ABSTRACT
In the eastern highlands, people adjusted their rhythms of plant exploitation to more seasonal resources, whereas in the central highlands more permanent occupation was possible by mobile groups exploiting a broad array of a seasonally producing food plants. Jocelyn Powell conjectured that the richness and diversity of edible plants in New Guinean rainforests may have fostered broad spectrum subsistence. Archaeological investigations suggest that Sahul was rapidly colonised by people following an ocean crossing from Island Southeast Asia. Adaptive flexibility was enabled by several practices that appear to have been common across Sahul during the Pleistocene. Taken together, the archaeological and palaeoecological evidence indicates that people have been agents of change in the interior rainforests of New Guinea since the Pleistocene. A re-evaluation of the recurrent model of highland subsistence requires an in-depth consideration of Pandanus phenology, vegetation history and resource availability in the interior rainforests of New Guinea, including the highlands, during the Pleistocene.
