VARIATION AND CHANGE IN STONE TOOLS IN THE HIGHLANDS OF : THE WITNESS OF WANELEK

Susan Bulmer Department of Conservation,

PREAMBLE ’s interest in archaeology began in childhood, largely due to his mother’s father, Harold Hughes, who was an architect and archaeologist. His work was to restore monuments such as Caernarfon Castle, and he published substantially on field archaeology. Family outings often took Ralph to his grandparents’ home in North Wales, and he grew up loving the many archaeological monuments of the countryside there. His mother was very enthusiastic about her father’s work and passed this on to her elder son. She knew the sites her father worked on well and enjoyed visits from archaeologists to the family home in Bangor; I remember her story of being terribly impressed, as a teenager, with the handsome young Mortimer Wheeler. Ralph’s personal interest in archaeology was sustained during his university years at Cambridge and although he did not intend to take up archaeology himself, his best friend Christopher Houlder did. Ralph saw much of archaeological staff and students and even occasionally helped on excavations in Britain and later in . During his first fieldwork in , at Baiyer River, in 1954, he soon recognised the potential for archaeological research in the Highlands. The many stone artefacts he collected as a sideline to his other anthropological work and his observations on Highlands field evidence, such as the swamp ditches in the Baiyer and Wahgi valleys, led to my own first fieldwork in Papua New Guinea in 1959. He was often assumed to be an archaeologist; we had a family joke about his being greeted enthusiastically by nearly monoglot colleagues in foreign parts as “Ah ! Professor Bulmer! The famous archaeologist!” Although he never himself excavated or even participated in an excavation of a Papua New Guinea site, his personal and intellectual enthusiam for archaeology was instrumental in establishing archaeology in the new Anthropology Department at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1968. This local academic base has been responsible for the fact that the country is now one of only four in the Pacific Islands that has its own indigenous practising archaeologists. Ralph was frequently invited to give public lectures on archaeology. He felt comfortable about this in the 50’s and 60’s when, as he was prone to say, Papua New Guinea prehistory could be written on the back of a postcard. But by the 1970’s, when archaeological research had outgrown Ralph’s postcard, he was happy to leave the field to specialists. In any case, by then his fame as an ethnoscientist had eclipsed his archaeological reputation, even in foreign parts.

INTRODUCTION This essay concerns the stone artefacts of Wanelek (formerly Wanlek), an open settlement site in the Kaironk Valley, Madang Province, in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The purpose is to discuss these tools in general terms, as an assemblage, and to consider their significance in regard to variation and change in stone technology during the 50,000 years of Highlands prehistory. The Wafielek assemblage is unique so far in the Highlands in reflecting the products of the manufacture of kinds of tools that had previously only been found in small numbers away from their place of manufacture or had not been previously known at all. The assemblage poses a traditional problem in stone tool analysis, that of the definition and significance of similarity and difference. This is particularly intriguing in that the assemblage is strikingly similar to assemblages of stone tools associated with the Lapita “complex”, ancestral to Polynesian culture, and to the stone tools of more recent Polynesians, particularly of New Zealand and the Chatham and Easter Islands. Its dating is from 2500 to 850 BC, substantially earlier, but overlapping in time with the ancestral Lapita “complex”. Does the Wanelek asssemblage reflect the importation to the Highlands of a “new” stone technology, or is it the technological “descendant” of the indigenous late Pleistocene stone technology of the Highlands? This discussion is a departure from much of the past analysis of Highlands stone tools in that it discusses an assemblage of several kinds of formal tools. Most comment during the 30 years of Highlands archaeological study has emphasised the small number of formal tool types, the lack of coincidence of the advent of the edge-ground axe-adze with that of agriculture, and the increasing “simplicity” of Highlands stone tools (e.g. Golson 1977a, White 1977:23, White and O’Connell 1982:64-5). These points of view are 470 Stone Tools in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea: the Witness of Wanelek 471 misleading in that they refer to and depend on very limited archaeological evidence. Most of the analysis of Highlands stone tools has been concerned with working-edges of flake and core tools, and the variety of methods and approaches to stone artefact analysis that has been explored elsewhere in the Pacific (Witter 1987) has yet to be applied to Highlands assemblages. It is not easy to bring stone technology in the Highlands into focus, where 50,000 years of prehistory is at present still filtered through a handful of excavated sites (Bulmer 1982) and where the predominant agricultural settlement pattern was one of short-lived shifting occupation. The small assemblages left behind by such settlement have been further biased by the fact that good quality rock suitable for artefacts was very restricted in its availability. This meant that sites of tool manufacture were relatively rare, and broken artefacts were not readily discarded but instead systematically recycled by being refashioned into new smaller artefacts. Characteristically, very little waste was left behind except at hunting and collecting camps where informal flake and pebble tools were made and used from local rock of whatever quality. This kind of archaeological evidence calls for careful analysis and interpretation. In order to address properly the questions of complexity and change in stone technology, sites of the manufacture and use of a full range of artefacts need to be excavated. Wanelek is such a site, with stone artefacts representing general occupation of an agricultural settlement and of sufficient quantity and variety to reflect a wide, perhaps the entire, range of stone tool technology, forms and functions of the community that lived there. Further, the artefacts and rock detritus, from all stages of manufacture and curation, indicate that all of the tools were made and used on the site.

