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Archaeologists uncover 5,000-year-old jewellery workshop By Jean Christou ARCHAEOLOGISTS have uncovered was appears to have been a jewellery workshop during excavations at the 5,000-year old Souskiou-Laona settlement. According to the Antiquities Department, a dense concentration of the mineral picrolite in the west ridge of the cliff-top settlement indicates that the spot was a workshop for the production of the cruciform figurines and large pendants. “The assemblage mainly consists of the raw picrolite material, possibly quarried from the Troodos Mountains rather than imported in pebble form from the Kouris River valley, many waste chips flaked from that raw material in order...

Fiji jewellery box find stuns archeologists 22 APR 2008 Archeologists have discovered a 3000-year-old pot in Fiji containing jewellery believed to have been made by the South Pacific’s original settlers – the Lapita people. The discovery was made by an excavation party from the Fiji-based University of the South Pacific and the Fiji Museum at Bourewa in Natadola on the Coral Coast. The dig at Bourewa, which is the earliest human settlement in Fiji, unearthed the pot and a thick piece of “exquisitely decorated pottery”. The Lapita people were the first colonists of Pacific Island groups, including the eastern Solomon...