Negotiating social identity through material practices with stone. In From Field to Museum—Studies from Melanesia in Honour of Robin Torrence, ed. Jim Specht, Val Attenbrow, and Jim Allen
Abstract
Dazzling, highly retouched obsidian stemmed objects comprised part of the material world of people in West New Britain and beyond in Papua New Guinea sometime between 6000 and 3000 years ago. Geochemical characterisation studies of the region’s obsidian sources indicate that the source of Kutau-Bao dominated to the point where stemmed artefacts made from its obsidian have been found in abundance on nearby Garua Island where another obsidian source, Baki, is located. Furthermore, stemmed artefacts made from Baki obsidian are not found anywhere else except on Garua Island. Studies suggest the nature of production involved centralised knowledge and practices with specialist knappers located on Garua Island. We explore two different approaches in order to look at how such organisation was accomplished. Firstly, we conducted replication experiments to identify characteristic debitage of aspects of stemmed artefact making. Then, the debitage attributes identified were used to examine excavated material from three sites, one near the Kutau-Bao source and two on Garua Island to try to understand the practices employed at the two sources. Our results suggest that Garua Island was a special place where knappers came and used the Baki source to learn, practise and hone their skills for making these dazzling artefacts.
