We report here on field and laboratory investigations motivated by several complementary issues in anthropology and museum studies that began in 1990 along 350 km of shoreline between the Indonesian border and the small village of Kaiep (or Kep) on the Sepik coast of Papua New Guinea. We also draw on additional information gleaned from the ethnographic material culture collections housed at the Field Museum purchased locally by Museum curators and others a century ago at villages on the 710 km of coast between Madang and the international border with Indonesia.

The partitioning of people by language is perhaps more extreme on the Sepik coast than anywhere else on earth. Shortly before World War I, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago acquired ethnographic material culture collections from a number of village communities there. Computer-aided social network analysis of these collections suggests that isolation by distance, rather than by language, has patterned their cultural relationships. Furthermore, it would be difficult for archaeologists to successfully “reverse engineer” existing language boundaries along this coastline given only observed differences in historic material culture.

Given what is now known or may be reasonably inferred about the geomorphological development of the northern shoreline of New Guinea—the second-largest island in the world with a land area of about 808,000 km²—this island has played a previously unexpected role in the prehistory of the Pacific, first as “barrier” and then later as “bridge” (or perhaps, more accurately, as “voyaging corridor”) between island Southeast Asia and Oceania. However, our field investigations since 1990 have shown us that people living on this tectonically unstable coastline have developed specific ways to handle the challenges of living in such a hazardous and changing environment. One of these strategies is the locally well-established institution of inherited friendship (more commonly referred to in the anthropological literature as “trade partnership”). The second, as yet still insufficiently documented on this coast, is the transgenerational management of resources.

The northern half of New Guinea was the scene of major scientific field investigations prior to World War I. However, foreign interest in the Sepik region faded once the war in Europe had begun. Between the wars, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and others did notable work in the area, but coastal villages were largely ignored by anthropologists and others until the late 1980s. Even today, far too little has been documented about daily life and customs in villages on the Sepik coast. On the other hand, the collections-based research begun at the Field Museum of Natural History in the late 1980s together with several seasons of fieldwork at Aitape and elsewhere during the 1990s, as reported in this monograph, have helped clarify some of the parameters of human settlement and prehistory on this coastline.

Between March 1993 and February 1994, archaeological site surveys were conducted in and around coastal and nearby offshore island communities in the area between the Serra Hills west of Aitape and the town of Wewak east of there. No excavations were carried out. Most of the surface collections made came from sites on Tendanye (Tarawai) and Walifu (Walis) islands off the coast of Wewak; Tumleo, Ali, Seleo, and Angel islands off the coast at Aitape; and the mainland Serra district west of Sissano Lagoon. We found an impressive diversity of previously unknown and unrecorded prehistoric pottery styles both locally in the Aitape and Tandanye-Walifu areas and along the entire coastal region surveyed. For both the Serra and Aitape areas, it was possible to use the evidence recovered to develop plausible ceramic sequences, and it can be argued that all the ceramic industries, extant and archaeological, now known for this coastal region are alike derived historically from the same red-slip tradition, which on present evidence was first established on Tumleo Island about 2,000 years ago.

During September and October 1996, we completed the first archaeological excavations done in the Aitape area on the Sepik coast. The ceramic finds from our excavations on hillcrests at Aitape (which are an uplifted Pliocene/Miocene coral reef formation) suggest that human occupation in this part of the coast dates back at least to the mid-first millennium AD when Sumalo Ware (Chapters 7 and 14) was being locally made. Additionally, our excavations on Tumleo Island recovered sufficient ceramic evidence in stratigraphic position to reconstruct a fairly definitive pottery sequence for this part of New Guinea covering the last 1,500–2,000 years.

