Darkness and Harmony: This Is What It Tastes Like

Mathieu Leclerc1,2*, Evelyne Bilae3, and Frank Lenki4

Pottery was once ubiquitous in the Western Pacific, with its manufacture embedded in the social contexts of Pacific Islander groups at the time of their settlement in the region around 3,000 years ago. Today, it survives in only a handful of communities scattered across Melanesia. In most regions, pottery was abandoned in the centuries following initial human settlement, and many of the rare traditions that persisted until European contact have since disappeared. Wusi, a village on the remote west coast of Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu, is one of the rare locations where traditional pottery manufacture has continued into the 21st century, although only a handful of practitioners now remain in the community. The dramatic depopulation that followed European arrival and the spread of introduced diseases led to a rupture in the transmission of knowledge between potters and their ancestors. Although pottery continues to be produced in Wusi, the lack of oral traditions linking current practice to ancestral knowledge has weakened the foundations of the practice and placed its survival at risk. This project aims to use biomolecular and ethnoarchaeological data to identify foods processed in pottery and earth ovens, and to reconnect pottery-making practices in Wusi with their deep time roots through archaeological excavations. Contextual information on cooking practices in Vanuatu, as well as preliminary results from the first year of the project, will be presented.