According to history passed down from generation after generation to my father Bunemiga is that; the megalithic site Ilukwewaya (O'utuyamu) was habitat to the very people who once lived there. Nobody here can trace their origin before settling there on the Trobriand Island.
It was thought to be the first people to settle on the Island even before the time of The Great giant (Dokanikani) who killed islanders for meat and the rest fled the island to seek refuge on nearby island or even further.
So the bones are thought to be their remains, buried during that time. Ever since, we've being digging up human bones while gardening there every time we make food gardens around the site. By history our ancestors do not bury the dead, their bones are dried and put them on shelves of coral cliffs or caves.
Only in mid eighteenth century we began to bury our dead because of the white man influence on the island but that only some villages do, most stuck to our old ways.
The site where I dug up the remains seem shallow, about 300mm deep with below the ground surface. An adult bones shattered by the ground pressure and the brain turned into soil have shuttered the skull as well. With fully grown tooth still stuck onto the jaw bone, almost all have come loose due to jaw bone have decay.
The great anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski first wrote about the megalithic site then Annette B Weiner who came to the island and lived with my parents in the late 60's also wrote about the site as well.
Regards,
Tonubu Bunemiga
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