The Earliest Archaeology in the Pacific: What did early archaeology of Sahul look like?

Introduction

Today we will talk about the earliest archaeology that has been found in the Pacific and this is talking about the period of 50,000 BP (Allen and O’Connell 2014). Therefore, we will be focusing on the great ancient landmass of Sahul, which is now today New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania, which is where these early sites are found. To make sense of this settlement in terms of archaeology stone technology with brief discussions on subsistence will be examined.

Where did early humans come from?

The "out of Africa' model.

Humans are theorized to have come from ‘out of Africa’ about 250,000 BP and quickly migrated around the world (Habgood and Franklin 2008). In the case of Sahul, migrations followed the coastline east eventually coming to Sundra (today making up parts of Asia and Indonesia) around 50,000 BP (See Allen and O’Connell 2014 for dating).

Image of Sahul and Sunda by Allen and O’Connell 2014.

There was at the time a short channel dividing Sahul from the rest of the mainland occupied by humans, known as the Wallacea sea (see the figure above). The only way they could reach Sahul was by crossing this channel, a move which has perplexed archaeologists as they try to determine reasons why. Whatever the reason for people making their way to Sahul the archaeology shows that from 50,000 BP people quickly appeared in the archaeological record around this whole landmass. The debate about why and how people traversed over Wallacea will be discussed in greater detail in another paper on PPA.

Sahul

Sahul was an ancient continent which was a result of much lower sea levels than what is observed today. The landmass was huge and very diverse, but the perfect place for early humans to reach in search of big-game hunting and forage for flora subsistence.

So, what type of vegetation was evident on Sahul?

In the north, along what is now the northern coastline of New Guinea, was a tropical warm environment full of rainforests. In the far south, in Australia, was dry arid environments of deserts and grasslands. And to make things even more complex, in the highlands of New Guinea it was very cold during the winter seasons. Sahul had all the different types of environments one could think of and so the early humans had to learn to adapt to these new contexts.

What type of animals did they encounter?

Sahul was home to many large megafaunas which had flourished in isolation from human predators. However, with the arrival of humans to Sahul they were a rich source of protein for the early peoples and so they population sizes quickly diminished, although the changing climate played a role in speeding this along as well (Stephen et al 2013).

Megafauna.

The Earliest sites

There is overall only a small number of early sites that have been discovered, but they are spread around the whole continent showing that humans did traverse all of Sahul. This section will first talk about the north, in New Guinea and the Island sites. Before it will then talk about the south, in Australia.

Sahul: the story in the north

One early site, Kosipe 49-44,000 BP, is one of the oldest in the region. Located in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, in the Ivane Valley, it is a good case study of what early archaeology of this region was in this context.  Being excavated on and off since the 1960s it was originally thought to be a single site but has since been shown to be a huge complex of many sites now named the Ivane Valley (Summerhayes et al 2010).

Excavations and site surveys in the 1960s found waisted axes which have become a prime example of what early material culture on Sahul looked like in the north (White et al 1970).

Figure of Stone Tools from the 1960s excavations (White et al 1970).

In addition to artefacts they also noted a long sequence of occupation from the excavations and layers of stratigraphy which dated back to 26,000 BP.

Excavations in the 1960s with layers exposed (White et al 1970).

A more recent study, lead by Glenn Summerhayes, found that site dated back to 49,000 BP and by studying this site through multidisciplinary lenses one might get a glimpse to how early humans adapted to these new environments (Summerhayes et al 2010).

Ford (2011) studied the lithic materials uncovered from the more recent excavations. They found that the raw materials show how people ‘learnt the lithic landscape.’ They became familiar with local lithic sources on a personal level as they worked out what sources were good versus not so good. In a bigger picture they argued that it helped understand the process of colonisation and adaption to new environments in Sahul (Ford 2011). 

Pandaus

In addition to lithics, subsistence was evidenced through wild Pandanus and yam residues identified from all layers of occupation. Pandanus was important as it served many uses from providing nuts rich in protein and oil, to being used to make tools from its leaves which would have been locally accessible. The yam on the other hand would not have been local and brought up to the highlands from the warm coastline (Summerhayes and Ford 2014: 222).

Another northern Sahul site, the Huan site, dates from 40,000 BP and is quite like the Ivane Valley in terms of lithics with waisted axes. Over 100 were found in the 1980s was Les Groube on the surface alone! These tools were found on terraces, which have not been dated by are likely more recent than earlier. But this region is a prime area for where early sites could be located and impacts of humans and coast could be studied.  

The waisted axes here show that early colonists impacted the landscape around them greatly. Today this area is all grasslands but based of excavations there is evidence that pre-human settlements there was rainforests. However, due to forest clearance for likely subsidence gathering these have been replaced by grasslands. These axes were likely used not to cut down trees but process them after they were felled.