Using a notational code having three levels of inclusiveness (attributes, attribute themes, and motifs), four stylistically distinct ceramic wares of evident chronological significance can be delineated in the Aitape area: Nyapin, Sumalo, Aiser, and Wain. The robustness of this stylistic sequence can be confirmed using two alternative computer-based algorithms: the software package Network 4.5.0.2 developed by Fluxus Technology, Ltd, for estimating all possible shortest and least complex phylogenetic trees in a dataset and the network software packages Ucinet 6.207 and NetDraw 2.083. Based on these analyses, it is reasonable to infer that people in this area of the Sepik coast have been using locally made pottery for at least 1,500–2,000 years belonging to a single, distinct, and stylistically evolving local ceramic tradition.

The shapes of prehistoric pottery vessels excavated in 1996 on Tumleo Island and at Aitape are described and compared with historic and modern pots from this area of New Guinea held in the ethnological collections of the Field Museum of Natural History. Four basic shapes are described. Two of these, platters and bowls with carinations, are not seen in the historic and contemporary ceramic collections. Additionally, a new shape is seen among historic but not contemporary vessels. Some decorative attributes used on prehistoric Wain Ware vessels occur also on Tumleo pots collected before World War I, but the decorations seen on most modern vessels are highly variable and cannot be readily interpreted as modern variations on older decorative themes. Uses are assigned to the various vessel shapes, and techniques of pottery making in historic and modern times are described on the basis of observations made by various investigators working in the area from 1902 through 1998. It is concluded that the same uses for pottery vessels as well as similar pottery-making techniques probably existed in prehistoric times, as in historic and in modern times.

Judging by the ethnographic collections at the Field Museum of Natural History, ceramic and wooden platters and shallow open bowls on the Sepik coast are not just analogous types of objects, but are alike derived historically from Lapita prototypes. Archaeological and ethnographic evidence from the Sepik coast documents the evident survival in the western Pacific of a stylized symbol or motif—the so-called Lapita face—on pottery and possibly other kinds of material items (such as wooden bowls and serving platters) for at least 3,300 years.

Human and nonhuman faunal remains from small deposits at three sites, NGRP 16, 23, and 46, were analyzed to determine the species and minimum numbers of individuals represented, and to investigate the processes of natural and human-induced modification that resulted in the extensive fragmentation of the human remains. Taphonomic analysis indicates perimortem modification of the human remains during disarticulation and processing as well as pig predation. The types and locations of tool marks, fractures, and fracture products are quantified and described, and quantitative taphonomic profiles for the human remains are compared to human and nonhuman bone assemblages from middens and normative burial contexts on Fiji. The NGRP assemblages do not taphonomically match other assemblages believed to represent incidents of cannibalism, but this does not rule out the consumption of human flesh or decomposition fluids. We reject the notion of a universal taphonomic signature of cannibalism, and find it more constructive to examine these data in the context of archaeologically and ethnographically documented mortuary practice in the region. We propose that the assemblages from these sites represent secondary deposits of human remains that were part of multistage mortuary programs that included the curation of specific skeletal elements, as documented in ethnographic accounts of mortuary ritual across Melanesia and far into antiquity. This study presented an interesting test of how we identify and interpret evidence of mortuary behavior when we encounter assemblages of human remains that do not fit the traditional concept of a burial or mortuary feature as most archaeologists know it.

Invertebrate remains recovered during excavations on the Sepik coast of Papua New Guinea in 1996 were analyzed. The main excavations took place in the Aitape hills, ∼2 km inland from the current coastline, and on Tumleo Island, ∼3 km off the coast. Remains of 72 mollusk, one arthropod, and two echinoderm species were identified. Forty-six of these are marine, 19 are from freshwater or brackish water and mangrove habitats, and 11 are terrestrial. A complete list and figures of most species are given. Analysis of the recovered remains suggests that in the Aitape hills, mollusk species gathered in freshwater and brackish water habitats were exploited extensively, while marine species played an insignificant role as a food source. Conversely, on Tumleo Island, most freshwater species found on the mainland are absent. Only a limited number of species inhabiting the interface of salt water and freshwater, such as mangrove swamps and estuaries, are present in considerable quantities. In addition, marine species were likely to have played a larger role as a food resource. Artifacts made from invertebrate remains are described and pictured.

