Prehistoric Occupation of Loloata Island Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Loloata Island is a small island lying immediately to the south of Motupore Island in Bootless Bay, 15 km southeast of Port Moresby. Like Motupore Island it is elongated, steep and narrow, being an extension of the same mainland strike ridge which was truncated during the postglacial rise in sea level about 6000 years ago (Swadling and Pain l980:62). While a considerable amount of research has been carried out on the prehistory and archaeology of Motupore Island, (Allen 1977a and b, 1984; Groube and Sassoon 1984), little attention has been paid to the archaeology of Loloata Island. This is partly because much of any pre- existing midden would have been removed for the building of a holiday resort complex on the island, and the likely inference that the midden on Loloata was a smaller replica of that on Motupore. In 1976 during the launching of a double hulled canoe built on the island, three human skeletons were uncovered. These were excavated by P. Swadling and her colleagues from the Papua New Guinea National Museum (National Museum Site ANT file.) More recently a small collection was made of ground stone axes found as a deflation layer on a section of the island's gravelly coastline (Worthing and White 1986). Worthing and White commented that the pottery on Loloata Island appeared to be similar to that on Motupore, but this comment presumably referred to the abundant water-worn pottery fragments found on the beach and sand spit. They noted however (p. 98) that despite the nature of the pottery, ethnohistorical evidence pointed to links between Loloata Island and the nearby mainland village of Tubusereia, and animosity between the inhabitants of Motupore and Loloata Islands. Oral history reported by Oram (1977) is equivocal on this matter, suggesting that the Western Motuan inhabitants of Motupore Island were forced, by people of Tubusereia, to flee their island about 250 years ago, and that this invasion came via Loloata Island. The role of any Loloata Island inhabitants at that time is however unclear.