Papua New Guinea archaeology

Historicising the emergence of ethnographic activities provides insights into the reliability of ethnographic analogies to aid archaeological understandings of past human societies, as well as allowing us to explore the historical emergence of ethnographically contextualised cultural traits. Epe Amoho is the largest hunting camp rockshelter used by the Himaiyu clan (Rumu people) of the Kikori River region, southern Papua New Guinea. Contemporary ethnographic information indicates dry season site use with subsistence practices directed towards riverine fishing and shellfishing, mammal hunting and gardening in the surrounding rainforest. But how long has the site been used and when in the past did activities start to resemble those known ethnographically? Archaeological excavations revealed three pulses of activity: Recent Phase (0-500 cal BP), Middle Phase (900-1200 cal BP) and Early Phase (2500-2850 cal BP). Pollen data reveal increasing rainforest disturbance by people through time. While the best match between ethnographic and archaeological practices occurs during the Recent Phase, selected aspects of Rumu subsistence extend back to the Early Phase. As the temporal depth of ethnographically-known practices differs between archaeological sites, a complex picture emerges where Rumu cultural practices unfolded at differing points in time and space over a period of at least 3000 years.

Austronesian speaking peoples left Southeast Asia and entered the Western Pacific c.4000-3000 years ago, continuing on to colonise Remote Oceania for the first time, where they became the ancestral populations of Polynesians. Understanding the  impact of these peoples on the mainland of New Guinea before they entered Remote Oceania has eluded archaeologists. New research from the archaeological site of Wañelek in the New Guinea Highlands has broken this silence. Petrographic and geochemical data from pottery and new radiocarbon dating demonstrates that Austronesian influences penetrated into the highland interior by 3000 years ago. One potsherd was manufactured along the northeast coast of New Guinea, whereas others were manufactured from inland  materials. These findings represent the oldest securely dated pottery from an archaeological context on the island of New Guinea. Additionally, the pottery comes from the interior, suggesting the movements of people and technological practices, as well as objects at this time. The antiquity of the Wañelek pottery is coincident with the expansion of Lapita pottery in the Western Pacific. Such occupation also occurs at the same time that changes have been identified in subsistence strategies in the archaeological record at Kuk Swamp suggesting a possible link between the two.

This paper emphasises sub-regional variation in the timing and nature of subsistence changes in the New Guinea Highlands at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. An analysis of the Kiowa lithic assemblage was used to examine the interplay between tool technology, mobility levels, and subsistence strategies by investigating changes in the procurement, manufacture, and use of different raw stone materials in an overall lithic technology. Throughout Kiowa’s occupation local stone was used extensively, and over time people increased their knowledge of the local lithic landscape, using more diverse local raw materials. Since the terminal Pleistocene, people carried reliable polished axes for a variety of activities and made expedient use of locally abundant river pebbles, while smaller nodules were located and carried as mobile toolkits to facilitate longer distance hunting and collecting excursions. In the mid Holocene exotic raw materials were also traded from more distant zones. The abandonment of Kiowa in the late Holocene shows that hunting became less economically important as cultivation developed in the area. Technological changes, in combination with changes in faunal remains are suggestive of increasing activ- ity at Kiowa through the Holocene as the site became specialised for bat hunting, perhaps driven by restricted land use and reduced mobility, reciprocally affected by increasing populations and the inten- sification of plant food production in the Highlands generally. Despite this, evidence for changes to hor- ticulture around Kiowa itself, in the Chimbu area, is limited to the mid-late Holocene, indicating that the early development of agriculture in the Wahgi may have been relatively localised, and did not necessarily displace existing subsistence strategies elsewhere in the Highlands.

This paper examines the archaeological collections accumulated by Sue Bulmer during her time in the New Guinea Highlands. Bulmer used this collection as a basis to investigate key themes in the island's prehistory. We focus on several of these research themes, established in the early years, but which remain pertinent: the occupation of the interior during the Late Pleistocene, the establishment of agriculture and horticulture in the Holocene, and the routes of trade and exchange from the coast into the Highlands. Case studies of recent research produced from the collection revisit these themes, providing valuable updates.

