Rethinking agency in hiri exchange relationships on Papua New Guinea’s south coast: Oral traditions and archaeology

•Analysis of how agency plays out in a famed New Guinea exchange network (the hiri).•Archaeological narratives of the exchange network are reassessed in light of Indigenous oral traditions.•Peoples of the Papuan Gulf assert that they initiated and maintained exchange relationships with people from the Port Moresby region.•Inter-family exchange partnerships were sometimes cemented by the practice of temporary adoption.