THE WANELEK SITE Wafielek is an open settlement site at about 1650 m a.s.l. It consists of a relatively flat broad ridge about 450 m long and 100 m wide. The ridge runs roughly east-west across the the upper Kaironk valley. Located in between the central Highlands valleys and the lowlands, Wafielek is thought to have been a community based on trade between the two areas (Bulmer 1977a). The reasons for its particular location, other than its elevated and central site, were access to local rock resources for tool making and to a mineral spring where trade salt was manufactured (Bulmer 1973:10-11). Both axe-adzes and salt were trade goods in the Highlands, and the few sherds of pottery found in the site also point to trade contacts with the lowlands. The residents were also agriculturalists, on the basis of the artefacts and the garden soils in the site. Stone artefacts were found scattered over the entire site, wherever pigs had rooted up the topsoil. In addition there were heavy concentrations of artefacts along the two sides of the ridge, in the gardens along the north side of it as well as in the roadcutting along its southern side. The face of the road cutting provided nearly a complete longitudinal cross-section of the deposits, showing occupation deposits and features up to 150 cm below the present ground surface. Excavations showed the Wafielek site contained five stratified occupation horizons. On the surface was a thin topsoil (A), probably related to the most recent gardening on the site, some two generations ago. Beneath A was an earlier garden soil (B), with a burnt and partly consolidated surface. The top of this soil appeared to have been removed, probably through later digging into it through the thin soil above. Garden soil B consisted of mixed topsoil and natural orange clay subsoil, and it lay on top of a horizon of redeposited subsoil (C), derived from erosion and/or levelling elsewhere. Beneath this was a dark grey brown, almost black, buried topsoil (D) which contained a great deal of charcoal. This horizon had a number of distinct occupation levels, appearing to have been built up over a relatively long period of time. A grey soil (E) underneath had a large number of postholes in its surface, and contained scatteree charcoal and a few artefacts. Layer (F) was a natural orange clay substratum with some postholes in its surface, indicating that the natural topsoil had been cleared from the settlement site when it was originally occupied. Archaeological excavations of about 70 sq m of the site explored several areas where features were visible along the road cutting. Excavations were also extended across the centre of the ridge in order to establish the overall stratigraphy of the site and the extent of habitation features. The only archaeological deposit present in the centre of the ridge was (A), the recent garden soil, resting directly on the natural clay (F),although a few scattered stone artefacts showed that the area had probably been occupied during earlier periods, but any earlier deposits apparently had been removed from the highest part of the ridge, as a consequence of erosion following gardening and pig rooting. The earlier habitation layers (B-E) began about halfway between the centre of the ridge and its edge, in lenses that deepened sharply on the perimeter of the site where the ridge’s side steepened. Archaeological excavations were restricted to the deposits on the southern side of the ridge, adjacent to the road cutting, but the density of artefacts collected in gardens on the other northern side indicated there were probably similar lenses of archaeological deposits there as well. Structural evidence, such as fireplaces, oven pits and postholes at different levels showed that the ridge side deposits were not merely refuse tipped down the hillside, but were habitation layers that had built up over a 472 long period of time. The fact that the layers were thicker downslope probably indicates that soil and other habitation material had been deliberately spread outward to extend the relatively level living area of the ridge, although downslope soil creep probably also contributed to its deposition. Eleven radiocarbon dates from stratified charcoal in the Wanelek site, previously published (Bulmer 1977a:65) without corrections for secular effect, have been calibrated (Table 1). They include four dates for the original occupation, the grey soil; GX-3328, 3329 and 3331 show this occupation dates to between about 14,000 and 4,000 BC. The other datings are for the occupation related to the buried black soil (D); this dates to between about 2,500 BC and 850 BC. Horizons (C) and (B) are undated, but are stratigraphically more recent than (D), and, on the basis of traditional accounts, (A) probably dates to the beginning of the 20th century. The stratigraphy of the site appears to be consistent all over, i.e. the site was generally reused in each period of occupation. However, given the large size of the site and the scattered pole structures involved, the occupation probably consisted of small numbers of houses built on different parts of this site at different times, rather than a large number of houses at once. Each structure would not have had a long period of use but, cumulatively over hundreds of years, they could have produced the kind of overall layering that was found at this site. Excavated features in all of the occupation horizons (B-E) indicate the former presence of curved sided pole houses, similar to modem Kalam houses (see Majnep and Bulmer 1977:P1.9b). There were also earth oven pits and postholes of other pole structures, some of them probably fences and storage platforms. The fireplaces and oven pits are also similar to those used by the Kalam in recent times. Large burnt areas were found in several places in Horizon D, one of them 4 m in diameter, where intense heat had turned the clay surface bright pink. These burnt areas were recognised by local Kalam as similar to fireplaces in their communal long houses where fires bum all day and night for several days during ceremonies. The implication of these findings is that the Kalam domestic house form dates back to the end of the Pleistocene and its ceremonial long house version is probably between 2,800 and 4,000 years old.

