Archaeological Studies of the Middle and Late Holocene, Papua New Guinea

Type X is a distinctive post-Lapita pottery on Huon Peninsula and its adjacent islands in Papua New Guinea, for which Lilley originally proposed a time span from about 1600 to 850/550 cal. bp. The paper reviews this chronology in the light of new dates and the original data, and proposes that the duration of Type X should be shortened to about 1000–500 cal. bp. This revised chronology possibly lengthens the post-Lapita aceramic period on Huon Peninsula, and has implications for the history of trading across Vitiaz Strait. LILLey, Ian, & JIm Specht, 2007. Archaeological Studies of the Middle and Late Holocene, Papua New Guinea. Part VI. Revised dating of Type X pottery, Morobe Province. Technical Reports of the Australian Museum 20: 217–226 [published online]. Technical Reports of the Australian Museum (2007) No. 20. ISSN 1835-4211 online www.australianmuseum.net.au/pdf/publications/1478_complete.pdf Archaeological excavations in the Siassi Islands and at Sio on northeast Huon Peninsula, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea (Fig. 1), have yielded evidence for five prehistoric pottery styles starting with the dentate-stamped phase of the Lapita ceramic series at about 3000 years ago (Lilley, 1988a, 1988b, 2002, 2004). The most distinctive of the four post-Lapita styles is Type X, which is now known from 33 localities on Huon Peninsula, its adjacent islands and New Britain (Table 1). Petrographic and limited geochemical studies suggest a probable origin for Type X somewhere on Huon Peninsula (Watchman, 1986; Lilley, 1988a; Specht et al., 2006). Lilley (1988a) assigned Type X to the period c. 1600–850/550 cal. bp, spanning about 750–1000 years and overlapping with the start of pottery traditions ancestral to the present-day industries of the Madang and Sio-Gitua areas of mainland New Guinea (cf. May & Tuckson, 1982). This paper reviews the chronology of Type X in the light of dates obtained since Lilley’s definition of the style or not available to him at the time, and reconsiders the original dating evidence. We conclude that Type X began around 218 Technical Reports of the Australian Museum (2007) No. 2