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An Archaeological Review of Western New Guinea

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Journal of World Prehistory Aims and scope

Abstract

Western New Guinea constitutes a frontier zone physically, politically, culturally and conceptually between Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Despite this pivotal position, archaeological information for the region is scarce due to limited investigations, limited publication and the multilingual nature of publications. Consequently, little archaeological information about western New Guinea has percolated into the mainstream literature. This paper aims to fill this gap and provides a detailed review of archaeological research, including rock art, published in Dutch, English, French, German and Indonesian. The resultant findings are discussed in terms of continuities and discontinuities with Papua New Guinea and Island Southeast Asia.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Pamela Swadling, Michael Cookson, and Chris Ballard (Australian National University) for providing us with translated texts and Christian Döhler (also ANU) for additional translations. Kara Rasmanis assisted with illustrations. The paper was improved by comments from Pamela Swadling and two anonymous referees. The work was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant awarded to Donohue and Denham (DP1093191).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD, 4222, Australia

    Duncan Wright

  2. Historical and European Studies, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, 3086, Australia

    Tim Denham

  3. School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, 3800, Australia

    Denis Shine

  4. Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Acton, ACT, 2600, Australia

    Mark Donohue

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Wright, D., Denham, T., Shine, D. et al. An Archaeological Review of Western New Guinea. J World Prehist 26, 25–73 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-013-9063-8

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