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Papuan Pasts: Cultural, Linguistic and Biological Histories of Papuan-speaking Peoples.

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Papuan Pasts: Cultural, Linguistic and Biological Histories of Papuan-speaking Peoples Edited by Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Jack Golson and Robin Hide. Pacific Linguistics 572. Published by Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 2005. ISBN 85883 562 2. Pp. xxiii + 817. Australia AUD$148.50 (incl. GST), elsewhere AUD$135.00.

This volume had its beginnings in a symposium planned in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU, Canberra, to reassess the prehistory of the New Guinea region, by addressing problems of interdisciplinary miscommunication, and of regional and temporal imbalances in research. There had been far more research on the Austronesian languages of the Pacific than on the very diverse other languages concentrated in the area of Near Oceania. Similarly, archaeological research in the region had been biased towards the last 3500 years, with a few notable exceptions.

While collaborations of archaeologists and historical linguists working on problems loosely defined as Austronesian culture history had been productive of new insights and energetic debate, such interdisciplinary synergies were weak or nonexistent among researchers working on the non-Austronesian-speaking areas of Near Oceania, and on its much greater time depth. In particular, research on non-Austronesian (Papuan) languages was prone to be misunderstood by non-linguists, or simply ignored.

The symposium was held in November 2000. The book contains most of the papers originally presented, more or less extensively revised, and one written later. It comprises twenty-eight papers in four parts: linguistics, archaeology, environment and human biology, each with a comprehensive introductory chapter written by one of the four editors.

Pawley's introduction to the linguistics section makes clear why non-specialist readers of literature on Papuan languages have so often been misled by classifications not generally acceptable to linguists. Of the six following chapters on linguistics, that by Ross on classifying the Papuan languages stands out in scope and importance. Using the personal pronouns as a primary diagnostic criterion, Ross identifies 23 probably unrelated families and nine or ten unclassifiable isolated languages. This diagnostic process, he argues, constitutes the crucial first step of the comparative method of historical linguistics. Nevertheless, it is a step that had been omitted from previous surveys of the Papuan languages, with the result that there has been little consensus among linguists about the number of families and their relationships. Ross's classification differs substantially from earlier ones. He finds no evidence to group the Papuan languages of Island Melanesia into one family, finding instead five or six families and three isolates. He also divides the Sepik-Ramu languages among three or four families and an isolate. Of the 23 families, the largest by far is a new version of the Trans New Guinea family, which Ross sees as spreading east, west and south from the central highlands of New Guinea, perhaps pushed by taro domestication, within the last 6000 years.

Pawley's paper addresses the history of...

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