THE STONE ASSEMBLAGE Although Wanelek did not contain organic materials, such as bones, wood or shell, it produced a variety of stone artefacts (Table 2), including both finished stone tools and the detritus from their manufacture. Several kinds of pigment were found, as well as a small number of potsherds of lowland origin (Bulmer 1977a:68). All five cultural horizons had stone artefacts stratigraphically associated with them. However, because the upper three horizons, (A), (B), and (C), included soils thought to have been eroded or dug from deeper deposits, the artefacts in these horizons may relate to the earlier occupations. The stone tools from the Wanelek site have not yet been analysed in detail, but for purposes of this discussion can be divided into five general classes, based on differences in rock type and general artefact form (Table 2): axe-adzes and chisels; slate tools; flake and core tools; grinders and grindstones; and pigment. Only the first three will be discussed further in this paper. While the earliest assemblage, associated with Horizon (E), includes only 7 tools, flakes and cores and grinders, the later assemblage, related to the occupation on the black buried soil (D), has the full range of tool classes.

1. Axe-adzes and Chisels The axe-adzes and chisels were made at Wanelek from two kinds of local fine-grained greywacke, a medium-grey banded rock and a pale green rock, both with reasonably good concoidal fracture. The term axe- adze is used here, consistent with previous usage (Bulmer 1966:42). inAn situ axe-adze-making floor was found during the archaeological excavations, and it is apparent from the surface collections that other similar floors were formerly present elsewhere. The axe-adzes were made into preforms, and then shaped further through secondary flaking. In the case of the intact working floor, the stoneworker sat in or near a pole house, and most of the waste flakes were swept into a disused oven pit next to the house and into a pile nearby. The stone artefacts from (D) include a full range of material from all stages of manufacture and use of axe- adzes; waste flakes, roughouts, preforms, ground and polished tools and flakes broken from finished tools during use. The axe-adzes were made in two contrasting size groups; small chisels, similar to wood carving chisels in New Zealand (Duff 1956:185) and larger tools, similar in size to some of the smaller adze-axes used by Highlanders in the 20th century before steel replaced stone. These tools were probably used for woodworking - carving, adzing, cutting, chopping and splitting. The Waftelek axe-adzes were made from preforms that derived from long flakes struck from a core by percussion. There were numerous blade flakes of axe-adze rock in the stratified and surface collections to show that this was the case, although no axe-adze cores were found at the site. No quarry site has been found, Stone Tools in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea: the Witness of Wanelek 473

