Changing ceramic traditions at Agila ancestral village, Hood Bay, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Accounts of New Guinea’s recent past are replete with both archaeological and ethnographic evidence of trade that indirectly connect virtually the entire country from coast to highland. One consequence has been a bias towards central places (e.g. Mailu Island) and/or large-scale production villages (e.g. of the Port Moresby region) as origin locations for distributed goods. Inversely, there has also been attention paid to distant, recipient points in the landscape (e.g. Gulf of Papua lowlands) where incoming traders turn back home to their originating villages. Less attention has been given to those extreme edges where separate networks indirectly connect. Here we present new evidence from Hood Bay on the south coast of PNG, a region that lies at a crossroads between the west-sailing Motu hiri and eastern Mailu Island ceramicists and seafaring traders. By being on the margins of each, Hood Bay is geographically well positioned to investigate changing inter-regional seafaring networks along a broad coastal expanse. We present initial results from excavations at the Agila village site, Hood Bay, where a changing incidence of western Motu and Mailu ceramics is evident. The results signal that Hood Bay villagers reorganised alliances and access to commodities and influence, depending on the prevailing conditions beyond their immediate western and eastern horizons.

Keywords:

• Agila
• Amazon Bay-Mailu
• hiri
• Hood Bay
• Motu
• pottery
• south coast of PNG
• trade and exchange

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge and thank Alois Kuaso and staff from the PNG National Museum and Art Gallery for their help in arranging fieldwork and for providing a vehicle. We thank Georgia Kaipu of the National Research Institute for advice on establishing a collaborative research programme at Hood Bay. We also thank Mrs Salote (Ward Councillor Hula) and Goria Rawali (Ward Councillor Kalo) for supporting the project. We thank the communities of Kalo, Kamali and Hula for their hospitality and all those who participated during site surveys and excavations. The field team wishes to especially acknowledge and thank Kila and Jenny for providing accommodation and preparing meals when staying in Kalo, and Mrs Guise for providing wonderful lunches. We also thank Jim Allen and three anonymous referees for their insightful and helpful comments on an earlier draft. Thanks to Monash University for institutional support and Kay Dancey, coordinator of CartoGIS at the College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, for drafting Figures 1 and 2.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was financially supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage.