Excavating and interpreting ancestral action: Stories from the subsurface of Orokolo Bay, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

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 re-construct 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 ancestors' 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.

Combining Oral Traditions and Bayesian Chronological Modeling to Understand Village Development in the Gulf of Papua (Papua New Guinea)

“…Some of the southernmost zones of the site were the subject of test excavations in 1976 which yielded a single date of 410 ± 80 BP (ANU-2181), providing an age range of 554-295 cal BP at 95.4% probability using the calibration methods outlined in our Methods (Rhoads 1994). The village is the focal point of local migration and origin traditions (Williams 1940(Williams : 28, 1976Urwin 2019b), and it features in the migration stories of people inhabiting the entire (125 km-long) geographical span of the Eleman language family (see Kakare and Karava 1975: 39;Skelly and David 2017: 174-175).…”

“…For the most part, origin stories are set in a timeless cosmological past, at a time when the lou haera formed the world and regional landscape features. Yet Eleman speakers believe the spirits of the lou haera are still present and active in the landscape today (Williams 1940: 137-138;Urwin 2019b). Stories about the lou haera explain how the beaches and mountain ranges were formed, and how ceremonies (such as the famed hevehe ceremony of Orokolo Bay) and key social practices (such as long-distance sea voyaging and exchange) came about.…”

“…It is worth noting that the "mythical" and "human" epochs overlap in some stories. Popo, for example, is known through genealogies and migration stories, but is also an origin site for aspects of ceremonial knowledge and material culture (Williams 1940(Williams : 28, 1976Kakare and Karava 1975: 39;Skelly and David 2017: 174-175;Urwin 2019b).…”

“…Popo is the archetypal Eleman migration village and the place anchors local narratives of social change (e.g., transitioning from "wandering" to a large relatively permanent settlement). Further, Popo comprised various zones ("estates"), each of which have subtly different social histories and oral traditions associated with them (see Urwin 2019b). As such, the place was clearly a good candidate for archaeological excavation across multiple zones, with the aim of unravelling how Papuan Gulf villages were built through time.…”

“…300 years or "fewer than fifteen generations" (see also Sheppard et al 2004;Barker et al 2015;Kirch 2018). Another possible explanation, which Urwin (2019b) has explored elsewhere, is that oral traditions are partly derived from local forms of landscape knowledge, including of subsurface pottery deposits and distinctive lenses of black (iron) sands. In other words, "memories and knowledge of the past are not only passed down from generation to generation through stories but are dynamically (re)constructed and maintained in relation to the contents of the (sub)surface" (Urwin 2019b: 299).…”