Traditional methods of imparting knowledge are known as yarning to Australian Aboriginal Elders and talking circles to North American First Nations peoples. Yarning is a relational methodology for transferring Indigenous knowledge. This article describes an emerging research methodology with yarning at its core, which provides respect and honour in a culturally safe environment. Yarning is highly structured, with protocols and principles providing participants control over the process and their stories. The methodology is embedded in a yarning space, which is framed by six protocols and seven principles. The protocols are gift, control, freedom, space, inclusiveness and gender specificity, and the principles are reciprocity, responsibility, relationship, dignity, equality, integrity and self-determination—to protect participants, stories and data. This is ensured through respectful and honouring relationships, responsibility and accountability between participants. The key camps in which the yarning journey is segmented are the Ancestors, protocols, principles, connections, data, analysis, processing and reporting, and the wider community.

In this article, we open up Yarning as a fundamentally relational methodology. We discuss key relationships involved in Indigenous research, including with participants, Country, Ancestors, data, history, and Knowledge. We argue that the principles and protocols associated with the deepest layers of yarning in an Indigenous Australian context create a protected space which supports the researcher to develop and maintain accountability in each of these research relationships. Protection and relational accountability in turn contribute to research which is trustworthy and has integrity. Woven throughout the article are excerpts of a yarn in which the first author reflects on his personal experience of this research methodology. We hope this device serves to demonstrate the way yarning as a relational process of communication helps to bring out deeper reflection and analysis and invoke accountability in all of our research relationships.

The archaeology of prehistoric occupation of the island of Garua, West New Britain, is beginning to provide a detailed picture of human adaptation to a highly volatile environment in which periodic catastrophic destruction of vegetation, soils and, presumably, human habitation, is countered, apparently, by the human ability to recolonise and adapt to changing circumstances. However, our ability to fully identify these human responses is presently limited by a lack of paleoenvironmental data. This wet tropical region presents specific problems in obtaining and analysing such data. In this case these problems are in part being overcome by the use of fossil phytolith analysis. However, to put this technique into use, several methodological issues have had to be addressed. This paper considers several of these, describing experiments testing preparation techniques, introducing key elements influencing assemblage compositions in this environment, and outlining the form of statistical analyses adapted and adopted to interrogate the large multivariate data set. Results are described from tests using modern analogue samples, which indicate promise in the ability of the analytical techniques to identify and differentiate key indicators of the complex and dynamic environment of prehistoric West New Britain.