In 2008, intensive archaeological surveys began at Caution Bay, located 20km to the northwest of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. The excavation of 122 stratified sites in 2009-2010 followed, and detailed analysis of the well-preserved and abundant faunal, ceramic and lithic finds has continued ever since. The Caution Bay Archaeology Project is providing new and exciting contributions to the western Pacific past. It has radically expanded the known geographic distribution of the Lapita Cultural Complex to include, for the first time, the southern coast of Papua New Guinea; it has established the relationship of Lapita to later cultural expressions in this area; it has pinpointed the time of arrival of domesticated animals along the southern coast of Papua New Guinea and, by inference, on the larger island of New Guinea; it has provided new insights into the impact of resident populations on local terrestrial and marine environments over a 5000 year time period; and perhaps of greatest significance, it has provided a unique opportunity to document, using multiple strands of archaeological evidence, interactions between resident and colonizing populations at a time of cultural transformation c. 2900 years ago. The first volume of the Caution Bay monograph series introduces the goals of the Caution Bay project, the nature and scope of the investigations and the cultural and natural setting of the study area. To this end, a series of chapters are included on the ethnographic and linguistic setting, the natural environment, archaeological surveys of the study area and investigative and analytical methods. These background chapters will be repeatedly referred to in all the other monographs, as foundational reference materials for the broader study. Subsequent volumes of Caution Bay Studies in Archaeology will each detail the results of excavations at a number of sites while addressing specific research themes, including Lapita colonization, ceramic transformations, long distance ceramic trade, spatial and temporal faunal resource use patterns, technological transformations, cross-cultural interactions and other themes.

A loss of place-names, and of the knowledge of history those named places hold, is effectively a significant cultural loss, and for this reason it was deemed important to record named places at Caution Bay before those localities were permanently altered. Therefore, named, culturally meaningful places within and near the Caution Bay study area were recorded in conjunction with local Koita and Motu community members in 2008-2010. This mapping was undertaken in two steps, the first consisting of opportunistic recording of place names during early, preliminary stages of fieldwork in 2008 and 2009; and the second a focused study undertaken in early 2010 explicitly aimed at recording place names and their cultural significance in the face of imminent developments that would forever transform the landscape. This chapter presents the results of these studies.

This article presents archaeological data critical to our understanding of the pre-colonial past along the northeast coast of New Guinea. Two archaeological sites from coastal and offshore Madang, Papua New Guinea, were excavated to establish the timing of colonization by Bel (Austronesian) speakers, and the subsequent emergence of their trade and exchange networks along the coast leading up to ethnographic accounts. These sites include Nunguri on Bilbil Island, formerly the center of the expansive Madang (Bilbil) pottery exchange network, and Tilu, Malmal village, a pottery consumption area along the coast. Both excavations suggest that initial occupation at these sites by the Bel-speaking groups occurred very recently in the last millennium be- fore present (c. 550–650 cal BP), which is broadly in line with oral his- tory and linguistic evidence. From the start, this occupation involved local red-slipped pottery production and distribution, the exchange of obsidian and sedimentary lithics, and the consumption of nearshore marine resources along with key domesticated animals. In-depth de- scriptions of these investigations and the archaeological material are presented here.

The first human arrivals in northern Sahul (New Guinea) encountered new environments, flora and fauna, yet they appear to have rapidly adapted to the challenges of settlement in these different ecological niches. Our paper looks at these adaptations and makes a contribution in understanding the temporal and geographical diversity of rainforest environments occupied by our species. Most of our understanding of these events comes from palaeo-environmental and archaeological records. Here we review the current evidence for the impact of people in forested environments with a view to model landscape management practices from the earliest arrivals at c.50,000 years ago through to the Early Holocene. The first Sahul colonisers were remarkably dynamic, attested to by their rapid dispersal across Sahul in a relatively short time span, and not all would necessarily have arrived in Sahul by the most northern pathway discussed here. The model presented here provides a heuristic framework within which new data can be tested to further our understanding of human activities and subsistence strategies across a diverse range of New Guinea landscapes.

