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The demise of a monopoly: Implications of geochemical characterisation of a stemmed obsidian tool from the Bishop Museum collections
Author(s) -
MULROONEY MARA,
TORRENCE ROBIN,
McALISTER ANDREW
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
archaeology in oceania
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1834-4453
pISSN - 0728-4896
DOI - 10.1002/arco.5069
Subject(s) - demise , outcrop , archipelago , archaeology , prehistory , new guinea , period (music) , geography , geology , history , paleontology , art , ethnology , political science , law , aesthetics
Geochemical analysis using portable X‐ray fluorescence (pXRF) shows that a large stemmed tool in the Bishop Museum, thought at one time to be a mata‘a from Rapa Nui, is composed of obsidian from the Mopir outcrops on New Britain, Papua New Guinea. As the first large, ceremonial stemmed tool from this quarry, it challenges the hypothesis that production was limited to one region, therefore suggesting that a more complex set of social networks operated in the period prior to 3000 BP in the Bismarck Archipelago.