A Holocene sequence from Walufeni Cave, Southern Highlands Province, and its implications for the settlement of the Great Papuan Plateau, Papua New Guinea

This paper presents preliminary results from the 2019 excavations at Walufeni Cave, at the eastern end of the Great Papuan Plateau (GPP) in western Papua New Guinea. Preliminary dating and analysis of the unfinished excavations at Walufeni Cave span the Holocene and probably continue into the Late Pleistocene, confirming the presence of people on the Plateau from at least the Early Holocene and potentially much earlier. The data presented here offer a site-specific model of early intensive site use from at least 10,000 years ago, then ephemeral use, followed by a sustained Late Holocene occupation. Although there are significant changes in the quantity of material discard over time, there is little evidence for significant change in the subsistence base or technology, reflecting a degree of relative homogeneity until the Late Holocene, when we see the introduction of pig, a change of focus in the plant economy and the presence of marine shell from the southern coast

Papua New Guinean genomes reveal the complex settlement of north Sahul

The settlement of Sahul, the lost continent of Oceania, remains one of the most ancient and debated human migrations. Modern New Guineans inherited a unique genetic diversity tracing back 50,000 years, and yet there is currently no model reconstructing their past population dynamics. We generated 58 new whole-genome sequences from Papua New Guinea, filling geographical gaps in previous sampling, specifically to address alternative scenarios of the initial migration to Sahul and the settlement of New Guinea. Here, we present the first genomic models for the settlement of northeast Sahul considering one or two migrations from Wallacea. Both models fit our data set, reinforcing the idea that ancestral groups to New Guinean and Indigenous Australians split early, potentially during their migration in Wallacea where the northern route could have been favored. The earliest period of human presence in Sahul was an era of interactions and gene flow between related but already differentiated groups, from whom all modern New Guineans, Bismarck islanders, and Indigenous Australians descend. The settlement of New Guinea was probably initiated from its southeast region, where the oldest archaeological sites have been found. This was followed by two migrations into the south and north lowlands that ultimately reached the west and east highlands. We also identify ancient gene flows between populations in New Guinea, Australia, East Indonesia, and the Bismarck Archipelago, emphasizing the fact that the anthropological landscape during the early period of Sahul settlement was highly dynamic rather than the traditional view of extensive isolation

Historic drill points in chert: a case study from MotuporeIsland, Papua New Guinea

International audienc

Historic drill points in chert: a case study from MotuporeIsland, Papua New Guinea

International audienc

Agila and the reanimation of seafaring on the south coast of Papua New Guinea after 770 cal BP

Seafaring ceramicists connected widely spaced communities along the expanse of PNG’s south coast for more than 1,500 years following the arrival of people using pots with Lapita decoration c.2,900 cal BP. Archaeological investigations at locations from the Gulf of Papua in the west to Mailu Island in the east suggest a major change occurred to seafaring and social relations after 1,200 cal BP. The following five centuries often referred to as the ‘Ceramic Hiccup’ were characterised by a contraction in the scale of formerly long-distance voyaging. Here we present results of recent archaeological excavations at the ancestral village site of Agila in Hood Bay east of Port Moresby. The decorations on older pot sherds at Agila are akin to those on ancestral Motu pottery known from Motupore Island to the west. The decoration changes on more recent sherds which have more in common with ancestral Mailu pottery from Mailu Island to the east. Details of changing seafaring relations–from west to east–at Agila were published in 2018 after our first field season. However, results from the first field season left questions about site antiquity unresolved. We returned to Agila in 2022 and continued excavations to address those questions. Our excavations revealed that initial settlement at Agila coincided with a reanimation of coastal seafaring after 770 cal BP. Results also show that the major pottery manufacturing and seafaring community of Motupore maintained relations with communities to both the east and west. An analysis of the ceramic assemblage allows us to historicise the emergence of social strategies which entrenched Hood Bay at a nexus between Motu and Mailu specialised trading and seafaring communities.</p

Archaeological investigations into the origins of Bel Trading Groups around the Madang Coast, Northeast New Guinea

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 before present (c. 550–650\ua0cal BP), which is broadly in line with oral history 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 descriptions of these investigations and the archaeological material are presented here