Chapter 4: History of Investigations

Abstract

The northern half of New Guinea was the scene of major scientific field investigations prior to World War I. However, foreign interest in the Sepik region faded once the war in Europe had begun. Between the wars, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and others did notable work in the area, but coastal villages were largely ignored by anthropologists and others until the late 1980s. Even today, far too little has been documented about daily life and customs in villages on the Sepik coast. On the other hand, the collections-based research begun at the Field Museum of Natural History in the late 1980s together with several seasons of fieldwork at Aitape and elsewhere during the 1990s, as reported in this monograph, have helped clarify some of the parameters of human settlement and prehistory on this coastline.