TABLE 1: REVISED RADIOCARBON DATINGS FOR CHARCOAL SAMPLES FROM THE WANELEK SITE (JAO)

(♦Calibrated according to Stuiver and Becker 1986; ♦♦Calibrated according to Klein et al. 1982)

Age BP Date Range BC Lab No. Stratigraphic position

2840±90 * 1212-1202 1-6861 TR1, fireplace in 1192-1142 Layer 4 1130-900 861-844

2865190 *1240-1235 1-6859 TR1, E pit, 1210-900 deepest fill

3170±210 *1688-1671 GX-3332 17-18B(II), pit, 1610-1210 top of Layer 6 1210-1193 1140-1133

3225±180 *1740-1310 GX-3330 16B, fireplace in 1299-1296 Layer 6 1277-1265

3280±230 *1864-1845 GX-3227B 17-18B(I), Layer 5 1828-1824 1812-1800 1780-1390 1330-1324

3430+175 *1864-1845 GX-3326 17-18B(I), fireplace 1825-1824 in Layer 7 1812-1800 1780-1440

384G±175 *2490-2110 GX-333B 1 IB, Layer 9 2097-2096 2083-2038

5455±105 **4525-3915 1-6860 10A, Layer 10

11,995±425 **10,844-9155 GX-3328 17-18B(I), Layer9

14,100±400 **12,950-19,350 GX-3329 1Z, Layer 13

15,100±450 **14,050-12,250 GX-3331 101Y, fill of posthole in Layer 9 but the material may have been obtained in the Kaironk River below the site where the rock occurs naturally. The preforms were initially either roughly diamond shaped or triangular in cross-section. They were further shaped by delicate bifacial flaking, and finished by grinding and polishing. The finished products were mostly or entirely polished and were lenticular, oval or plano-convex in cross-section. The fully ground cutting edges were generally symmetrical (axe-like), slightly curved in plan, but straight in cross-section. Many axe-adzes were broken in the process of manufacture, having been rejected when mis-directed primary flakes or imperfections in the rock distorted the roughout’s shape, or when they broke across the mid­ section during retouching. Axe-adzes similar to those at Wanelek have been found in unstratified context throughout the Kaironk Valley which indicates that Waflelek was not the only settlement that used these kinds of tools. However, Waflelek is the only site found so far where there is evidence of axes having been manufactured. 474 Susan Bulmer

