The centre cannot hold. Trade networks and sacred geography in the Papua New Guinea Highlands (original) (raw)
Frontier Archaeology: Excavating Huli Colonization of the Lower Tagali Valley, Papua New Guinea
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
Archaeological investigations have documented an ideological and occupied frontier in the Lower Tagali Valley along the southern margins of the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Open-area excavations document two types of house structure associated with Huli occupation of the Lower Tagali Valley landscape, a women's house (wandia) and a lodge and ceremonial complex associated with a bachelor cult (ibagiyaanda). Excavation revealed the complete floor plan of the women's house site and multiple structural elements of the ceremonial complex. Radiocarbon dating provides a chronology for both sites that accords with genealogical histories for the colonization of this landscape by Huli during the early nineteenth century, or approximately eight generations ago. These archaeological findings are consistent with the strategies still employed today by Huli in the initial ideological incorporation of new territory and anchoring of expansionary claims through subsequent settlement and cul...
Prehistoric social landscapes of the Arawe Islands, West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea
Archaeology and Physical Anthropology in Oceania, 1989
This paper lays out a theoretical framework for interpreting a regional archaeological record in terms of the social formations which produced it. The central idea is that of the social landscape. Past social groups are seen to operate in the landscape in order to provide and sustain a social system, rather than reacting to the structure of their environment. The idea of a social landscape is employed to examine how groups organise themselves on a local regional scale to meet social goals and to link these forms of organisation to the archaeological record they leave behind. The central social principle explored here is that of debt, which enjoins dispersal of materials and sets up landscapes which are non-accumulative. Data from the Arawe island group on the south coast of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea are presented to illustrate these ideas.
Australian Archaeology, 2010
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.
Journal of Social Archaeology, 2019
The Gulf of Papua, Papua New Guinea, is a rapidly changing geomorphic and cultural landscape in which the ancestral past is constantly being (re)interpreted and negotiated. This paper examines the importance of subsurface archaeological and geomorphological features for the various communities of Orokolo Bay in the Gulf of Papua as they maintain and reconstruct cosmological and migration narratives. The everyday practices of digging and clearing for agriculture and house construction at antecedent village locations bring Orokolo Bay locals into regular engagement with buried pottery sherds (deposited during the ancestral hiri trade) and thin strata of 'black sand' (iron sand). Local interpretations and imaginings of the subsurface enable spatio-temporal interpretations of the ancestor's actions and the structure of ancestral settlements. These interpretations point to the profound entanglement of orality and material culture and suggest new directions in the comparative study of alternative archaeologies.
Anthropology in Papua New Guinea: History and Continuities
2010
The aim of this paper is to explore the history of anthropology in Melanesia with a particular attention to the territory of the current independent state of Papua New Guinea. Author analyzes the history of the anthropological research in Papua from the late 19th century until the sixties. The author distinguishes three phases of history of anthropology in Papua: a phase of the first anthropological contact in the late 19th century, a phase of the nidation until the middle of twentieth century and a phase of the gold age of the anthropology in Papua, from the middle to the sixties of the twentieth century. Author argues that the fieldworks conducted in Papua changed the face of anthropology in a profound way. In the last part of the paper author summarizes main achievements and progress in anthropology of Melanesia in the framework of anthropology as such.
The introduction and exchange of pottery between Pacific Islands can provide insight into interaction and social organisation from both regional and local perspectives. In the Massim island region of far eastern Papua New Guinea, pottery is present in the archaeological record from 2800 to 2600 calBP. However, on Rossel Island, a relatively isolated landmass in the far east of the Louisiade Archipelago, archaeological excavation and AMS dating of several sites has determined that pottery on this island was a late prehistoric introduction, from 550–500 calBP. The introduction of pottery coincided with the establishment of increasingly complex exchange networks in the Massim, namely the Kula. It is argued in this paper that the desire for Kula participants to obtain high-quality shell necklaces (bagi), which are prominently manufactured on Rossel, led to the island becoming more actively involved in down-the-line regional exchange. Pottery is largely found on the western end of Rossel, where most bagi are manufactured. The uneven distribution of pottery across the island is further argued to indicate a socio-economic/political divide between the populations living on the western and eastern ends, which is supported by linguistic and anthropological evidence.
University of Otago Studies in Archaeology, 2020
Permanent link to open access version: http://hdl.handle.net/10523/10586 Materialising Ancestral Madang documents the emergence of pottery production processes and exchange networks along the northeast coast of New Guinea during the last millennium before the present. This dynamic period in the Pacific’s human past involved important fluctuations to people’s mobility, social interaction, and technological organisation. It therefore remains crucial to understanding and historicising the expansive maritime subsistence trading networks that famously characterised the coast in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This book investigates these transformations by exploring the archaeology of Madang District; the heart of the Madang exchange network that revolved around the production and distribution of distinctive red-slipped pots. Potsherds of this style have been previously found spanning a 200 km radius, reaching Karkar Island, the Bismarck Archipelago, and even the New Guinea Highlands. By combining archaeological survey, excavation, craft ethnography, and archaeometric analyses, the volume systematically delineates the production groups that were working within this broader community of practice. The study shows that pre-colonial potters made use of a range of local raw materials and were free to improvise with their forming and decorating techniques but learned and reproduced similar technological sequences over the past 500–600 years. It is likely that social restrictions permitted only potters from a small number of clans to produce ceramics and that the finished vessels were then distributed both informally within the local area and strategically during extensive trade voyages along the northeast coast of New Guinea. These results therefore cast light on an important but previously obscured aspect of Pacific culture history and provide a model for how craft production and exchange processes have manifested and co-modified across the generations
An Archaeological Survey of Inland Madang, Northeast Papua New Guinea
Archaeology in New Zealand, 2018
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.
