The To'aga ceramics

Abstract

Ceramics have played a critical role in understanding prehistory in Samoa and West Polynesia. They are usually well preserved, archaeologically visible, and carry a large amount of information on variation in style (temporal and spatial), technology, function, and raw material. While ceramics have proven useful for making culture-historical inferences about Samoa and the region, they also present several interesting problems to be resolved in their own right. First, what is the nature of ceramic variability (temporal and spatial) in Samoa? Second, what kinds of change (stylistic, technological/material, and functional) occurred over the duration of ceramic production in Samoa? And third, why did ceramics disappear in Samoa after an approximate thousand-year sequence of production? In this chapter we describe the ceramic assemblage from the To'aga excavations and begin to address these questions through analyses of ceramic clay composition, technology, function, and style.