TABLE 2: PROVISIONAL COUNTS OF STONE TOOLS EXCAVATED AT WANELEK

LAYER Flakes, Grinders, Slate Axe- Pigment Total cores grindstones tools adzes

A. Garden soil 1 2 1 - - 3 6

B. Garden soil 2 15 4 4 4 6 33

C. Redeposited 22 4 3 1 2 32 subsoil

D. Grey brown 39 6 4 5 6 60 soil

E. Grey soil 3 4 - - - 7

TOTAL 81 19 11 10 17 138

2. Slate tools Eleven of the stone tools found in the excavations and a much larger number in the unstratified collection are made of highly schistose local slate. This slate breaks easily into large flat slabs that required mainly edge- shaping and minor retouching to be turned into tools. Some have been made into distinctive forms, including tanged, waisted and concave implements, but there are also amorphous slate flakes with one or more retouched or utilised edges. These tools are heavily weathered from thousands of years in the ground and thus appear to be fragile. However, they would have been much stronger when they were freshly flaked. Their working edges vary. Some are irregular, but others are carefully shaped and retouched. Some of the edges show relatively small chipping, possibly the result of having been used as knives and scrapers, but others have larger breaks, perhaps from percussive use. Many of the tangs have broken off at the base, suggesting that some sort of leverage was involved in their use. Thus slate was a material used to make a variety of forms of tool, and for a variety of functions, on the basis of different patterns of breakage. As well, some of the slate tools were formal, i.e. fashioned into a particular shape and size, while others were informal, presumably merely selected from flaked material for their suitability in size and shape, with shaping apparent only on the working edges. The slate tools from Wafielek have been discussed in previous papers, where it was suggested that some of them are likely to have been used in weeding and other garden activities (Bulmer 1977b:66-8, Golson 1977a: 159-60). Clearly others are not digging tools, but may have been used for fibre or food scraping and cutting. Similar tools have been found elsewhere in the Kaironk Valley, some made of different kinds of rock that also easily broke into thin slabs.

3. Flake and core tools These tools were made from local chert and flint. They include at least two specific forms, drill points and triangular sectioned retouched blade points. The majority of the chert and flint flakes and cores were amorphous, with utilised or retouched working edges. Stone detritus at Wafielek indicated the tools were made and used and maintained on site.

DISCUSSION Of the two stone tool assemblages from Wafielek, the earlier, dating to the period 14,000 to 4,000 BC, is small and includes undiagnostic kinds of artefacts, but the later assemblage, dating to 2,500 to 850 BC, is so far unique in Highlands archaeology. Its wide range of stone tools, their relatively large number, and the fact that they were all made and used at the site makes it unusual. Some of the varieties of tools in the Wafielek assemblage had been found previously in stratified sites, while others had not. In order to consider the significance of the Wafielek assemblage in the wider context of Highlands prehistory, evidence from other Highlands sites first needs to be reviewed. The evidence for prehistoric stone technology in the Highlands, particularly the period 2,500 to 850 BC and immediately before, comes mainly from rockshelters and caves which were hunting camp sites. Only three open settlement sites dating to the same period have so far been investigated; these are NFB, NGG, and NGH in the Eastern Highlands, and unfortunately they contained very little by way of stone artefacts (Watson and Cole 1977:193-5). The Kuk site in the Wahgi valley, where a long sequence of prehistoric gardens, beginning about 7,000 BC, has been investigated and also contains very few stone artefacts (Golson 1977a). Stone Tools in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea: the Witness of Wanelek 475

