Archaeological investigations at Waredaru and the origins of the Keipte Kuyumen clan estate, upper Kikori River, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

In 2008-2009, the patriarch of the Keipte Kuyumen clan of the upper Kikori River near the Highlands foothills, Papua New Guinea, requested that archaeological excavations be undertaken at the site of Waredaru in a dense rainforest setting, an ancestral village only known from oral traditions. According to these oral traditions, Waredaru was a sago adze-head (‘sago-pounder’) manufacturing centre, and it is at this village that the Keipte Kuyumen underwent an important ceremony by which they obtained their clan lands. This paper reports on these archaeological excavations, enabling the rare dating of the origins of the Keipte Kuyumen as a landed social group.