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 be...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2015-09, Vol.10 (9), p.e0134497
Main Authors: Gaffney, Dylan, Summerhayes, Glenn R, Ford, Anne, Scott, James M, Denham, Tim, Field, Judith, Dickinson, William R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Ancient pottery
Archaeological sites
Archaeology
Art galleries & museums
Austronesian languages
Ceramics
Charcoal
Coasts
Culture
Domestication
Editors
Geochemistry
Highlands
Historic sites
History
Humans
Islands
Material culture
New Guinea
Oceania
Pottery
Radiocarbon dating
Radiometric Dating
Silence
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0134497