Another garden site at Yeni, in the northern lowlands, dating to 1,500 BC, contained only a tanged tool and a pebble tool (Gilleson et al. 1985:33). The few rockshelters and caves that were occupied in the same period (Bulmer 1975) contained predominantly flake and core tools and detritus, with very few examples of axe- adzes and waisted and tanged tools comparable to the slate tools. There are two exceptions to the pattern of small numbers of axe-adzes in rock shelters; Kafiavana (White 1972) and Wurup (Christensen 1975a) both have long sequences of axe-adzes. At Kafiavana the manufacture of axe-adzes from local stream pebbles is alleged to have begun as early as 9,700 BC (White 1972:95), while trade axes from the nearby Kafetu quarry and planilateral axe-adzes first appear in the period 2,500 to 0 BC. There are steeply sloping layers in this shelter (White 1972:87), while the analysis of materials is based on levels, making one wonder whether the early radiocarbon date is in fact associated with the axe-adzes. The Wurup site contains a sequence of axe-adzes dating from about 3,900 BC (Christensen 1975a:32-3), which agrees with the evidence from Yuku and Kiowa rockshelters, where polished axe-adzes appear in layers dated to just after 4,000 and 4,700 BC respectively (Bulmer 1966:108,129, 1975:29-30). It is important to interpret these findings in light of evidence for the antiquity of edge ground axe-adzes in Papua New Guinea (Bulmer 1975:31, White and O’Connell 1982:67, Mountain 1983:96). However, the axe- adzes of the late Pleistocene were only rarely edge-ground and were generally used with flaked working edges. These are crude chopping or cutting implements in comparison to the polished axe-adzes that appear at a variety of Highlands sites about 4,000-3,000 BC, indicating a widespread use of tools capable of forest clearance. Even if, as suggested by Groube (1987), waisted axes functioned to clear forest, the polished oval- lenticular axe-adze could attain and hold a sharp wood-cutting edge far superior to the late Pleistocene axe- adze. Indeed, pollen evidence indicates widespread forest clearance by about 2,500 BC (Walker and Hope 1982:278). It is also relevant to consider the artefactual evidence in the context of the general environmental conditions that prevailed during the period of the occupation of Wanelek (Bulmer 1982:174). The earliest settlement at Waflelek was during the period of the warming of the climate at the end of the Pleistocene and the consequent melting of the high mountain glaciers and expansion and increase in altitude of the forest zones, in the period 14,000-4,000 BC. Waflelek was probably first occupied as a seasonal hunting and collecting camp, visited by people from lower areas following the forest resources up the mountains and valleys. There was then a period of generally warmer and wetter climate in the Highlands from about 7,000 to 3,000 BC, when agriculture began at the Kuk site (see Golson’s contribution to this volume). Waflelek was next occupied during this period, paralleling all but the earliest phase of the first three periods of agriculture at Kuk (Golson 1977b). The nature of the agriculture presumed to have been practised at Waflelek is as yet unknown, but it was probably dryland gardening such as was carried out by draining the swamps at Kuk by about 4,000 BC. Another significant environmental variable that possibly relates to the cultural changes in the Highlands is the post-Pleistocene rise of sea level, which caused the coastline in the -Ramu lowlands to move 150 km further inland than it is at present. Swadling et al. (1989) suggest that the major reduction in area of available coastal plains caused by this marine transgression and the accompanying ecological changes may have caused a movement of the lowland population into the Highlands. Trade contact between Highlands and lowlands is even earlier than the development of agriculture; at Kafiavana lowlands shell is dated to 7,500 BC. Trade within the Highlands in polished axe-adzes dates to the period 4,000 to 2,500 BC (Bulmer 1966:108-9, Christensen 1975a:32-3, White and O’Connell 1982:90). This trade was based on the restricted occurrence of fine quality rock in certain localities in the Chimbu, Wahgi, Jimi and Asaro valleys. The earliest axe-adzes produced at these quarries were of oval-lenticular cross-section, but being made of rock that was not easily flaked, metamorphosed argillite, tuffaceous greywacke and Amphibolite (Bulmer 1966:43-5), they were split with the use of fire and hammered and sawn into shape. Oval-lenticular axe-adzes were also made of waterwom pebbles wherever rock of adequate quality occurred, such as described by Blackwood (1950). There is stratigraphic evidence that the planilateral style of axe-adze (Bulmer 1966:45) which was predominant in the 20th century axe-adzes of the Highlands, was produced somewhat later than the establishment of the quarries and axe-adze trade. The absence of planilateral axe-adzes at Waflelek suggests that the style came into production after 850 BC. Plano-convex axe-adzes, such as those found at Waflelek, are known from a collection of surface finds from Baiyer River (Bulmer 1964:251) and from a single stratified example at Kiowa in a layer stratigraphically more recent than a date of 4,000 BC (Bulmer 1966:95). On present evidence the Waflelek axe-adze manufacturing is more recent than the opening of the Highlands axe-adze quarries, although it is likely that pebble oval-lenticular axe-adzes of lesser quality local rock were previously widely made and used. The rock used for axe-adzes at Waflelek was not as hard and tough as the rock from the quarries, but the industry continued side-by-side with the central Highlands axe-adze trade, suggesting that the Waflelek axe-adzes were probably made for local consumption or for trade with lowland communities that had no access to suitable rock. 476 Susan Bulmer

Waisted and tanged tools have been found in various parts of the Highlands, such as in the Wahgi Valley (Allen 1970), the Manim valley (Christensen 1975b), Bomai in the (Bulmer and Tomasetti 1970), and in the Sepik lowlands as well (Swadling 1984:16). These tools are varied in form, finish and type of rock used, suggesting manufacture in many places and for a variety of functions. They include what is apparently a stone replica of a bronze spear point, as well as implements thought to have been hafted as spades. No doubt the surface finds are weighted toward the recognition and retention of the more formal and better finished tools, but some of the more carefully shaped and finished slate tools from Wanelek are comparable. There are also roughly fashioned slate tools, similar to the small waisted and tanged tools that have been found in stratified context Highlands rockshelter sites. In this other context there is obvious continuity between the flaked late Pleistocene waisted and tanged tools, beginning 50,000 BC (Groube 1987) and the few smaller examples that were evident at the Yuku site until about 4,500 BC and at Kiowa until after 4,000 BC. This terminal date for waisted and tanged tools at the rockshelters coincides with the advent of trade axe-adzes, and probably indicates the end of the use of the sites as hunting camps and the beginning of their use as garden shelters. On first reflection it seemed Wanelek might be a settlement of traders who had moved up from the lowlands to make salt and stone artefacts at Wanelek, and who brought with them a new advanced stone technology. Both the “new” artefact types appearing in the Highlands (drill points, blade points) and the similarity of the entire Wafielek assemblage to Polynesian stone tools pointed to this interpretation. The Wafielek axe-adzes could go unnoticed in the Lapita adze kit (Green 1971) or in various islands of (Duff 1956, Leach 1981). The waisted and tanged tools resemble the mataa of southern New Zealand and the (Jones 1981) and Easter Island (McCoy 1979:149-51). Mataa are also highly varied in size and shape and finish, and included tools with different functions, including scrapers and spear heads, as well as less formal tools. Drill points are ubiquitous in Polynesian sites, and identical blade points are also present in Polynesia (e.g. Gerard 1976). When this comparison was first made (Bulmer 1973), it was thought that Austronesian language speakers, the ancestors of the Polynesians, had migrated from or into the New Guinea area sometime in the period 6,0003,000 BC. It was then suggested that the Wafielek settlers could either be land­ locked Austronesian-speaking traders or Highlanders inspired by new trading activity on the coast. However, current linguistic theory puts the arrival of the Proto-Oceanic language speakers in the New Guinea at no earlier than 2,000 BC (Pawley and Green 1984). The Wanelek Horizon (D) settlement probably began earlier than the earliest sites attributable to Austronesian speakers, the Lapita “complex”. Indeed, the other evidence from Wanelek does not fit with the idea of Austronesian-speaking traders moving up from the lowlands. The evidence was that houses and other structural features were distinctively Highland in that they were identical to those used by the modem occupants of the area, the Kalam. Although the Kalam have traditions that indicate they arrived in the valley only about nine generations ago, archaeological evidence at Wafielek suggests a considerable general continuity of material culture in the valley for thousands of years. The ceremonial long house in particular is unique to the Kalam and to closely related nearby language groups. Of course, the ancestors of the Kalam, as well as the house forms and other structures at Wafielek, may possibly have ultimately originated in the lowlands, but this possibility remains to be tested archaeologically. Looking at the question of the origins of the Wanelek stone assemblage from the completely opposite point of view, could it be that it is the result, not of the immigration of technologically different stone workers or the importation of new stone technology, but instead of local technological change within the Highlands? The earlier Horizon (E) assemblage at Wanelek is too small to use as a basis for comparison either with other early Highlands assemblages or with its successor at Wafielek. However, it can be argued that the occupants are likely to have had a stone tool kit like that of their Highlands contemporaries, the people at Yuku, 50 km to the southwest (Bulmer 1977b:43-4). The first occupants of Yuku, perhaps 14,000 BC, used a wide range of tools, including pebble tools, waisted and tanged tools, and unwaisted flaked axes and hand-axe like tools, as well as small flake and core tools. Other types of core tools have been found in undated contexts but were probably made as well, such as “horsehoof” cores, similar to those in (O’Connell and White 1982:65- 6), and disc cores, such as found in the Pasismanua collection from New Britain (Bulmer 1977b). The Yuku assemblage is small, but it is comparable to those of a small number of other late Pleistocene sites, particularly Kosipe (White, Crook and Ruxton 1970). There are also late Pleistocene assemblages from the Huon Peninsula terraces (Groube 1987) and Nombe rockshelter (Mountain 1983), although these have not yet been described in detail. The Highlands tools were rendered with a high degree of stone working skill, though generally having to make use of rather unpromising rock (Bulmer 1977b). The forms found in poor quality rock and small numbers in the Highlands sites can be better seen if compared to the Pasismanua collection. This is undated but probably late Pleistocene and illustrates skilled stoneworking in good quality flint and chert, including Stone Tools in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea: the Witness of Wanelek 477 blade flaking. A collection from Nagovisi, Bougainville Island, shows a comparable stone technology (Nash and Mitchell 1973). Plausible antecedents for all of the Wanelek tool types can be found in the late Pleistocene large tool assemblage (Bulmer 1977b). Unwaisted flake axe-adzes, large and small, and with lenticular and plano­ convex section, are easily transformed into the Wafielek axes with only the addition of grinding and polishing. Waisting and tanging butt modification of Late Pleistocene axe-adzes is not present on the Wafielek axe-adzes, but is evident on early artefacts of local manufacture in Baiyer River (Bulmer 1964:251). It is also, of course, evident in the Wafielek slate tools. The absence of waisting and tanging on the polished trade axe-adzes may indicate the adoption or development of a different kind of hafting. Waisting and tanging is thought to relate to split cane hafting, such as used in recent times in New Britain, in contrast to the socket hafting of recent Highlands axe-adzes. The origin of the drill point is possibly from outside the Highlands, although it would appear that the stone workers of Wafielek possessed sufficient skills to produce small tools as well as large tools. There is some evidence on other Highlands sites, such as Kiowa and Yuku (Bulmer 1966:108, 114, 129, 132-4) of a small flake tool tradition, and if, as is here posited, the Wafielek assemblage is otherwise a product of local evolution of stone technology, it may be that the drill point developed locally as well. Similarly, the large retouched blade points could plausibly derive from late Pleistocene technology. Thus it is possible to postulate, on the basis of the evidence at other earlier Highlands sites, that the Wafielek assemblage evolved within the Highlands, even though this cannot be demonstrated on the basis of the evidence from Wafielek alone. Interestingly, the Late Pleistocene assemblage appears to have generally gone out of manufacture and use by the time that the Horizon (D) occupation at Wafielek began. But what of the ancestors of the Polynesians, the Eastern Oceanic language-speaking groups that later settled in coastal New Guinea and ? Instead of being able to be credited with the introduction of a “new” stone technology to the New Guinea area, they appear to be inheritors of the post-Pleistocene version of a very ancient stone technology, which they then helped to spread throughout the Eastern Pacific.

