Archaeology in Port Moresby and the Southern Lowlands of Papua New Guinea: Intellectual and Historical Contexts for Caution Bay

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Archaeology

Until the Caution Bay project, limited archaeological research in the Port Moresby region and, more broadly, along the entire southern lowlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG) had been almost exclusively restricted to sites of the past 2000 years, representing that period after the arrival of ceramicists (Figure 2.1; Chapter 1: Figure 1.1). This limited window of time covered by the archaeological evidence had critical impacts for how we have since come to understand the long-term history of the entire region, and thus for how the Caution Bay finds themselves came to be slotted-in to a predetermined cultural pattern incorporating hypothesized ceramic transactions along vast distances of coastline. Here we revisit this archaeological setting, as it sets the how our understanding of the long-term history of the southern lowlands needs to be rethought in light of the Caution Bay results, and, on the other hand, for how some of these new results confirm other pre-existing patterns.