Abstract
The late Pleistocene colonization of Greater Australia by humans by c. 40,0130 b.p. is now generally accepted. This landmass, which comprised at periods of lower sea levels Tasmania, Australia and Papua New Guinea, has now produced sites with rich and diverse sequences extending towards or now mainly beyond 30,000 b.p., in the present arid country of western New South Wales (Barbetti & Allen 1972), in southwest Western Australia (Pearce & Barbetti 1981), in the Papua New Guinea Highlands (Gillieson & Mountain 1983), and recently even in Tasmania (Cosgrove 1989). Prior to 1985, with the exception of an 11,000 b.p. date for occupation in Misisjl Cave on New Britain (Specht et al. 1981), the tropical lowlands of Papua New Guinea and its attendant nearer Melanesian island chain had remained a blank on the region’s map of Pleistocene human expansion.
Keywords
PleistoceneNew guineaCaveArchaeologyGeographyAridEthnologyGeologyHistoryPaleontology
Affiliated Institutions
Related Publications
Wrong DOI, But Not my fault
The IntCal09 and Marine09 radiocarbon calibration curves have been revised utilizing newly available and updated data sets from 14 C measurements on tree rings, plant macrofossi...
A Complete Terrestrial Radiocarbon Record for 11.2 to 52.8 kyr B.P.
Dating Carbon Radiocarbon dating is the best way to determine the age of samples that contain carbon and that are younger than ∼50,000 years, the limit of precision for the meth...
Publication Info
- Year
- 1989
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 63
- Issue
- 240
- Pages
- 548-561
- Citations
- 193
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
193
OpenAlex
Cite This
Jim Allen,
Chris Gosden,
J. Peter White
(1989).
Human Pleistocene adaptations in the tropical island Pacific: recent evidence from New Ireland, a Greater Australian outlier.
Antiquity
, 63
(240)
, 548-561.
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003598x00076547
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1017/s0003598x00076547