Prehistoric social landscapes of the Arawe Islands, West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea

This paper lays out a theoretical framework for interpreting a regional archaeological record in terms of the social formations which produced it. The central idea is that of the social landscape. Past social groups are seen to operate in the landscape in order to provide and sustain a social system, rather than reacting to the structure of their environment. The idea of a social landscape is employed to examine how groups organise themselves on a local regional scale to meet social goals and to link these forms of organisation to the archaeological record they leave behind. The central social principle explored here is that of debt, which enjoins dispersal of materials and sets up landscapes which are non‐accumulative. Data from the Arawe island group on the south coast of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea are presented to illustrate these ideas.