Talepakemalai: Lapita and Its Transformations in the Mussau Islands of Near Oceania

Peter Sheppard is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, having joined the academic staff in 1992 and retired in 2021. He has conducted archaeological research in the Solomon Islands since 1989 when, as a postdoctoral fellow, he was sent by Roger Green to Malaita to locate sources of chert found in the Lapita sites of Temotu Province. Returning to the Solomon Islands in 1996 he began a series of projects with his students and colleagues that involved survey and excavation throughout the islands of the Western Province. In 2009 he turned to the eastern Solomons, where he carried out field studies on Santa Ana, followed by research on Santa Cruz in Temotu Province with reexcavation and dating of the SE-SZ-8 Lapita site originally excavated by Green. Much of this work is summarised in the first monograph-length survey of Solomon Island archaeology, Archaeology of the Solomon Islands (University of Otago Press, University of Hawai‘i Press), which he published with Richard Walter in 2017. Peter is also Co-editor of the journal Archaeology in Oceania with Peter White.