KEY POINTS:
The largest site of live burials in the Pacific region has been added to Unesco's World Heritage List.
The United Nations agency this week added new sites to its list including three in the Pacific - the domain of Chief Roi Mata, Vanuatu's last paramount chief, the New Caledonia lagoon, and the Kuk early agricultural site in Papua New Guinea.
Marcellin Adong, director of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, told the Herald yesterday he was excited at the news after years of the centre trying to get recognition of the special area.
"It is very important culturally and historically."
The Roi Mata Domain was named after the famous Chief Roi Mata, who archaeologists say died about 1600.
The domain includes coastal land in the northwest of the island of Efate, about an half hour drive from the capital Port Vila, and two small nearby islands of Lelepa and Eretoka.
The three early 17th century sites include Roi Mata's residence, the site of his death and his mass burial site.
After Roi Mata died of natural causes, he was buried with his wife and more than 40 members of his court who were buried alive with him.
Tombstones marked the spot on the sacred island of Eretoka where the mass burial took place.
The Roi Mata domain is Vanuatu's first listing on the World Heritage list.
The cultural centre's honorary curator, Kirk Huffman, said it was also possibly the first listing of its sort - a land site made meaningful by oral traditions.
Mr Huffman said Chief Roi Mata had been like a King Arthur to his people, bringing peace and introducing a clan system to the central Vanuatu islands that existed to this day.
Eighty per cent of the country's population still lived traditionally.
He said megalithic stones marked the graves, including the chief's.
"It was the largest mass burial in the Pacific at one time."
Ancient rock art was found in Fels Cave on Lelepa Island where Roi Mata was said to have drawn his last breath.
Mr Huffman said the oral traditions that had been passed down were remarkably accurate.
When in the early 1960s the French archaeologists dug up the site many of those buried were found as described, even down to the details of what they were wearing and adornments such as pig tusks and shells.
"Some individuals could be identified by name."
Mr Huffman said the men who were willingly buried alive had been allowed kava to calm them and their skeletons were found in a relaxed pose.
But the women were not customarily allowed kava, and many of their skeletons were discovered with the arms reaching up through the earth.
Mr Huffman said the Unesco recognition of the domain would give locals a pride in their culture and traditions as well as helping to protect it.
The World Heritage Committee said the site reflected the convergence between oral tradition and archaeology and bore witness to the persistence of Roi Mata's social reforms and conflict resolution, still relevant to the people of the region.
The committee also named as a heritage site the 15,000 square kilometres of the New Caledonia lagoon, the second largest continuous coral reef in the world after Australia's Great Barrier reef.
The lagoons comprise six marine clusters which represent the main diversity of coral reefs and associated ecosystems in the archipelago of New Caledonia, and one of the three most extensive reef systems in the world.
They feature an exceptional diversity of coral and fish species and a continuum of habitats from mangroves to seagrasses with the world's most diverse concentration of reef structures.
Intact ecosystems, with healthy populations of large predators, and a great number and diversity of big fish, are contained in the lagoon.
It is a habitat for a number of threatened fish, turtles, and marine mammals, including the third largest population of dugongs in the world.
The committee said the waters were of exceptional natural beauty, and contained reefs of varying age from living reefs to ancient fossil reefs, providing an important source of information on the natural history of Oceania.
The latest additions bring the number of this year's new world heritage sites to 27.
Unesco has 878 properties of outstanding universal value on its World Heritage List.
