Communities occupying the 19 small islands to windward (east) of the large Melanesian islands of the Solomons, New Hebrides, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and on the southern fringes of Micronesia. Archaeology and linguistics suggest settlement by a back-movement from western Polynesia (Samoa, Futuna, Ellice) perhaps starting in the 1st millennium AD. Archaeological evidence indicates that by 1300 BC islands in northern Vanuatu were settled by the makers of the distinctive Lapita pottery from Melanesian islands to the west.