2015
Sailing for Survival is a comparative study of the trading systems and canoes of two groups of people in Papua New Guinea: the Bel people of Bilbil/Yabob on the North Coast, near Madang and the Motu people on the South Coast, near Port Moresby. There is now no doubt that they shared a common ancestry in West New Britain. They both belong to Austronesian language groups but had no contact with each other on their trade routes, separated as they were by twisting coastlines and rugged mountain ranges, nor did any trade items [apart from obsidian] pass from one trading zone to the other for over two thousand years. Yet the trade systems they developed independently have an amazing array of commonality harking back to their common ancestry in the Bismarck Archipelago. The association between archaeological and linguistic distributions suggests that the movement of Papuan Tip Cluster speakers to the west along the Papuan Coast took place about 2800 years ago, and the time depth for the sp...
Small-scale excavationwas undertaken at the Malakai site on the small island of Nimowa, located in the Louisiade Archipelago, Massim region, Papua New Guinea. This is the first excavation to be reported in detail from the archipelago,with the Malakai site providing insight into cultural practices on the island and pottery exchange in the southern Massim region. A stratified deposit was revealed with dense cultural material, first inhabited from 1350 to 1290 cal. BP, with a subsequent period of settlement within the last 460–300 cal. years. Pottery, shell, and stone artifacts were recovered, as well as human skeletal remains in a primary burial context,which contributes to understanding regional patterns of prehistoric mortuary activity. It is argued that Nimowa was already part of an exchange network that encompassed many of the southern Massim islands when the Malakai site was first occupied.There is increased diversity in the number of vessel forms in later prehistory, but with remarkable continuity in the decorative motifs over time, suggesting some degree of regional social cohesion in the southern Massim. It appears that the northern Massim islands were not a major supplier of pottery to Nimowa. The implications for the prehistory of the wider region are subsequently discussed.
Modeling Past and Present in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea
Journal of Indo-Pacific Archaeology , 2020
The existence of “fringe societies” in Papua New Guinea has long been recognized by anthropologists. In the New Guinea Highlands, the term refers to peoples who occupy the fringes of more populous and better-known valleys. In many instances, these groups also subsist on staples other than Ipomoea batatas, more commonly known as sweet potato, a tuber introduced to the highlands within the last 300 years. The Awa at the far eastern edge of the Eastern Highlands are such a group, and the word fringe has often been used to describe them. Surprisingly, anthropologists and archaeologists have not seized on the possibility that their unusual subsistence represents a survival of a previous adaptation that has not completed its conversion to the new crop. The authors of this paper use the Awa economy to model a pre-ipomoean past for members of the Tairora language subfamily, namely, the South Tairora, Auyana, and Awa languages. Using archaeological, paleoenvironmental, demographic, and ethno...
Stemmed Tools, Social Interaction, and Voyaging in Early-Mid Holocene Papua New Guinea
2013
To assess the proposal that the widespread distribution of early-mid Holocene obsidian stemmed tools in Papua New Guinea signifies wide ranging social networks, studies of their morphology, technology, and geochemical composition were conducted. It is argued that strong similarities in technology and form of artifacts made from both Manus and New Britain obsidians and their characterization to only one subsource in each region indicate significant social interaction between these two island groups. Away from the obsidian sources, stemmed tools made from local raw material as well as imported obsidian suggest knowledge and practices were also distributed through a series of overlapping social networks. Long-distance voyaging to confirm and enhance status might explain the far-flung distribution of some tools. The new data about stemmed tool production on Manus and the early use of the Umleang-Umrei sub-source highlight the importance of further research in that region.
The Holocene, 2008
The Upper Wahgi valley has been a focus of multidisciplinary research -principally archaeology, geomorphology and palaeoecology -for over 40 years. In the 1960s joint palaeoecological and archaeological research was undertaken at Warrawau to investigate vegetation history and the antiquity of agriculture in the highlands ; ). This multidisciplinary character has pervaded subsequent projects in the region, especially intensive research at Abstract: A practice-based method is advanced to understand the emergence and transformation of agricultural practices in the Upper Wahgi valley during the Holocene. Conceptually, practices represent the nexus of human-environment interactions, as well as of structure-agency relationships, while methodologically, they are the visible remains -whether encountered directly through archaeology, or inferred through palaeoenvironmental proxy -of people living in the past. Multidisciplinary information from the Upper Wahgi valley is used to reconstruct multilayered practices of plant exploitation across the landscape through time; the intention is to spatialize, temporalize and humanize information often represented chronologically and technically. Practice-oriented interpretations clarify, interrogate and amplify existing multidisciplinary records of the past and shed new light on how the earliest agriculture was originated and transformed in the New Guinea highlands during the Holocene.