Petrographic study of the temper sands in fifty prehistoric potsherds from the mainland coast and nearby offshore islands of northwestern Papua New Guinea, and comparison of the temper sands with modern coastal sands of the region have shown that temper grains were derived from largely volcanogenic bedrock of the Torricelli Mountains and associated ranges lying inland from the coast. Temper aggregates include both natural tempers embedded in clay bodies and manually added tempers of both fluvial and beach origin, but all the tempers are generically similar, being composed of varied arrays of mineral grains and rock fragments with broadly common origins. Seven temper groups are defined petrographically on the basis of sand texture and mineralogy, and most or all can be identified from megascopic examination of sherds without microscopic analysis. Temper analysis provides no evidence for importation of pottery into the region from elsewhere, nor do any potsherds studied to date from the Bismarck Archipelago contain tempers indicative of ceramic transfer eastward from northwestern Papua New Guinea.

Explaining the modern cultural and linguistic diversity present on the Sepik coast requires an understanding of long-term interaction on both a regional and a broader Melanesian scale. To assess the nature of prehistoric social networks, 438 obsidian specimens and 326 ceramic sherds collected from the coast and brought to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago were subjected to chemical analysis by either laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry or portable X-ray fluorescence. The results indicate that people living on the Sepik coast received obsidian from sources in the Admiralty group and on New Britain continuously for the past 2,000 years, and possibly as far back as the mid-Holocene. While obsidian from New Britain is more abundant in contexts believed to pre-date ∼2,000 BP, the more proximal Admiralty sources dominate later assemblages. Ceramic exchange may have begun between production centers on the coast as early as 2,000 years ago, and spanned the length of the coast by at the latest 1,000 BP. Regional differences in the degree and scope of exchange relationships evident in the recent past may have very ancient roots—the present data suggest that social networks on the coast were comparable to those ethnographically documented, and that sometimes quite proximal sites obtained materials from different sources or networks of exchange partners.

Radiocarbon determinations suggest that the earliest pottery thus far identified on the Sepik coast, which we have called Nyapin Ware after a locality on Tumleo Island, dates back to the interval 2,000–1,500 BP (95% highest posterior density [HPD]). A more precise estimate can be made for the Sumalo Ware as currently known in the Aitape area. Analysis suggests that Sumalo Ware was locally in use over a period of between 5 and 270 years (95% HPD) beginning some time in the interval 1,400–1,200 BP (95% HPD). Additionally, a local marine ΔR of 1,005 ± 80 can be estimated for this location.

The investigations described in this monograph have shown us that the Sepik coast is an appealing place where people have devised strikingly effective ways of handling the challenges of living in such a hazardous and changing environment. Contrary to the expectations of some before our fieldwork began on this coast in 1990, we have recovered no evidence linking Lapita pottery in the Bismarck Archipelago directly with early ceramics in mainland Southeast Asia, Taiwan, the Philippines, or Indonesia. Nor have we found anything confirming that the craft of pottery making in northern New Guinea is older than Lapita Ware. However, we have found a range of previously unrecorded prehistoric wares, both locally in the Aitape area and elsewhere along the coast east and west of Aitape. It has been possible to use the ceramic evidence recovered to propose tentative local pottery sequences for both the Aitape and the Serra localities. Additionally, it seems likely that all the ceramic wares, extant and prehistoric, now documented for this coast from Aitape to Jayapura in Papua, Indonesia, are alike derived historically from the same red-slip tradition—which on present evidence was established on Tumleo, for example, around 2,000 years ago if not before. Our sourcing results for both ceramics and obsidian suggest that communities on this coast, as well as those on the nearby offshore islands, have been in contact with people elsewhere in Melanesia at least for the past 2,000 years, and quite possibly for the past 6,000 or more years.