Oceanic Art Speaks – Ben Shaw
Live online talk — 7:30 pm, Wednesday 28 October 2026 (East Coast Australia)
Hear Dr Ben Shaw from the Australian National University present his latest findings and research on the precolonial Massim region of Papua New Guinea (PNG).
The presentation draws on the recent publication of his latest book Developing Maritime Economies of the Pre-Colonial Massim, Papua New Guinea: The Making of an Island World and the Foundations of Kula.
Ben’s research is geographically focused on Papua New Guinea where he has undertaken extensive fieldwork over the past 17 years across many island, coastal and highland regions.
Ben’s research spans the full length of human history from colonisation through to historic contexts. His major interest is the interplay between past climates, environments, and human behaviours. Specifically, using multidisciplinary approaches to understand how cultural and technological adaptations contributed to the emergence of complex human diversity in the Asia-Pacific region, and globally.
Ben is currently working in the islands of the Milne Bay Province and the Bogia-Ramu area in the Madang Province of Papua New Guinea. In the Milne Bay islands he has established a Late Pleistocene antiquity for human colonisation, defined the timing for the arrival of cultural groups associated with the spread of pottery producing cultrual groups (Lapita), and modelled the antiquity of historically known cultural practices. In the Highlands as part of a collaborative transdisciplinary research initiative he has identified sociocultural changes linked to agricultural developments.
Prior to this, Ben developed and tested an isotopic approach for identifying migration in the Pacific Islands using human and animal dental remains from archaeological contexts.
You can view youtube videos of Ben’s fieldwork in Papua New Guinea here
