Glenn Summerhayes

Human Adaptation and Plant Use in Highland New Guinea 49,000 to 44,000 Years Ago

New Guineas Ancient Colonies Isolated by water, Australia and New Guinea were some of the last major parts of the world colonized by modern humans. Summerhayes et al. (p. 78; see the Perspective by Gosden) describe an archaeological site in the highlands of New Guinea that sheds light on this migration. The record extends back to nearly 50,000 years ago and thus represents one of the earliest known records. Nuts and yams were widely consumed, and the variety of stone tools discovered implies that the early humans may have cleared forest patches to promote the growth of useful plants. Archaeological sites in the New Guinea Highlands trace the arrival of modern humans to nearly 50,000 years ago. After their emergence by 200,000 years before the present in Africa, modern humans colonized the globe, reaching Australia and New Guinea by 40,000 to 50,000 years ago. Understanding how humans lived and adapted to the range of environments in these areas has been difficult because well-preserved settlements are scarce. Data from the New Guinea Highlands (at an elevation of ~2000 meters) demonstrate the exploitation of the endemic nut Pandanus and yams in archaeological sites dated to 49,000 to 36,000 years ago, which are among the oldest human sites in this region. The sites also contain stone tools thought to be used to remove trees, which suggests that the early inhabitants cleared forest patches to promote the growth of useful plants.

Pleistocene occupation of New Guinea's highland and subalpine environments

Abstract New Guineas mountains provide an important case study for understanding early modern human environmental adaptability and early developments leading to agriculture. Evidence is presented showing that human colonization pre-dated 35ka (ka = thousands of uncalibrated radiocarbon years before present) and was accompanied by landscape modification using fire. Sorties into the subalpine zone may have occurred before the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM), and perhaps contributed to megafaunal extinction. Humans persisted in the intermontane valleys through the LGM and expanded rapidly into the subalpine on climatic warming, when burning and clearance may have retarded vegetation re-colonization. Plant food use dates from at least 31ka, confirming that some of New Guineas distinctive agricultural practices date to the earliest millennia of human presence.

The Pottery Trail From Southeast Asia to Remote Oceania

ABSTRACT A set of unique circumstances created a durable archaeological record of ancient human migration from Southeast Asia to Remote Oceania, useful as a global model of population dispersals. Finely made pottery with a very specific decorative signature is found in multiple locations in the Philippines and western Oceania, constituting a shared cultural trait that can be traced, both geographically and chronologically, to a specific homeland. Especially important for human migration models, this decorated pottery is linked to a system of cultural origin, so the spread as a diagnostic tradition can be related to the spread of a cultural group. Even more important, this decorated pottery appeared with the first peopling of the remote Pacific Islands, thus providing a clear and datable chronicle of where and when people spread from one location to another. The pottery trail points to a homeland in the Philippine Neolithic about 2000–1800 BC, followed by expansion into the remote Mariana Islands 1500 BC, and then slightly later into the Lapita world of Melanesia and Polynesia.

Far Western, Western, and Eastern Lapita: A Re-Evaluation

Lapita assemblages from the western Pacific have been regionalized into stylistic boundaries or provinces, known as Far Western, Western, and Eastern, and it has been thought that differences between them are partly temporal (Far Western) and mainly a result of isolation after the initial colonization of the area (Western versus Eastern). This paper assesses these constructions by comparing dentate decorated Lapita pottery from assemblages in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea, with assemblages further afield. It is argued here that differences between these style provinces are primarily due to temporal factors and that the terms Far Western, Western, and Eastern should be replaced by Early, Middle, and Late Lapita.

A jade gouge from Emirau Island, Papua New Guinea (Early Lapita context, 3300 BP): a unique jadeitite

A small stone artifact fashioned as a wood-carving gouge, discovered during an archaeological excavation on Emirau Island, Bismarck Archipelago, Papua New Guinea, has been determined to consist of jadeitite – jadeite jade. It is very unusual with respect to both pyroxene composition and minor mineral constituents. Pyroxene compositions lie essentially along the jadeite–aegirine join: Jd 94 Ae 6 to Jd 63 Ae 36 , and without any coexisting omphacite. This contrasts with Jd-Di or Jd-Aug compositional trends commonly observed in jadeitites worldwide. Paragonite and albite occur in veins and cavities with minor titanite, epidote-allanite, and zircon, an assemblage seen in a few jadeitites. Surprisingly, some titanite contains up to 6 wt% Nb 2 O 5 with only trace Ta and a single grain of a Y-Nb phase (interpreted as fergusonite) is present; these are unique for jadeitite. A possible source is along the Torare River in northeast Papua, Indonesia, from which samples of “chloromelanite” (actually jadeitite) were collected by C.E.A. Wichmann in 1903 near Humboldt Bay along with stone adzes fashioned from the same material.

