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35,000-year-old sites in the rainforests of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Christina Pavlides  and
Chris Gosden
Christina Pavlides
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, La Trobe University, Bundoora Campus, VIC 3083, Australia
Chris Gosden
Affiliation:
Pitt Rivers Museum, and Department of Ethnology & Prehistory, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PP, England
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Extract

The growing story of early settlement in the northwest Pacific islands is moving from coastal sites into the rainforest. Evidence of Pleistocene cultural layers have been discovered in open-site excavations at Yombon, an area containing shifting hamlets, in West New Britain's interior tropical rainforest. These sites, the oldest in New Britain, may presently stand as the oldest open sites discovered in rainforest anywhere in the world.

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Notes
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Antiquity , Volume 68 , Issue 260 , September 1994 , pp. 604 - 610
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1994

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