The 2008-2009 Excavations at the Sac Locality, Reber-Rakival Lapita Site, Watom Island, Papua New Guinea

Petchey, Peter; Buckley, Hallie R.; Walter, Richard; Anson,; Kinaston, Rebecca

doi:10.7152/jipa.v40i0.14928

“…Our dates from the four human teeth from Matenkupkum address a stark lack of direct dates on human fossils from the Bismarck Archipelago, with the only others being available from the Lapita site at Reber-Rakival on Watom Island, off the coast of East New Britain [ 93 , 94 ]. The collagen yields ranged between 1 and 3% and all C/N ratios fell well within normal values (3.2: normal range 3.2–3.6).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fossils, fish and tropical forests: prehistoric human adaptations on the island frontiers of Oceania

Roberts

¹

,

Douka

²

,

Tromp

³

et al. 2022

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Oceania is a key region for studying human dispersals, adaptations and interactions with other hominin populations. Although archaeological evidence now reveals occupation of the region by approximately 65–45 000 years ago, its human fossil record, which has the best potential to provide direct insights into ecological adaptations and population relationships, has remained much more elusive. Here, we apply radiocarbon dating and stable isotope approaches to the earliest human remains so far excavated on the islands of Near and Remote Oceania to explore the chronology and diets of the first preserved human individuals to step across these Pacific frontiers. We demonstrate that the oldest human (or indeed hominin) fossil outside of the mainland New Guinea-Aru area dates to approximately 11 800 years ago. Furthermore, although these early sea-faring populations have been associated with a specialized coastal adaptation, we show that Late Pleistocene–Holocene humans living on islands in the Bismarck Archipelago and in Vanuatu display a persistent reliance on interior tropical forest resources. We argue that local tropical habitats, rather than purely coasts or, later, arriving domesticates, should be emphasized in discussions of human diets and cultural practices from the onset of our species' arrival in this part of the world. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Tropical forests in the deep human past’.

show abstract

“…The SAC site on Watom, off the coast of New Britain (Petchey et al 2016 and references therein), and the Sigatoka Dune Site on Viti Levu in Fiji (Marshall et al 2000) are the only other major Lapita and immediately post-Lapita open funerary sites in Melanesia where information on funerary practice has been published from more than a handful of burials. At the Watom site, as at Teouma, a range of isotopic and skeletal pathology studies have also been carried out (see Petchey et al 2016 for the most recent summary of work there). Also of note is a large series of second millennium CE burials investigated on the Polynesian Outlier island of Taumako in the Solomons (Leach and Davidson 2008:133-253; see also Buckley 2001;Kinaston and Buckley 2017).…”

Section: The Archaeology Of Deathmentioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeologies of Island Melanesia: Current Approaches to Landscapes, Exchange and Practice

Urwin

¹

2020

Australian Archaeology

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The SAC site on Watom, off the coast of New Britain (Petchey et al 2016 and references therein), and the Sigatoka Dune Site on Viti Levu in Fiji (Marshall et al 2000) are the only other major Lapita and immediately post-Lapita open funerary sites in Melanesia where information on funerary practice has been published from more than a handful of burials. At the Watom site, as at Teouma, a range of isotopic and skeletal pathology studies have also been carried out (see Petchey et al 2016 for the most recent summary of work there). Also of note is a large series of second millennium CE burials investigated on the Polynesian Outlier island of Taumako in the Solomons (Leach and Davidson 2008:133-253; see also Buckley 2001;Kinaston and Buckley 2017).…”

Section: The Archaeology Of Deathmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a history of Melanesian archaeological practices

Spriggs¹

2019

Archaeologies of Island Melanesia: Current Approaches to Landscapes, Exchange and Practice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the study of history.-Cicero, Orator, 120 10 Archaeologies of Island Melanesia terra australis 51 This paper will not delve into the history of the wider theoretical frameworks that we use to organise our data, the subject being too vast to cover here, but it will illustrate the point made above about the availability of particular scientific practices and techniques. It will provide a few select case studies concerning when particular techniques were first available, when they were first deployed in Pacific archaeology more generally and when in the archaeology of the Melanesian region in particular. Certain kinds of evidence-based discussions were not possible until particular technical advances in practice in archaeological science were deployed; some questions simply could not be asked. Radiocarbon dating is the obvious place to start the discussion, and then the lead is given by the three themes for the volume identified by the editors. I will draw illustrations from each of these in turn, before using this history to evaluate the networked or isolated status of archaeology in our region at particular times. The themes lend themselves to the examination of particular facets of our discipline. The first, 'Landscapes and complexities', requires an engagement with settlement patterns and landscape archaeology. The second, 'Exchange and contacts', relies on characterisation and provenance studies of such artefacts as stone adzes, pottery and obsidian flakes. I will use this as my primary 'case study' and cover the topic in most detail. The final theme, 'Practices', involves such topics as manufacturing sequences, environmental reconstruction and funerary (bio)archaeology. Has there been a slow unfolding of knowledge or were there particular, perhaps serendipitous, moments that have shaped the course of archaeological investigation? The radiocarbon revolution One such defining moment was surely the invention of radiocarbon dating by Willard Libby and colleagues in the late 1940s, becoming potentially available to archaeologists throughout the world around 1949-50. It was very quickly deployed by Pacific archaeologists, with Bishop Museum archaeologist Kenneth Emory getting the first date back from a Polynesian archaeological site in 1950, the Kuli'ou'ou rock shelter on O'ahu, Hawaii. It was published originally on 21 September 1951 in the second date list from Libby's laboratory at the University of Chicago, along with two Australian archaeological samples collected by Edmund Gill from Victorian middens (Libby 1951). Melanesia was not far behind with Edward Winslow Gifford publishing multiple dates from two significant Fijian sites he had excavated in 1947 and judiciously kept the charcoal from (Gifford 1952, 1955, as anticipated in his earlier monograph [1951:203]), and then from his 1952 New Caledonia excavations, including at the site of Lap...

show abstract

The 2008-2009 Excavations at the Sac Locality, Reber-Rakival Lapita Site, Watom Island, Papua New Guinea

Abstract: ABSTRACT

Cited by 7 publications

References 8 publications

Fossils, fish and tropical forests: prehistoric human adaptations on the island frontiers of Oceania

Fossils, fish and tropical forests: prehistoric human adaptations on the island frontiers of Oceania

Archaeologies of Island Melanesia: Current Approaches to Landscapes, Exchange and Practice

Towards a history of Melanesian archaeological practices

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About