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Koey Ngurtai is a small, uninhabited island located midway between the residential islands of Badu and Mabuyag in western Torres Strait. In 2003 and 2004, 100% surveys of the islet revealed 166 cultural sites. Fifty archaeological excavations were undertaken, revealing a rich history of islet use culminating with the emergence of Koey Ngurtai as a ritual centre after 550–700 cal BP, and a proliferation of ritual structures focused on dugong hunting magic after 350–550 cal BP. Shortly after the arrival of colonial powers in Torres Strait in the 1870s, including pearl shelling and missionary activity, Koey Ngurtai's ritual status was again transformed. This paper reports on these archaeological investigations and historicises Koey Ngurtai as a ritual land‐and‐seascape.

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The Lapita expansion took Austronesian seafaring peoples with distinctive pottery eastward from the Bismarck Archipelago to western Polynesia during the late second millennium BC, marking the first stage in the settlement of Oceania. Here it is shown that a parallel process also carried Lapita pottery and people many hundreds of kilometres westward along the southern shore of Papua New Guinea. The key site is Hopo, now 4.5km inland owing to the progradation of coastal sand dunes, but originally on the sea edge. Pottery and radiocarbon dates indicate Lapita settlement in this location c. 600 BC, and suggest that the long-distance maritime networks linking the entire southern coast of Papua New Guinea in historical times may trace their origin to this period.

The Caution Bay archaeological project on the south coast of mainland Papua New Guinea has excavated 122 sites over a 9 km 2 area. Lapita ceramics appear at a number of sites at c. 2900 cal. BP. Here we present the results of excavations at Moiapu 3, a site that helps define the end of the dentate-stamped Lapita phase of this region. It is suggested that the decline and ultimate cessation of dentate stamping related to a loss of symbolism during a period of major socioeconomic readjustment and innovation.