apita pottery consists of handmade earthenware, manufactured without the aid of a wheel but often using slab building and a paddle-and-anvil method of vessel wall thinning. The potting clays had beach or river sand added as temper.33 We have no evidence of kilns; pots were presumably fi red in simple open blazes of coconut shells and wood, as is still done in some Oceanic societies (fi g. 4.12). Due to this method of rapid, low-intensity fi ring (with temperatures in the range of 600º–700ºC), the interior walls of Lapita vessels are often incompletely oxidized, leaving a telltale “sandwich” fi lling of dark, unfi red clay, while the outer surfaces are usually a reddish-brown color.