Pleistocene colonisation of the Bismarck Archipelago: new evidence from West New Britain

Abstract

The geological and archaeological signatures al the site of Kupona na Dari on the Willaumez Peninsula, West New Britain provide important new data about human colonisation of the Bismarck Archipelago. Analyses of the stratigraphy and weathering of paleosols and manuporls. when combined with fission track. radiocarbon, and luminescence dating, indicate that the site was first occupied at about 35-45.000 years ago. During the whole peri(Kl of occupation, people were exposed to a series of volcanic events which varied in terms of tbeir potential impacts on the local environment. A PIXE-PIGME characterisation study of the obsidian artefacts at tbe site demonstrates that from the earliest period stone resources were acquired from outcrops located across a relatively large region. When compared with Early-Middle Holocene assemblages from nearby localities, the Pleistocene stone tool technology differs in only a few minor respects. From this analysis we infer tbat groups were mobile in both periods, but slightly different strategies for tbe procurement and maintenance of tbe stone tools were required for tbe more extensive ranges exploited during the Pleistocene. The inter-disciplinary study of Kupona na Dari concludes that colonisation comprised a long term process of settling into this volcanically active environment. Due to variability in the environments tbat people encountered, the pattern of colonisation may not have been similar across the entire Bismarck Archipelago, RT: Anthropology. Tbe Australian Museum,

Impact of Human Colonization on the Landscape: A View from the Western Pacific

“…The evidence from Kupona Na dari indicates relatively high mobility manifest in the wide range of stone resources utilized for the production of stone tools (Torrence et al 2004) and is consistent with the evidence from Yombon (Pavlides 2004). Yombon is an inland open site located on the south side of the Whiteman Mountain Range, 2 days walk from the coast and occupied by 35,000 B.P.…”

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Fire Mountains of the Islands : A History of Volcanic Eruptions and Disaster Management in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands

“…They are part of a separate tectonic setting to the islands of Near Oceania and relate more closely to the islands of Vanuatu. 12 Torrence et al (2004) and Ballard (2010). that has less than one per cent of the world's land mass, we nd almost 20 per cent of the world's languages -roughly 1,100 mutually unintelligible tongues which average only 2,000-3,000 speakers each'.…”