Hood Bay

Hood Bay lay on Papua's southern coast, between the maritime worlds associated with Motu and Mailu voyagers. Its ancestral villages included Agila and Veirarupu. Archaeological dating places occupation at Agila after about 1300, while Veirarupu was occupied during roughly 1450–1650. These settlements stood within coastal networks that linked people around Hood Bay with Bootless Bay farther west.

Pottery preserves a particular history of those relationships. Vessels from Hood Bay shared shapes and decoration with pottery from Motupore in Bootless Bay, but mineral analysis shows that some were made locally. Similarity therefore also reflected the movement of skills. Researchers suggest that kinship and intermarriage helped women transmit pottery-making knowledge between communities. The identities of the individual potters remain unknown. Around the mid-seventeenth century, Agila, Veirarupu and Motupore were abandoned, marking a major change in these connections. Hood Bay's past thus included both seafaring exchange and the household relationships through which people learned to make the objects they used.