Kuk is a settlement at c. 1600 m altitude in the upper Wahgi Valley of the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea, near Mount Hagen, the provincial capital. The site forms part of the highland spine that runs for more than 2500 km from the western head of the island of New Guinea to the end of its eastern tail. Until the early 1930s, when the region was first explored by European outsiders, it was thought to be a single, uninhabited mountain chain. Instead, it was found to be a complex area of valleys and basins inhabited by large populations of people and pigs, supported by the intensive cultivation of the tropical American sweet potato on the slopes above swampy valley bottoms.
With the end of World War II, the area, with others, became a focus for the development of coffee and tea plantations, of which the establishment of Kuk Research Station was a result. Large-scale drainage of the swamps produced abundant evidence in the form of stone axes and preserved wooden digging sticks and spades for their past use in cultivation. Investigations in 1966 at a tea plantation in the upper Wahgi Valley by a small team from The Australian National University yielded a date of over 2000 years ago for a wooden stick collected from the bottom of a prehistoric ditch.
The establishment of Kuk Research Station a few kilometres away shortly afterwards provided an ideal opportunity for a research project.
Edited by:
Jack Golson,
Tim Denham,
Philip Hughes,
Pamela Swadling,
John Muke
Imprint: Australian National Univ.
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions:
Height: 290mm,
Width: 205mm,
ISBN: 9781760461157
ISBN 10: 1760461156
Series: Terra Australis
Pages: 544
Publication Date: 07 July 2017
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
An Introduction to the Investigations at Kuk Swamp Part One: Agriculture in a World, Regional and Local Setting Early Agriculture in World Perspective Domesticatory Relationships in the New Guinea Highlands Environment and Food Production in Papua New Guinea The Wetland Field Systems of the New Guinea Highlands Part Two: Kuk Swamp and its Store of Evidence Kuk Swamp Volcanic Ash at Kuk Tibito Tephra, Taim Tudak and the Impact of Thin Tephra Falls Palaeoecology The Archaeobotany of Kuk Part Three: People in the Swamp and on its Margins Phase 1: The Case for 10,000-Year-Old Agriculture at Kuk Phase 2: Mounded Cultivation During the Mid Holocene Phase 3: The Emergence of Ditches Phase 4: Major Disposal Channels, Slot-Like Ditches and Grid-Patterned Fields Phase 5: Retreating Forests, Flat-Bottomed Ditches and Raised Fields Phase 6: Impact of the Sweet Potato on Swamp Landuse, Pig Rearing and Exchange Relations Houses in and out of the Swamp Part Four: Artefacts of Wood and Stone The Kuk Artefacts, an Introduction Artefacts of Wood Kuk Stone Artefacts: Technology, Usewear and Residues Stone Sources and Petrology of Kuk Swamp Artefacts Part Five: The Traditional Owners Hagen Settlement Histories: Dispersals and Consolidations Kuk Phase 7, 1969–1990, the Kuk Research Station: A Colonial Interlude Kuk 1991 to 1998, the Station Abandoned and the Land Resumed: Archaeological Implications Kuk Phase 8: Heritage Issues to 2008