Late Pleistocene lithic technology in the Ivane valley: A view from the rainforest

Ford, Anne

doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2016.05.030

Cited by 22 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…The approach presented in this essay advocates for following the chaîne opératoire in order to describe technical and social life in pre-colonial Melanesia-going beyond the artefact as an inert object, and untangling the specific technological processes that bring these materials to life on the human scale. Similar approaches are beginning to be taken up in many studies of Melanesian material culture (see Coupaye 2009Coupaye , 2016Ford 2012Ford , 2017Gaffney 2016Gaffney , 2018Lagarde and Sand 2013;Leclerc 2016;Pétrequin 1999, 2006;Szabó 2004). In presenting the case of pottery-making around Madang, tracing this technological process back through time and drawing comparisons with other technological processes on the north-east coast, we see there are commonalities in how groups in this part of Melanesia bring forth material actors, materialise meaning and grow social relationships.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Technological process in pre-colonial Melanesia

Gaffney¹

2019

Archaeologies of Island Melanesia: Current Approaches to Landscapes, Exchange and Practice

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Technology is a process. As a process, it materialises knowledge, identity and society. In this essay, I introduce the concept of technological process, which draws on the tenets of process archaeology and the anthropology of technology in describing materials and people as dynamic, mutually constitutive lines of flow. These lines are best codified as a chaîne opératoire (operational sequence), which allows us to tease apart socially meaningful, diachronic variation and change. How technological process, as a narrative device and interpretive concept, can be uniquely applied to the pre-colonial past in Melanesia is explored through the production and exchange of red-slipped pottery around Madang in the recent pre-colonial past. Common themes in this research, and other case studies from the area, draw attention to unique aspects of the technological process in northeast New Guinea, which involves growth, personification, magic and ritual. This has implications for how we understand technology in deeper archaeological time.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Technological process in pre-colonial Melanesia

Gaffney¹

2019

Archaeologies of Island Melanesia: Current Approaches to Landscapes, Exchange and Practice

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“…The second involved lithic technological analysis to describe the nature of reduction and tool use on-site. Examination of the reductive flaked technology at the sites followed a hierarchical classification system based on the chaîne opératoire as described above, and as outlined elsewhere for New Guinea lithic analysis (Ford 2017;Gaffney in review;Gaffney et al 2015), which sought to define distinct technological procedures operational within each raw material type. By examining each artefact's chaîne opératoire-that is, how it has passed through different stages of procurement, production, use, re-use and discard-we can examine recurring patterns relating to how each material was being treated at the different sites.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coastal mobility and lithic supply lines in northeast New Guinea

Gaffney

Summerhayes

2018

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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This paper investigates how coastal mobility and a community's place within regional trade networks intersect with technological organisation. To do this, we identified different types of lithic production and exchange during the late pre-colonial period at three coastal sites around Madang in northeast New Guinea. The study is the first major technological and sourcing study in this area. Consistent with terrestrial models, lithic technological analysis crucially shows that groups with higher levels of coastal mobility (1) were reducing a wider range of lithic materials and (2) reduced material less intensively than groups with indirect access. Conversely, groups with lower coastal mobility levels (1) were flaking a restricted range of lithic materials and (2) reduced material more intensively. Geochemical analysis, using X-ray fluorescence, shows that at all three sites obsidian artefacts exclusively derived from Kutau/Bao (Talasea) in West New Britain. This indicates that, by about 600 years ago through to the late nineteenth century, the Kutau/Bao source had become a specialised export product, being fed into major distribution conduits operational along the northeast coast. Importantly, there is no evidence for exchange with other sources such as Admiralties or Fergusson Island obsidian. This is contrastive to the Sepik coast, where obsidian from the Admiralties Islands featured prominently alongside West New Britain obsidian, and suggests the emergence of different coastal supply lines feeding the northeast Madang coast and the north Sepik coast.

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“…The site is situated on a spur above a tributary feeding the Ivane River (Figure 2b) and lies in close proximity to two other sites of similar age: South Kov Ridge (AAXE) and Vilakuav (AAXF) (Summerhayes et al., 2010). Like other sites in the Ivane Valley, the Joe’s Garden sequence has yielded flaked stone assemblages broadly representative of other mainland Papua New Guinea Pleistocene sites (Ford, 2017).…”

Section: Site Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Layer 3 is the lowest archaeological horizon at Joe’s Garden. While flaked and unmodified stone were present in Layers 4 and 3 in all the Ivane Valley sites, no ground stone has been identified (Ford, 2017). Carbonized remains of Pandanus spp.…”

Section: Site Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The bowl was manufactured from tholeiitic basalt, an exotic raw material from outside the Wahgi Valley, maybe from within New Guinea (e.g. Ford, 2017), and perhaps outside of New Guinea (see discussion in Sullivan et al., 2017: 418–421). Microscopic examination revealed no diagnostic usewear or visible residues (Fullagar and Golson, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Functional studies of flaked and ground stone artefacts reveal starchy tree nut and root exploitation in mid-Holocene highland New Guinea

et al. 2020

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Ground stone technology for processing starchy plant foods has its origins in the late Pleistocene, with subsequent intensification and transformation of this technology coinciding with the global emergence of agriculture in the early Holocene. On the island of New Guinea, agriculture first emerges in the highland Wahgi Valley, potentially from c. 9 kya, and clearly evident by 6.5 kya. Approximately 400 km further east in the highland Ivane Valley, long-term occupation sequences span the Holocene and late Pleistocene, but there is currently no direct evidence for wetland agriculture. Here, we report rare evidence for ground stone implements from a secure mid-Holocene archaeological context in the Ivane Valley. The Joe’s Garden site has flaked and ground stone artefacts with significant starch assemblages dating to approximately 4.4 kya. We present the first empirical evidence for the function of stone bowls from a New Guinea highland setting. Usewear and residues indicate the grinding and pounding of endemic starch-rich plant foods. Geometric morphometric analysis of starch grains shows that at least two taxa were processed: Castanopsis acuminatissima (nut) and Pueraria lobata (tuber). This regional example adds to our understanding of the trajectories of diverse plant food exploitation and ground stone technology development witnessed globally in the Holocene.

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Late Pleistocene lithic technology in the Ivane valley: A view from the rainforest

Cited by 22 publications

References 55 publications

Technological process in pre-colonial Melanesia

Technological process in pre-colonial Melanesia

Coastal mobility and lithic supply lines in northeast New Guinea

Functional studies of flaked and ground stone artefacts reveal starchy tree nut and root exploitation in mid-Holocene highland New Guinea

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