Abstract
This thesis examines the nature of changing pottery production and exchange on the northeast coast of New Guinea in the pre-colonial past. Models in Melanesian archaeology suggest that the recent past, leading up to ethnographic contact, was a dynamic period of changing mobility, social interaction, and technology, and is crucial to our understanding of culture in the region today. Here, this important time of social and technological flux is investigated by examining the emergence of the extensive Madang (Bilbil/Bilibili) exchange network. This network was based around the specialised production and distribution of ‘Madang-style’ ceramics—a distinctive red-slipped, applied/incised tradition that has previously been found from Karkar Island in the north, to the New Guinea Highlands in the south, and the Bismarck Archipelago to the east.
The major contributions of this thesis describe the recent survey, excavations, and analyses of Madang-style ceramic assemblages from the Madang coast: at Tilu, Malmal Village, and at Nunguri, on Bilbil Island. This analysis takes a technological approach to ceramics, following the chaîne opératoire, which can systematically examine the nature of production and exchange, and delineate past production groups working within broader communities of practice. In this way, the complete production and distribution sequence of the Madang-style is examined through a variety of traditional and geochemical techniques. Consideration is then given to the implications of these results to processes of production and exchange along the northeast coast generally, and to important, unanswered questions in Madang’s culture history.