The Upper Sepik-Central New Guinea Project explores the relationships between material culture on the one hand, and language, geographical propinquity, population, subsistence and environment on the other, in two adjacent regions of Papua New Guinea - the upper Sepik basin and the highlands of central New Guinea - during a relatively narrow time span before major impact by foreign cultures.
The data consists of objects of material culture, and the written information about those objects, located in museums and private collections within Australia and overseas, assembled as a single, virtual collection. The role of trade/exchange links, marriage, population movements, communal rituals and warfare in affecting relationships among the variables will be considered.