Learning the lithic landscape: using raw material sources to investigate Pleistocene colonisation in the Ivane Valley, Papua New Guinea

Recent research in the Ivane Valley has shown that it was first occupied during the late Pleistocene between 43–49,000 years cal. BP, making this area one of the earliest colonised in Papua New Guinea. At an altitude of 2000 metres above sea level, occupation also marks the first time that modern humans pushed into the high altitude montane regions within Sahul. Part of the process of familiarisation with a landscape involves the identification of lithic sources. The importance of lithic sources for the landscape learning process is that, unlike plant foods and animals, it can be assumed that the colonisers had little a priori knowledge of their location before arriving in a particular landscape. If lithic sources are available, then their successful use would require a process of learning the locations and properties of the different raw material sources, thus creating an intimate level of knowledge of a landscape. By examining how modern humans familiarised themselves with the Ivane landscape through the use of lithic sources, we may be able to understand further the processes of colonisation and adaptation to particular landscapes.