This chapter investigates how Lapita communities used the Vitiaz Strait as a conduit for migration and exchange. We report provisional archaeological work on Arop/Long Island in the Vitiaz Strait of Papua New Guinea, providing insight into occupation prior to the c. 1660 AD eruption. This includes the finding of a potsherd overlapping in form and technology with Lapita plainware from the Siassi Islands. This sherd is tempered with sand probably deriving from Schouten Arc geology of southwest New Britain. Type X and Madang-style pottery is also present. Obsidian stone tools from surface collections all derive from the Kutau-Bao source in West New Britain and these were supplemented by local low-quality volcanic raw materials. We posit that these tentative finds are suggestive of Lapita occupation on the island, or exchange with Lapita communities around New Britain.

Northeast New Guinea will be an important area for future archaeological research, in modelling both Pleistocene and Late Holocene migrations into the Pacific Islands. To make some initial steps towards redressing a relative absence of archaeological fieldwork in the region, we undertook ground survey around Wapain in inland Madang, locating a number of promising sites. Three caves and two rockshelters have the potential to yield deep time sequences, which could inform our understanding of Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene occupation, and the technological and subsistence behaviours underpinning these occupations. Given that many of the offshore islands around Madang were not uplifted until the recent past, and because the sea-level highstand in the past was several metres higher than today, such caves could also be within the purview of Mid-Late Holocene palaeoshorelines and coastal populations. This is especially the case given the close proximity to the Gogol River, which ethnographically acted as a conduit facilitating movements into the interior. Targeting sequences around 4000-3000 years old will be essential to untangling the nature of Austronesian- speaking migrations around northeast New Guinea and the possible interactions and integrations between these groups and extant mainland populations.

Since the 1970s the site of Emo (aka ‘Samoa’, ‘OAC’) in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea has been cited as one of the earliest-known ceramic sites from the southern Papuan lowlands. This site has long been seen as holding c.2000 year old evidence of post-Lapita long-distance maritime trade from (Austronesian-speaking) Motu homelands in the Central Province, where pottery was manufactured, to the (non- Austronesian) Gulf Province some 400km to the west where pottery was received and for which large quantities of sago were exchanged (the ancestral hiri trade). However, until now the only three radiocarbon dates available for Emo were out of chronostratigraphic sequence, and few details on the site had been published. This paper presents the results of new excavations and the first detailed series of AMS radiocarbon determinations from Emo, thereby resolving long-standing uncertainties about the age of the site and its implications for the antiquity of the long-distance Motuan hiri maritime trade.

This E-Book on the Nakanai Mountains of East New Britain is in four parts. The first section provides an overview of the karst and cave attributes which led to the listing of Nakanai on the Tentative World Heritage List in a Serial Site known as The Sublime Karsts of Papua New Guinea. The next section provides a brief history of the region involving European encounters. This is followed with a brief overview of the archaeology of East New Britain. The fourth section highlights some of the unique flora and fauna of the Nakanai. The final section includes the UNESCO Justification for Significance on the Tentative World Heritage List.

The history of pottery use along the south coast of Papua New Guinea spans from Lapita times, here dated to 2900-2600 cal BP, through to mass production of pottery associated with a number of ethnographically-known interaction (and exchange) networks. Understanding the antecedents and developmental histories of these interaction networks is of considerable importance to archaeological research from local to western Pacific geographical scales. The archaeological site of Ruisasi 1 located at Caution Bay near Port Moresby provides new insights into scales of pottery production before the development of the regional Motu hiri exchange system within the past 500 years. Here faunal remains indicate occupation by marine specialists who exploited a diverse range of local marine environments. Nearly 20,000 ceramic sherds are present in Square A, mostly from a 26cm thick ‘pottery midden’. A minimum of 45 red slip/plainware vessels based on conjoined sets of sherds plus two vessels with incised decoration are present; the maximum number of clay vessels based on Fabric Types is 146. The globular red slip/plainware pots have standardised shapes and sizes, consistent with mass pottery production. The concentration of sherds from these pots within the pottery midden reflects short-duration depositional events within the period of village life c.1680-1180 cal BP. Whether or not the pots were made locally or imported is the subject of ongoing research. Whatever the case, Ruisasi 1 raises the possibility of mass pottery production linked to a regional interaction network pre-dating the hiri.

