Tiga by the tale

Paradise not lost ... Tiga Island’s history uncovered
Paradise not lost ... Tiga Island’s history uncovered

Giant wasps, sea snakes and skeletons are all part of the job for a UQ archaeologist.

Being claustrophobic and allergic to wasps on an island potholed with caves and swarming with giant wasps didn’t deter a UQ archaeologist during his latest dig.

Associate Professor Ian Lilley, a Reader with UQ’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, has been surveying Tiga Island, the smallest of New Caledonia’s Loyalty Islands about 1500 kilometres northeast of Brisbane.

Little is known about the culture and history of the coral island, just 10 square kilometres in area – too small to even show up on most maps. The island lacks fresh surface water but is home to around 200 people.

Dr Lilley and his French and New Caledonian colleagues trekked the island’s razor-sharp coral identifying and digging at significant sites, abseiling down cliffs, exploring island caves, and dodging one of the world’s deadliest sea snakes. So far, they’ve uncovered burial caves, household remains including ancient pottery called Lapita, skeletons and chiefly compounds.

They have also found one mysterious clump of massive boulders that had been moved from the seashore a kilometre inland and 80 metres up a series of cliffs to the island’s highest plateau.

“We’ve been working carefully to gain permission to work on the very abundant skeletons in little caves all over the island,” Dr Lilley said. “Some of them have upwards of 40 or 50 bodies in them. “They should really help us understand the region’s human biological history.” He said they also found handmade water basins to collect water drips 50 metres down in caves as well as a hidden underground lake that early residents used as their main water supply.

“For 3000 years, people have been living perfectly successfully on this little speck of coral with no water,” he said. “How did they survive there for that long, let alone build lots of large structures?”

Dr Lilley believes Tiga Island is vital in explaining Pacific Rim history because the island had been a regional hub. He said the team was identifying and excavating ancient sites and recording local oral history to piece together the story of how people lived, how their villages were organised and how their political systems developed.

Dr Lilley said he planned to return to the area in November for further research to explore burial caves on the rugged eastern side of the island.

Digging deep ... Dr Lilley (far left) at work
 Digging deep ... Dr Lilley (far left) at work

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