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Five decades of Lapita archaeology: A personal retrospective

My engagement with the archaeology of Lapita having now extended over exactly five decades, I offer the following reflections on how the field has changed and advanced over this period, in terms of the questions being posed, the field and lab methods applied, and the resulting interpretations. This is not intended as a comprehensive or even balanced overview, but rather as the personal perspective of one researcher. I conclude with a brief assessment of the current stateof-play and a few suggestions for where the field might develop in coming years.