Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T05:38:11.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

35,000-year-old sites in the rainforests of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Christina Pavlides  and
Chris Gosden
Christina Pavlides
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, La Trobe University, Bundoora Campus, VIC 3083, Australia
Chris Gosden
Affiliation:
Pitt Rivers Museum, and Department of Ethnology & Prehistory, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PP, England
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The growing story of early settlement in the northwest Pacific islands is moving from coastal sites into the rainforest. Evidence of Pleistocene cultural layers have been discovered in open-site excavations at Yombon, an area containing shifting hamlets, in West New Britain's interior tropical rainforest. These sites, the oldest in New Britain, may presently stand as the oldest open sites discovered in rainforest anywhere in the world.

Type
Notes
Information
Antiquity , Volume 68 , Issue 260 , September 1994 , pp. 604 - 610
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, J.,Gosden, C. & White, J.P. 1989. Human Pleistocene adaptations in the tropical island Pacific: recent evidence from New Ireland, a greater Australian outlier, Antiquity 63: 548–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, R.C., Head, G., Jenike, M., Owen, B., Rechtman, R. & Zechenter, E. 1989. Hunting and gathering in the tropical rain forest: is it possible?, American Anthropologist 91: 59–82.Google Scholar
Bellwood, P. 1990. From late Pleistocene to early Holocene in Sundaland, in Gamble, C. & Soffer, O. (ed.), The world at 18,000 BP 2: 255–63. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Blong, R.J. 1982. The Time of Darkness: local legends and volcanic reality in Papua New Guinea. Canberra: Australian National University Press.Google Scholar
Chowning, A. 1980. Culture and biology among the Sengseng of New Britain, Journal of the Polynesian Society 89: 7–31.Google Scholar
Dodson, J. (ed.). 1992. The Naive Lands: prehistory and environmental change in Australia and the Southwest Pacific. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire.Google Scholar
Eggert, M. 1992. The central African rain forest: historical speculation and the archaeological facts, World Archaeology 24(1): 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enright, N.J. & Gosden, C. 1992. Unstable archipelagos — southwest Pacific environment and prehistory since 30,000 BP, in Dodson (1992): 160–98.Google Scholar
Flenley, J.R. 1979. The equatorial rain forest: a geological history. London: Butterworth.Google Scholar
Gillieson, D. & Mountain, M.-J. 1983. Environmental history of Nombe rocksheiter, Papua New Guinea Highlands, Archaeology in Oceania 18: 45–53.Google Scholar
Groube, L. 1989. The taming of the rain forests: a model for late Pleistocene forest exploitation in New Guinea, in Harris, D. & Hillman, G.C. (ed.), Foraging and farming: the evolution of plant exploitation: 292–304. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Groube, L., Chappell, J., Muke, J. … Price, D. 1986. A 40,000 year-old human occupation site at Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea, Nature 324: 453–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, T.B. & Hart, J.A. 1986. The ecological basis of hunter-gatherer subsistence in African rain forest: the Mbuti of Eastern Zaire, Human Ecology 14(1): 29–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Headland, T.N. 1987. The wild yam question: How well could independent hunter-gatherers live in a tropical rain forest ecosystem?, Human Ecology 15(4): 463–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Headland, T.N. & Reid, L.A. 1989. Hunter-gatherers and their neighbours from prehistory to the present, Current Anthropology 30(1): 43–66.Google Scholar
Pavlides, C 1993. New archaeological research at Yombon, West New Britain, Papua New Guinea, Archaeology in Oceania 28: 55–9.Google Scholar
Pavlides, C. & Gosden, C. In press. The mysteries of West New Britain, Paradise.Google Scholar
Specht, J., Lilley, I. & Normu, J. 1981. Radiocarbon dates from West New Britain, Papua New Guinea, Australian Archaeology 12: 13–15.Google Scholar
Specht, J., Lilley, I. & Normu, J. 1983. More on radiocarbon dates from West New Britain, Papua New Guinea, Australian Archaeology 16: 92–5.Google Scholar
Swadling, P. & Hope, G. 1992. Environmental change in New Guinea since human settlement, in Dodson (1992): 13–40.Google Scholar
Torrence, R. 1992. What is Lapita about obsidian? a view from the Talasea sources, in Galipaud, J.C. (ed.), Poterle Lapita et peuplement: actes du colloque Lapita, Noumea, Nouvelle Calédonie Janvier 1992: 111–26. Noumea: Orstom.Google Scholar
Walker, J. 1982. Speculations on the origins and evolution of the Sunda-Sahul rain forests, in Prance, G.T. (ed.), Biological diversification in the tropics:proceedings of the fifth international symposium of the Association for Tropical Biology: 554–75. New York (NY): Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Whitmore, T.C. 1984. Tropical rainforests of the Far East. 2nd edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Wickler, S. & Spriggs, M. 1988. Pleistocene occupation of the Solomon Islands, Melanesia, Antiquity 62: 703–6.Google Scholar
White, J.P., Crook, K.A.W. & Ruxton, B.P. 1970. Kosipe: a late Pleistocene site in the Papuan Highlands, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 36: 152–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar