This monograph presents the results of archaeological research that takes a longitudinal approach to interpreting and understanding Aboriginal–European contact. It focuses on a small but unique area of tropical rainforest in far north Queensland’s Wet Tropics Bioregion.

The aim of this research is to investigate the nature of the social and economic transition occurring between the Lapita to post-Lapita periods on the island of Watom, East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea.

This dissertation as two main aims: To form a classification system (non-classificatory arrangement; after Dunnel, 1971) for the purpose of ascertaining a functional to coral tools in relation to fishhook manufacture. To devise a standardised system for the measurement of attributes on coral abraders that may aid future functional studies.

People carrying the Lapita culture, which first appeared in the Bismarck archipelago c. 3300 BP, were the first colonists of Remote Oceania. While over 200 Lapita sites have been identified throughout the Pacific, very few contain any skeletal remains. The scarcity of burials has limited insight into Lapita mortuary practices, actions that bring forth the...

The advance of Neolithic culture was a defining process in human history. Chronicled by the distribution of Austronesian languages, one such expansion of Neolithic peoples swept through the Indo-Pacific region just 4,000 years ago. A record of this dispersal is carried in the genes of modern people. Yet human populations have a much older history...