southwest Pacific include a number of taxa not previously recorded from those islands. These are Rattus praetor for both Nissan and Tikopia, and Thylogale brunii. Unicomys poneeleti. and Uromys salebrosus for Buka. R. praetor and T. brunii were probably introduced into the region by humans during the mid Holocene. Following the initial expansion in the ranges of these …
Pleistocene human occupation of the Solomon Islands, Melanesia
Pleistocene dates from a rockshelter on Buka Island at the northern end of the Solomons Chain demonstrate human settlement by 28,000 b.p., some 25,000 years earlier than previously reported for this island group
Archaeological research on Erromango
Lapita sites of the Bismarck Archipelago
The Lapita questionThe prehistory of the western Pacific has, for the last 30 years, been dominated by the problem of the origins of the present Polynesian and Melanesian cultures (Terrell 1988). In 1961 Golson drew attention to the distribution of highly decorated Lapita pottery, now known to date from between 3500 BP and 2000 BP, which crossed the present-day division between Melanesia and Polynesia. Furthermore, sites with Lapita pottery repre…
The dating of the Island Southeast Asian Neolithic
As with conventional definitions of the Neolithic anywhere, the concept in this region relies on there being an agricultural economy, the traces of which are largely indirect. These traces are artefacts interpreted as being linked to agriculture, rather than direct finds of agricultural crops, which are rare in Island Southeast Asia. This definition by artefacts is inevitably polythetic, particularly because many of the sites which have been inve…
Early setlement of Island Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific
It was a quarter of a century ago that ANTIQUITY first announced the 'Pleistocene colonization of Australia', when Mulvaney (1964) reported secure dates before 12,000 b.p. from Kenniff Cave, Queensland. The last three years alone have seen dates from New Guinea of around 40,000 b.p., early dates from the offshore islands of the Bismarck Archipelago, and dates from Australia itself that show a rapid colonization of both the arid central desert and…
[Diversity, Continuity and Change in the History of the Bismarck Archipelago] Lapita Origins, Distribution, Contemporaries and Successors Revisited
[Studies in the Ethnogenesis of Indo-Pacific Populations] Considering Meacham's Considerations on Southeast Asia
Direct evidence for human use of plants 28,000 years ago
The excavation of Kilu Cave and the discovery of a Pleistocene prehistory for the Solomon Islands have already been reported in ANTIQUITY by Wickler & Spriggs (62: 703-6). Residue analysis of stone artefacts from the site now provides the earliest direct evidence for the prehistoric use of root vegetables, in the form of starch grains and crystalline raphides identifiable to genus. The direct microscopic identification of starch grains opens new …
The Bougainville Crisis
Late colonization of East Polynesia
In a recent A NTIQUITY article (65: 767–95) Atholl Anderson presented a detailed analysis of radiocarbon dates to show that the settlement of New Zealand occurred later than previously thought. In this paper Anderson teams up with another proponent of ‘chronometric hygiene’, Matthew Spriggs (see A NTIQUITY 63: 587–613), to examine the dates for the colonization of the rest of East Polynesia. Once again the generally accepted dates for initial set…
Anahulu
Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Vol. 1: Historical Ethnography. By Patrick V. Kirch and Marshall Sahlins. (Chicago and Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Vol. 2: The Archaeology of History. By Patrick V. Kirch, Marshall Sahlins, Marshall Weisler, and Matthew Spriggs. (Chicago Get access Linda S. Parker Linda S. Parker San Diego State University, San Diego, California Search for other work…
Who taught Marx, Engels and Morgan about Australian aborigines
The Australian National University—Vanuatu Cultural Centre Archaeology Project, 1994–97
Despite an intensive period of research in Vanuatu during the 1960s and 1970s, a number of basic questions regarding the archaeology of the islands remained largely unanswered. The Australian National University—Vanuatu Cultural Centre Archaeological Project began in 1994, and was established in an attempt to address some of these questions. Research has been carried out on the islands of Malakula, Efate and Erromango, and has concentrated on est…
Archaeological dates and linguistic subgroups in the settlement of the Island Southeast Asian-Pacific region
Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies (94 works) · Archaeology (81 works) · Geography (71 works) · History (66 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (55 works) · History (37 works) · Sociology (29 works) · Geology (26 works) · Biology (25 works) · Anthropology (20 works)