![hiri trade hiri trade](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-msu4jzZhB-I/UMkJSuLuYMI/AAAAAAAACv4/zDNHEooerXY/s1600/Lakatoi.jpg)
1700 years before the emergence of Lapita in the Bismarck Archipelago, providing insights into pre-ceramic cultural practices on the Papua New Guinea south coast. At least as important has been the discovery of rich and well-defined layers deposited up to c. Yielding well-provenanced and finely dated assemblages of ceramics, faunal remains, and stone and shell artefacts, this remarkable set of sites has extended the geographical range of the Lapita cultural complex to not only the mainland of Papua New Guinea, but more remarkably to its south coast, at Australia’s doorstep. This remains the largest archaeological salvage program ever undertaken in the country. In 2008–2010, the Caution Bay Archaeological Project excavated 122 stratified sites 20km northwest of Port Moresby, south coast of Papua New Guinea. The Archaeology of Tanamu 1 presents the results from Tanamu 1, the first site to be published in detail in the Caution Bay Studies in Archaeology series. Here we review ethnographic, oral historical, and linguistic information on hiri trade and associated pottery manufacturing as a prelude to historicizing the hiri from this new archaeological evidence in forthcoming volumes. Historical roots of ceramic use, manufacture and trade relationships between maritime-focused, coast-dwellingĪnd pottery-making Lapita colonists and existing aceramic, terrestrial-focused populations and the cultural and linguistic antecedents of the ethnographic Motu and Koita. These new findings have stimulated new questions about the origins of the hiri trade the deep We have recently established archaeologically that at Caution Bay in the heart of the Motu pottery manufacturing and hiri trade area, pottery-making was introduced much earlier than the oral historical (dating back <400 years)Īnd documentary, ethnographic (dating back 140 years) evidence for the hiri, with the arrival of Lapita colonistsĬ. The Motu are the principal hiri traders and makers of pottery, and while Koita lived near and among them, they made relatively little pottery and did not participate in the hiri to the same extent as the Motu.
![hiri trade hiri trade](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AmuPTqQi_Ro/V_NRWocmFJI/AAAAAAAACW8/gGT72sDfYqkhwBFaP3fhWVzUqElQBZLNACLcB/s640/wwwww.jpg)
Local oral histories relating to the hiri come from the Motu and Koita of the Port Moresby area, two peoples who speak unrelated languages and who have lived in close proximity for an extended period. The Port Moresby region of the south coast of mainland Papua New Guinea (PNG) is well known ethnographically as the source-area for the Motu hiri trade, a long-distance maritime enterprise involving shell valuables and the annual local manufacture of tens of thousands of clay pots sent westward in fleets of lagatoi (large Indigenous sailing ships) in exchange for large logs to make hulls and hundreds of tons of sago starch from trading partners in the Gulf of Papua swamplands up to 400km away.