On the Rat Trail in Near Oceania: Applying the Commensal Model to the Question of the Lapita Colonization

Abstract: Presented here are the most recent results of our studies of Rattus exulans, one of the main commensal animals transported across the Pacific by Lapita peoples and their descendants. We sampled several locations in Near Oceania to determine distribution of R. exulans mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplotypes in the region. We also obtained data regarding distribution of other introduced Rattus species to several islands in the Bismarck Archipelago. Our results suggest that there were multiple introductions of R. exulans to the region, which may suggest a more complex history for Lapita populations in Near Oceania.

Impact of human colonization on the landscape: A view from the Western Pacific

Abstract: In this paper we review and assess the impact of colonizing peoples on their landscape by focusing on two very different colonizing processes within the western Pacific. The first is the initial human colonization of New Guinea 45,000–40,000 years ago by hunter-foraging populations; the second is the colonization of smaller offshore islands of the Bismarck Archipelago, some 3,300 years ago, by peoples argued to have practiced agriculture: two different colonizing processes by two different groups of peoples with two different social structures practicing two very different subsistence strategies. The impact of these two colonization processes on the environment is compared and contrasted, and commonalities identified for the archaeological and vegetation record.

Earliest pottery on New Guinea mainland reveals austronesian influences in highland environments 3000 years ago

Austronesian speaking peoples left Southeast Asia and entered the Western Pacific c.4000-3000 years ago, continuing on to colonise Remote Oceania for the first time, where they became the ancestral populations of Polynesians. Understanding the impact of these peoples on the mainland of New Guinea before they entered Remote Oceania has eluded archaeologists. New research from the archaeological site of Wañelek in the New Guinea Highlands has broken this silence. Petrographic and geochemical data from pottery and new radiocarbon dating demonstrates that Austronesian influences penetrated into the highland interior by 3000 years ago. One potsherd was manufactured along the northeast coast of New Guinea, whereas others were manufactured from inland materials. These findings represent the oldest securely dated pottery from an archaeological context on the island of New Guinea. Additionally, the pottery comes from the interior, suggesting the movements of people and technological practices, as well as objects at this time. The antiquity of the Wañelek pottery is coincident with the expansion of Lapita pottery in the Western Pacific. Such occupation also occurs at the same time that changes have been identified in subsistence strategies in the archaeological record at Kuk Swamp suggesting a possible link between the two.

Persistent tropical foraging in the highlands of terminal Pleistocene/Holocene New Guinea

The terminal Pleistocene/Holocene boundary (approximately 12–8 thousand years ago) represented a major ecological threshold for humans, both as a significant climate transition and due to the emergence of agriculture around this time. In the highlands of New Guinea, climatic and environmental changes across this period have been highlighted as potential drivers of one of the earliest domestication processes in the world. We present a terminal Pleistocene/Holocene palaeoenvironmental record (12–0 thousand years ago ) of carbon and oxygen isotopes in small mammal tooth enamel from the site of Kiowa. The results show that tropical highland forest and open mosaics, and the human subsistence focused on these environments, remained stable throughout the period in which agriculture emerged at nearby Kuk Swamp. This suggests the persistence of tropical forest foraging among highland New Guinea groups and highlights that agriculture in the region was not adopted as a unilinear or dramatic, forced event but was locally and historically contingent.

Edge-Ground and Waisted Axes in the Western Pacific Islands: Implications for an Example from the Yaeyama Islands, Southernmost Japan

A flaked, ground, and waisted axe, discovered on Iriomote Island in the Yaeyama group, southernmost Japan, appears to be a unique find in Japanese prehistory. Its resemblance to waisted, edge-ground axes which, in Australia, are of Pleistocene age, and to similar artifacts of early Holocene age in New Guinea, as well as potential antecedents in the Pleistocene edge-ground axes of Honshu, invites questions about its significance. This is especially so because the Yaeyama Islands are regarded currently as having been first occupied by people during the Shimotabaru phase of Neolithic culture, beginning about 3800 B.P. Comparison with similar western Pacific artifacts, and consideration of the eustatic history of the Yaeyamas, suggest that the Iriomote example might be of early Holocene age, although its origin within the late Holocene cannot be excluded. The find raises questions about the human history of the southern Ryukyu groups that demand further research.