Reviews: An Atlas of Papua and New Guinea

The reviewer assesses the 1970 An Atlas of Papua and New Guinea, edited by R. Gerard Ward and David A. M. Lea with cartography by Marlous Ploeg, as a progress report on a rapidly changing territory approaching independence. Its 51 black-and-white maps, compiled for the 1970 ANZAAS meeting in Port Moresby from the work of more than 30 experts, combine earlier and original research with explanatory commentary. The reviewer emphasizes its human-geographical orientation and wide coverage of administration, population, languages, disease, environmental resources, agriculture, infrastructure, social services, and research sites. Data gaps, uneven coherence, omitted temperature maps and plantation coverage, and occasional legibility problems qualify the assessment. Nevertheless, the reviewer considers it an essential reference for Melanesia and a pioneering interim work between the 1951 Resource Atlas and a hoped-for national atlas.