Terra Australis reports the results of archaeological research, in the main of staff and students of the Dept. of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University. Its region is the lands south and ea t of Asia , though mainly Aus tralia, New Guinea and Island Melanesia , that were terra australis incognita to generations of European geographers before Cook and are largely so to prehistorians today. Its subject is the settlement f the diverse environments in this isolated quarter of the globe by peoples who have maintained their di crete and traditional ways of life into the recent recorded r remembered past and at times into the observable present .