Holocene Paleoenvironment and Demography of the New Guinea North Coast

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Pacific islands are often used as model cases of human-environment systems and the development of biocultural diversity. In comparison to the smaller islands of the southwestern Pacific, the prehistory of the north coast of New Guinea remains poorly understood, particularly prior to ~2000 BP. We draw together a variety of archaeological evidence collected during fieldwork in the area around Aitape (Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea) as well as paleoenvironmental data from coring (pollen, diatoms, charcoal) to examine the regional environmental sequence, land use intensity, and inferred paleo-demography. We find likely increases in population and land use intensity during the mid-Holocene, including a particularly rapid increase after ~3500 BP, a period that witnessed rapid movement of people out of Near Oceania. We argue that population growth from about 6000-3000 BP was a region-wide phenomenon driven largely by increasing environmental productivity on newly emergent coastlines after the Holocene Thermal Optimum and Marine Transgression. After 2000 BP, declining resource potential and unsettled climate may have contributed to population decline. These demographic and environmental trends have important implications for interpreting cultural and biological patterning in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23965