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Human Pleistocene adaptations in the tropical island Pacific: recent evidence from New Ireland, a Greater Australian outlier

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Jim Allen ,
Chris Gosden  and
J. Peter White
Jim Allen
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3083, Australia
Chris Gosden
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3083, Australia
J. Peter White
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
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Extract

The late Pleistocene colonization of Greater Australia by humans by c. 40,0130 b.p. is now generally accepted. This landmass, which comprised at periods of lower sea levels Tasmania, Australia and Papua New Guinea, has now produced sites with rich and diverse sequences extending towards or now mainly beyond 30,000 b.p., in the present arid country of western New South Wales (Barbetti & Allen 1972), in southwest Western Australia (Pearce & Barbetti 1981), in the Papua New Guinea Highlands (Gillieson & Mountain 1983), and recently even in Tasmania (Cosgrove 1989).

Prior to 1985, with the exception of an 11,000 b.p. date for occupation in Misisjl Cave on New Britain (Specht et al. 1981), the tropical lowlands of Papua New Guinea and its attendant nearer Melanesian island chain had remained a blank on the region’s map of Pleistocene human expansion.

Type
Special section
Information
Antiquity , Volume 63 , Issue 240 , September 1989 , pp. 548 - 561
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1989

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