The Huan area showing the terraces and grasslands which once were covered in forests (Eric Lindgren: https://eric-lindgren.photoshelter.com/image/I0000a1tYEBeMULk)

Sahul: sites in the south

This section will focus on the situation in the south in what is now Australia. What has already been established is that when Sahul was settled sites quickly appeared all over the mainland and sites appeared not just in the north, but the south.

Map of MJB location sourced from Clarkson et al (2015).

One site found in northern Australia is Madjedbebe (MJB) which had dates of around 50,000 BP (some argue even older at 60-70k BP) (Hiscock 2017). This site has one of the larges stone artefact assemblages found in Sahul during 1989 excavations and described in Clarkson et al (2015). Previous excavations had uncovered shell middens with human remains, faunal remains and lithics in the upper layers. The midden content itself was similar to other local sites with freshwater mussel, marsupial, retile, bird, crustacean, and mollusc food (Clarkson et al 2015: 47). These occupants clearly relied on local resources for their subsistence through hunting and gathering seeing through the midden as well as stone tool technology. The stone tools being used to hunt, as well as prepare food for consumption through blade and scraper technology (Clarkson et al 2015).

A selection of stone tools from MJB (Clarkson et al (2015).

Discussion of archaeology from Sahul 50,000 BP

The earliest sites in Sahul generally all have a heavy reliance on stone tool technology (seen through a brief look at three sites above). They are in their basic form very similar to each other overall but have local variances and adaptations. The three cases observed briefly in this paper show a local variance in the north with waisted axes, with the example stone tools from MJB showing a different type of waisted axe amongst other styles. What they share is a reliance on stone tool technology to survive these varying landscapes they had arrived in from Sunda.

In the highlands of PNG, they relied on imports from the coast seen through the presence of yam on residue analysis which could not have grown on those climates (Kosipe site as an example). The coastline of northern Sahul was deforested through clash-and-burning which has resulted in much of the coastline today made up of grasslands. The trees show evidence of not just being burnt down for clearance, but also being felled likely with an axe and then worked with a waisted axe.

Similar practices would have been taking place around central Sahul at the MJB site. Their subsistence relied on local resources evidenced through the midden and the stone tool technology which were fashioned to hunt and prepare these foods and serve other cultural purposes.

Conclusions

The early archaeology of the Pacific and Sahul is fascinating. This paper was just a case study of sorts introducing Sahul and just a few of the key sites which help inform our knowledge about the human story 50,000 years ago. Early sites in the Pacific show that they travelled often bringing with them stone technologies which they applied to the landscapes they encountered. The affect is varying types of tools in the archaeological record and different cultural practices as they adapted to these new environments.

Topics which I plan I writing about next following on from this brief summary include: Colonisation debates of Sahul, the diversity of Sahul in terms of geology and geography, what types of island sites existed, more focused studies on the north and south because there is clearly a lot more to unpack!

After this study of Sahul has been completed, I plan on posting about the effect of the LGM and how sites changed overtime across the continent before Lapita.

References

Allen, Jim; O’Connell, James F. 2014. Both half right: Updating the evidence for dating first human arrivals in Sahul, Australian Archaeology, 79:1, 86-108, DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2014.1168202

Clarkson, C., Jacobs, Z., Marwick, B. et al. 2017. Human occupation of northern Australia by 65,000 years ago. Nature 547, 306–310. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22968

Ford, Anne. 2011. Learning the Lithic Landscape: Using raw Material Sources to Investigate Pleistocene Colonisation in the Ivane Valley, Papua New Guinea. Archaeology in Oceania 46: 42-53.

Habgood, Philip; Franklin, Natalie. 2008. Modern Human Behaviour and Pleistocene Sahul in Review. Australian Archaeology: 65(65). DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2007.11681854

Peter Hiscock (2017) Discovery curves, colonisation and Madjedbebe, Australian Archaeology: 83(3)168-171, DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2017.1408544

Summerhayes, Glenn. 2019. The Archaeology of Melanesia. Hirsch, Eric; Rollason, Will (eds). The Melanesian World. Routledge Worlds 1^st Edition.

Summerhayes, G.R., M. Leavesley, A. Fairbairn, H. Mandui, J. Field, A. Ford and R. Fullagar. 2010. Human adaptation and plant use in Highland New Guinea 49,000 to 44,000 years ago. Science 330: 78-81.

Wroe, Stephen; Field, Judith H; Archer, Michael; Grayson, Donald; et al. 2013. Climate change frames debate over the extinction of megafauna in Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea).Wroe, Stephen (record owner) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America: 110(22), pp.8777-8781

White, J.P., K.A.W. Crook and B.P. Ruxton. 1970. Kosipe: A Late Pleistocene site in the Papuan Highlands. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 36: 152-170.