Previous Archaeological Investigations: Paul Gorecky and Rhis Jones 1987 and Nancy Sullivan 1990 - 2008

In 1987, the archaeologists Paul Gorecky and Rhys Jones, members of the Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, carried out a prospection of the area and over the steep mountain behind the village of Awin they identified a series of 10 caverns with cave painting art, of a total amount of 157 known till the date. Impressed by the complexity and profusion of these paintings they concluded that they could be considered like a new Province of Cave Painting Art comparable to that of Australia and which without doubt constitutes till the present time the biggest in Melanesia.

Their initial project of investigation was directed towards the observation concerning if the caves had been previously inhabited and if an archaeological excavation was justified since other excavated caves in the area had been inhabited since high antiquity and some of them in Papua New Guinea and nearby islands had an age of more than 30,000 years. Those visited did not contain archaeological deposits, but on the other hand found themselves profusely decorated with numerous drawings. The locals told them that they were the first outsiders to visit those places which has been corroborated by Dr. Sullivan, but regretfully many of them that contained amulets and sacred burial art works, were plundered and the art objects object of treading and exchanged by unscrupulous traders for diverse goods of consume or of prestige such as clothes or outboard motors.

According to Dr. Sullivan, some of these wooden sculptures, have been date with C14 to more or less 1350 to 1280 before Christ, and were sold in the emerging market of Oceanic antiquities of Western countries. These days the price of some of these statues reaches figures of several thousand Euro and can be found in private collections from Basile to Museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or in the Young Museum of San Francisco. Nevertheless, this enormous panels covered with pictographs located in these caves and eaves, continue without been registered or studied, very little is know of the ethnographic context in which this cave paintings arts can be inserted among the groups that people nowadays these places. Due to this Dr. Sullivan will dedicate herself in the coming months to collect all the corresponding ethnographic information, concerning its meaning and function, especially all the information related with those pictographs that are registered during this Expedition.

Despite we are not aware until the present moment of the temporary frame in which this cave painting art can be inserted, as some of these paintings could have a great antiquity, as its motifs and design shapes resemble recurrent pictures in the area that have been dated in several thousand years, we know other of them were made by the Awin and Yimas people in recent times. For this reason the systematic registration of the ceremony and rituals related with their confection, can bring by analogy, valuable information that allow us to understand the significance of these motifs in the past. Is possible to assume, although we can not assert it, that the motivations for which they were confectioned by passed generation, could be the same as those for which they were confectioned by their ancestors in remote times.