REFERENCES

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BIRD-MAN AMULETS AND TRIDACNA SHELL DISCS FROM TAUMAKO,

Janet Davidson and National Museum of New Zealand

Kapkaps,Tridacna discs with turtle shell overlays, are a distinctive form of personal ornament in several parts of Melanesia. In northern Melanesia, from the Admiralty Islands to the northern Solomons, the turtle shell overlay is a circular fretwork, centrally placed; in the Santa Cruz group, a highly stylised Figure, often interpreted as a bird and/or Fish motif, is placed on the upper part of the disc, which in this area is always worn as a breast pendant. Various writers have reviewed the distribution of kapkaps and other kapkap-like ornaments in Melanesia and beyond (for example, Reichard 1933, Bodrogi 1961, Rose 1980). The relationship between the true kapkaps of northern Melanesia and the Santa Cruz discs has been debated inconclusively. Rose has suggested that good archaeological materials “might permit time-depth evaluations over broad areas” (Rose 1980:255). Excavations on Taumako, a Polynesian outlier on the eastern fringe of the Santa Cruz district, showed that the Tridacna shell disc itself has considerable antiquity in this part of Melanesia, and produced two examples of a form of amulet which may be ancestral to the Santa Cruz turtle shell overlays. The amulet can be interpreted as a bird-man, although other interpretations are also possible. We offer this short paper in honour of Ralph Bulmer and in memory of his interest in birds, bird-men, and people-carried-away-by-birds.