The Reber-Rakival site on Watom Island is of particular significance, as it is the first place where what is now known as Lapita pottery was found, by a German missionary in 1909. It is also significant as a Lapita-era burial site, although there has been much debate about the exact relationship between the burials and the Lapita occupation. In 2008 and 2009 an Otago University/Otago Museum/Papua New Guinea National Museum expedition carried out new excavations at the SAC locality in Rakival Village, in order to increase the sample size of both burials and ceramics, and to address some of the ongoing debates. The expedition found more burials, Lapita ceramics and associated artefactual material, and while it confirmed the relationship between the burials and the Lapita occupation, it also found that previous excavations had not reached the base of the site, and evidence of human occuption was found up to 0.8m deeper than previously known. Based on this work, a refined stratigraphic sequence is presented, with 7 layers replacing the old 4 zone model that has been used to date. This paper presents the description and interpretation of the SAC locality at Watom, and provides a basis for other more specialist papers that are in preparation.

Since 1909, patrol officers, anthropologists, archaeologists, and others have identified evidence of a pre-contact trading network linking New Guinea with the Tor-res Strait. Current research in the Lower Sepik River Basin reported various ethno-graphic descriptions relating to cultural material objects stenciled on various rock art sites in Auwim, Upper Karawari-Arafundi region, East Sepik, Papua New Guinea (PNG). In addition to the rock art, the broader area has one of the most environmentally intact freshwater basins with lowland rainforests in Melanesia, and is famous for its architectural carvings and spirit houses. This paper reports new research that articulates local ethnographic knowledge about rock art with the art-work itself. The rock art panels contain a wide range of stencils primarily consisting of hands but also, importantly, several objects, one of which is the kina, gold-lip pearl (Pinctada maxima) shell. The kina shell stencils are, among other things, indicative of the remarkable distance over which the shells were traded and traditionally used. The Auwim case study is important because it is one of the relatively few sites across PNG for which we still have ethnography of rock art and therefore provides us with important insight into the past-present rock art practices and, concurrently, notions of cultural continuity.

The emergence of agriculture was one of the most notable behavioral transformations in human history, driving innovations in technologies and settlement globally, referred to as the Neolithic. Wetland agriculture originated in the New Guinea highlands during the mid-Holocene (8000 to 4000 years ago), yet it is unclear if there was associated behavioral change. Here, we report the earliest figurative stone carving and formally manufactured pestles in Oceania, dating to 5050 to 4200 years ago. These discoveries, at the highland site of Waim, occur with the earliest planilateral axe-adzes in New Guinea, the first evidence for fibercraft, and interisland obsidian transfer. The combination of symbolic social systems, complex technologies, and highland agricultural intensification supports an independent emergence of a Neolithic ~1000 years before the arrival of Neolithic migrants (Lapita) from Southeast Asia.

The southern lowlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG) are biogeographically distinct. Vast tracts of savanna vegetation occur there and yet most palaeoecological studies have focused on highlands and/or forest environments. Greater focus on long-term lowland environments provides a rare opportunity to understand and promote the significance of local and regional savannas, ultimately allowing non-forested and forested ecosystem dynamics to be compared. This paper examines palaeoecological and archaeological data from a lowland open savanna site situated on the south-central PNG coastline. The methods used incorporate pollen and micro-charcoal analyses, artefact recovery and sediment descriptions. We conclude with an environmental model of sedimentation and vegetation change for the past c. 5,800 years, revealing a mid to late Holocene savanna interchange between herbaceous and woody plant growth, with fluctuating fire occurrence increasing toward the present day. Increased silt deposition and modified regional hydrology are also recorded. Environmental changes correspond in timing with the start of permanent settlements and human use of fire. In particular, landscape burning for hunting and gardens for agriculture have helped create the open ecosystem still evident today.

