Archaeological Work in the Arawe Islands, West New Britain Provincey Papua New Guinea, December 1989 February 1990

Abstract

The archaeological investigations in the Arawe Islands off the south coast of West New Britain carried out at the end of 1989 and the beginning of this year form the continuation of a project initiated in 1985 as part of the Lapita Homeland Project. Over three seasons of fieldwork we have built up a picture of the archaeological record over the last 6000 years, which can be combined and contrasted with information gained through interview and mapping of the form of society existing in the last hundred years. The results and finds from our latest season of work add considerably to our knowledge of the sequences of material culture in the area and the formation processes of the archaeological record. Our present excavations have also revealed a whole series of deposits with preserved organic remains which were hitherto unexpected and add a new dimension to our understanding of prehistoric subsistence. Because of the unexpected nature of some of these finds it appeared to us that rapid, preliminary publication of the results was worthwhile. This report is a progress report in a number of senses. First, the data from this and previous field seasons have not been fully analysed yet and more details of sites and their contents will be published shortly. Also the field aspect of the project has not yet been completed, with another two field seasons planned which will add to and alter the results already obtained. The Arawes project is also part of larger investigations covering three areas of West New Britain, funded by an ARC Program Grant awarded to Specht and Gosden in 1988 (reports on other aspects of the project are contained in Specht et al. 1988; previous reports on the Arawes are to be found in Gosden 1989; and Gosden et al. 1989). Over the last three field seasons we have discovered evidence relating to the last 6000 years of human settlement in the Arawe region. By far the bulk of the evidence has come from the Lapita period dating to between 3500 and c. 2000 Be with lesser amounts of material from later periods. All the excavated material from the present season derived from Lapita contexts and this will be described first.