Archaeology Actually

The following is a slightly edited version of a report I originally wrote for PAST, the newsletter of the Prehistoric Society , which provided me with some funding to attend the Motupore Island excavation in Papua New Guinea in 2016. This did not end up appearing in PAST, so I thought I would post it here. In June 2016 the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) ran an archaeological field school on Motupore Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Because my research as a graduate student at the University of Otago had looked at the archaeology of sites and regions thought to be linked to Motupore Island, I was invited to attend as an overseas student. A short report on the excavation follows.  Motupore Island in Bootless Bay is a small, waterless island located some 16km east of Port Moresby, the national capital of PNG. The island is about 800m long, 275m wide at its widest point, and rising to a maximum 61.4m above sea level. On the protected northern (shoreward) end of the island, a cu...

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 ou...