Production et premiers transferts de haches en Piémont-Chapitre 8-Modélisation ethnoarchéologique en Nouvelle-Guinée : techniques, modes de production et circulation des producteurs Jade Objets-signes et interprétations sociales des jades alpins dans l'Europe néolithique 1Avant d’aborder la question des exploitants en accès direct aux sources de jades alpins du Mont Viso, les auteurs proposent un référentiel ethnographique constitué de six exemples de production de haches et d’herminettes en Nouvelle-Guinée, étudiés in vivo dans les années 1950-2000. Partant de situations actuelles (ou d’un passé proche) où sont décrits et illustrés les vestiges laissés au sol lors de chaque étape des chaînes opératoires (extraction, mise en forme, polissage) replacée dans le contexte social du moment, l’intention est de fournir aux préhistoriens quelques clés de lecture et d’interprétation des documents archéologiques, permettant de passer du domaine des hypothèses archéologiques clairement exprimées à celui du contrôle scientifique.

Dans cette approche actualiste, qui diverge notablement des approches dites expérimentales, plusieurs points essentiels sont abordés : l’intention des producteurs (modèle typologique recherché et sa fonction sociale), les groupes sociaux impliqués dans les activités de production, l’accès direct aux sources de matière première et les éventuels déplacements de groupes de travail, la segmentation des chaînes opératoires dans l’espace en rapport avec la distance aux exploitations, les modalités d’extraction et de mise en forme des ébauches en fonction de la nature des roches utilisées (impact du déterminisme de la matière première), les rapports entre les tailleurs-bouchardeurs d’ébauches et les polisseurs… toutes questions primordiales à expliciter avant d’aborder le sujet des producteurs de lames polies en jades alpins.

Une telle approche à partir d’exemples actuels est conçue pour exciter l’imagination scientifique et présenter une forme d’inventaire des possibles (mais bien sûr pas de tous les possibles), avant d’élaborer des hypothèses contrôlables à partir des données archéologiques de terrain : les rejets archéologiques liés à la production des haches et des herminettes, qui s’avèrent – en Nouvelle-Guinée – spécifiques de chaque épisode des chaînes opératoires concernées.



Ethnoarchaeological modelling in New Guinea: techniques, modes of production and the movements of the producers

Abstract

Before addressing the question of the people who directly accessed the sources of the Alpine jades of Mont Viso and exploited them, the authors prepared a set of six ethnographic case studies relating to the production of axeheads and adze-heads in New Guinea, based on fieldwork undertaken between 1950 and 2000. Using evidence that was either contemporary with the fieldwork, or had been left in the recent past, these case studies document and illustrate the traces left in the soil from each stage in the chaînes opératoires of production (i.e. extraction, roughing out, polishing), and place them within the social context of the makers. By doing so, the intention is to provide prehistorians with keys for reading and interpreting archaeological evidence, allowing them to depart from the domain of clearly-defined archaeological hypothesis to that of scientific exposition.

In this real-time approach, which differs significantly from the approaches termed ‘experimental archaeology’, several essential points are taken into account, namely: the intention of the producers to create a specific artefact type, with its own social function; the social groups involved in the activities of production; accessing the raw material sources directly, and the possible deployment of work-groups; the location of the various manufacturing activities with regard to distance from the extraction areas; the modes of extraction and of producing roughouts, given the physical properties of the rock (which determine how that rock can be worked); the relationship between the people producing the roughouts and those who grind and polish the objects, etc. All these questions are essential if we are to understand the people who produced the polished axeheads, adze-heads  and chisels of Alpine jade.

