Motupore Island Excavation 2016

It has been an eventful last couple of months. In June I spent a couple of weeks in Papua New Guinea (PNG) taking part in an excavation on Motupore Island. The day after arriving back in New Zealand I was off to the New Zealand Archaeological Association conference in Blenheim (which I have covered in recent posts on this blog). Since getting back from conference I've found out that my thesis has passed (with distinction!), had a second paper accepted for publication by a peer-reviewed journal and have found myself a job in archaeology (for the next 6 months, anyway)!

My participation in the Motupore Island excavation (a University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) fieldschool) was made possible by an award from the Prehistoric Society in the UK that helped cover the costs of travelling to PNG.

The detail about the setting and history of the island provided in this post is drawn from a series of evening seminars given on the island by Emeritus Professor Jim Allen, who carried out several excavations on the island in the 1970s when he was at the UPNG. Many of the details also appear in a 1979 article he wrote (see reference list at the end of this post). 

Motupore Island is located approximately 16 km east of Port Moresby, the capital of PNG. The island is actually a submerged hilltop, about 800 m long, about 60 m high at its highest point and about 275 m wide at its widest point.

Northern side of Motupore Island, Bootless Bay. Photo taken by the author.

Motupore Island is covered in the grass species Themeda triandra (previously called Themeda australis) and Eucalyptus vegetation, and mangroves have become established along some of the shoreline. On the northern side of the island, a cuspate (triangular) sandspit of approximately 1.5 ha has formed and been consolidated with grass cover. In front of this is a sand beach and tidal sandspit (on which I was standing when I took the photo above). It is this feature that gives the island its name in the local language, Motu (motu = island; pore = gravel or sand bank/spit). This is the important part of the island, from an archaeological perspective. Archaeological materials (pottery, stone, shell and bone) can be recovered from all these areas (the sandspit, sand beach and tidal spit on the northern side), but are not found anywhere else on the island.

The island was bought by the UPNG in 1970, originally on account of its potential archaeological value. Radiocarbon dates from extensive excavations during the 1970s suggested occupation continuously for 450 years from around 800 to 350 years ago. These excavations suggested that initial occupation on land was confined to a very narrow strip of sand beach. Allen postulates that settlement took the form of stilt houses constructed over the water, as is still seen in some villages around Port Moresby today. This settlement pattern would have resulted in the buildup of the sandspit as silting occurred around the housepiles and rubbish deposited into the sea from the houses above. 

 

Hanuabada, a Motuan stilt village near the modern capital, Port Moresby. The occupants of Motupore Island may also have lived in stilt houses over the water. Source image here.

Although Motupore was not inhabited when European exploration and colonisation of the region began in the 19th century, the island is referenced in some oral traditions of the Motu people, who occupied the coastal area around Port Moresby at the time. Indeed, Allen argues convincingly that, independently of the oral traditions, a comparison of the Motupore Island archaeology and accounts of the lifestyles of the Motu people by European explorers, missionaries and anthropologists following contact leads to the conclusion that it was the ancestors of the Motu that occupied the island. The archaeological record on Motupore Island, therefore, allows the extension of the post-European contact picture back in time and an opportunity to study in detail the processes by which that picture developed.     

Of particular note are the trade networks that the Motu were involved in at the time of contact. Pottery manufacture is an industry for which the Motu villages were renowned, and which is mentioned in almost every ethnographic account of Motu life. The Motu engaged in a variety of year-round trade networks. They traded, amongst other things, pots and fish for smoked wallaby (Macropus agilis) meat and garden produce with groups living further inland. Most famously, the Motu also undertook annual long distance trading voyages by sea to the Gulf of Papua (hiri voyages), a journey of almost 400 km to the west, where they traded pots for sago (Metroxylon sagu). This is, of course, a highly simplified account of these networks. For those interested in details, I refer you to Allen (1977). 

Pots laid out prior to loading on canoes (lakatoi) for the hiri trading voyage. Photo attributed to J.W. Lindt (obtained by author from Jim Allen).

A hiri trading canoe (lakatoi). Source image here.

Allen argues that a massive increase in the density of pottery sherds deposited in the last 150 or so years of the Motupore sequence (i.e. from ca. 500 years ago) is indicative of a massive increase in the production of pottery for such external trade. It is interesting, therefore, that radiocarbon dating undertaken in the Kopi region of the Gulf of Papua places the start of large-scale importation of ceramics into the region at sometime around 500 years ago (David 2008).

Here are some photos from the excavation:  

The excavation - a 2x1m pit near the edge of a large midden (the hill evident in this photo is actually a massive rubbish dump, mostly built up during the last 150 years of the Motupore sequence). Photo taken by the author.

Looking out from the excavation area (far right). At the time of initial occupation (c. 800 years ago) the flat area to the left of the building would have been sea (for an explanation, see text above). The present day beach is located just beyond the mangroves to the far left. Photo taken by the author.   

The excavation gets underway. Photo taken by the author.

 

Yours truly at the wet sieving station (left), with visiting staff from the PNG National Museum and Art Gallery. Photo taken by Professor Glenn Summerhayes.

Some of the UPNG students recording the stratigraphy of the site. Photos taken by the author.

Overall, a great couple of weeks and plenty learnt!


Thanks for reading,

Nick.

References

Allen, J. 1977. Fishing for wallabies: trade as a mechanism for social interaction, integration and elaboration on the central Papuan coast, in J. Friedman and M. Rowlands (eds.) The Evolution of Social Systems: 419-55. London: Duckworth.

Allen, J. 1979. The physical and cultural setting of Motupore Island, Central Province, Papua New Guinea. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 1: 47-55. 

David, B. 2008. Rethinking cultural chronologies and past landscape engagement in the Kopi region, Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea. The Holocene 18(3): 463-79.