Such early dates were somewhat expected for New Guinea, which was attached to Australia. But it came as a total surprise to Pacific archaeologists when Jim Specht found radiocarbon dates from the Pleistocene in New Britain at the Misisil cave site. New Britain and New Ireland had never been connected to the New Guinea mainland; nevertheless, these early dates demonstrated comparably early settlement in the Bismarcks. Since then Pavlides, Leavesley and Allen, and Gosden and Robertson have all identified early settlement sites dating to more than 30 000 BP on New Britain and New Ireland (at Yombon, Buang Merabak and Matenkupkum, respectively). Most of these sites (except for Yombon) were rock shelters or caves. Similarly, Wickler and Spriggs have excavated the Kilu rock shelter in Buka where the earliest settlement dates to 29 000 BP.
Thus, it would appear that the people first crossed the Vitiaz Strait separating the Huon Peninsula from New Britain at least 30 000-40 000 years ago. From New Britain they next settled New Ireland, followed both by northerly and southerly colonizations of the Admiralty Islands and Solomon Islands, respectively. Fredericksen et al. excavating the Pamwak rock shelter on Manus found support for this model when they dated the earliest settlement of the Admiralty Islands to 13 000 BP. Similarly, Roe excavated the rock shelter site of Vatuluma Posovi on Guadalcanal and mid-Holocene sites with slightly earlier dates, and Spriggs obtained comparable dates from the Nissan, situated between New Ireland and Bougainville in the northern Solomon Islands. South of the Solomons, current research suggests that first human settlement was generally associated with Lapita pottery.
World History