This approach, grounded in contemporary examples, was conceived as a way to stimulate the scientific imagination and to establish an inventory – albeit probably not an exhaustive one – of the various elements involved in producing these artefacts, so that this could inform the creation of testable hypotheses based on the archaeological evidence. The results of the ethnoarchaeological work in New Guinea have revealed what are the diagnostic traces relating to each stage in the chaînes opératoires for manufacturing axeheads and adze-heads; these can be matched against the corresponding archaeological evidence relating to Alpine jade artefacts.

Expansion of Austronesian-speaking peoples from the Bismarck Archipelago out into the Pacific commencing c.3300 cal BP represents the last great chapter of human global colonisation. The earliest migrants were bearers of finely-made dentate-stamped Lapita pottery, hitherto found only across Island Melanesia and western Polynesia. We document the first known occurrence of Lapita peoples on the New Guinea mainland. The new Lapita sites date from 2900 to 2500 cal BP and represent a newly-discovered migratory arm of Lapita expansions that moved westwards along the southern New Guinea coast towards Australia. These marine specialists ate shellfish, fish and marine turtles along the Papua New Guinea mainland coast, reflecting subsistence continuities with local pre-Lapita peoples dating back to 4200 cal BP. Lapita artefacts include characteristic ceramics, shell armbands, stone adzes and obsidian tools. Our Lapita discoveries support hypotheses for the migration of pottery-bearing Melanesian marine specialists into Torres Strait of northeast Australia c.2500 cal BP. Expansion of Austronesian

The first peopling of Sahul (Australia, New Guinea and the Aru Islands joined at lower sea levels) by anatomically modern humans required multiple maritime crossings through Wallacea, with at least one approaching 100 km. Whether these crossings were accidental or intentional is unknown. Using coastal-viewshed analysis and ocean drift modelling combined with population projections, we show that the probability of randomly reaching Sahul by any route is <5% until ≥40 adults are 'washed off' an island at least once every 20 years. We then demonstrate that choosing a time of departure and making minimal headway (0.5 knots) toward a destination greatly increases the likelihood of arrival. While drift modelling demonstrates the existence of 'bottleneck' crossings on all routes, arrival via New Guinea is more likely than via northwestern Australia. We conclude that anatomically modern humans had the capacity to plan and make open-sea voyages lasting several days by at least 50,000 years ago. Increased attention to maritime landscapes over the last two decades has re-invigorated investigation into the role of coastal environments and sea travel in the behavioural evolution of our species. New evidence has fundamentally changed our understanding of the cognitive capacity of anatomically modern humans 1,2 , genetic ancestry 3 , dispersal patterns from Africa 4 and the peopling of new environments 5,6. However, the role of coastlines and coastal resources in the dispersal of modern humans has been much debated. Proponents of a coastal migration model for H. sapiens out of Africa argue that coastlines would have provided for a fast, directional population expansion with predictable resources and supplies of potable water 7. Those opposing, point out that there is little direct evidence to support a coastal-highway hypothesis and that there is evidence that early humans were able to make use of savanna and rainforest environments 2,8. More recent papers propose a less dichotomous model featuring flexibility, involving use of coasts and estuaries, but not exclusively relying on them 4,5,9. Whatever the reality, it is clear that the ability to make even rudimentary watercraft and move directionally over water, both across large rivers and in traversing unknown sections of coastline, would have given H. sapiens a selective advantage over other hominins. Australia and the islands to its north (the Wallacean Archipelago) have been at the forefront of this debate because the maritime crossing from Sunda to Sahul requires lengthy water crossings that appear to have been beyond the capacity of earlier hominins.

Abstract This paper presents archaeological evidence for the initial occupation and use of a large clan ossuary on the upper Kikori River at Baina in Papua New Guinea. Drawing extensively on clan oral accounts of its use and function, it is posited that the timing and use of the site as an ossuary effectively dates the establishment of a sub clan entity known as Kesele and the fragmentation of larger clan based land owning units into smaller sub-clan entities dating from around 200 years ago in the region. It is further posited that evidence of the more intensive use of the site from around 600 years ago and its subsequent use as an ossuary at 200 years ago may be linked to its proximity to an important lithic raw material source used in the manufacture of sago pounders, a major trade item linked to the hiri pottery trade.