While anthropologists have viewed the highlands as homogeneous, as socially and culturally continuous, the study of prehistory in the Papua New Guinea highlands has likewise tended towards ‘general interpretations’ only (White 1982:179). In his recent synthesis, White notes that ‘Because of modern cultural similarities within the area, the small number of sites reported, and some gross similarities between them, it has been customary to write of “highlands prehistory” as though a common pattern can be seen’ (1982:175). However, without drawing any implications, there have been some dissenting views on this ‘common pattern’ of highlands prehistory.

In one of the earliest survey papers on the subject, S. and R. Bulmer (1964:52) conclude that a ‘somewhat different course of historical development [has taken place] in the eastern and western sub-regions of the Highlands’. The point is repeated: once in the context of some speculative physical and ecological data; and once while noting that the Yuku excavation in the western highlands appears to have a ‘rather different cultural sequence’ than the Kiowa site located further eastward. The probability of reconciliation of the two sites is maintained by them, however. More recently (1977:137), V. Watson and Cole have spurned comparisons outside the eastern highlands (site of their excavations) with the remark that ‘the kind of archaeological data recovered in some areas is apparently so different from data so far recovered in the eastern highlands as to preclude comparability’.