Experimental and archaeological studies of use-wear and residues on obsidian artefacts from Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Experimental and Archaeological Studies of Use-wear and Residues on Obsidian Artefacts from Papua New Guineaby Nina KononenkoTechnical Reports of the Australian Museum, On -line 21. Australian Museum, Sydney, 2011. 244 pp. ISSN 1835-4211. Available free in pdf format from the Australian Museum website, doi:10.3853/j.1835-4211.21.2011 .1559Reviewed by Michael Haslam, Research Labora-tory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Univer -sity of Oxford, South Parks Rd., Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom. Email: michael.haslam@rlaha.ox.ac.ukIn many discussions of lithic technology, the fo -cus on material procurement, transport, trade, manufacture, curation, and discard can give the impression that the actual use of stone tools was almost an afterthought. !is remains true even though techniques for the functional analysis of stone artifacts have seen constant development over several decades. In particular, the analysis of use-wear patterns and adhering microscopic resi-dues has proved capable of reconstructing fine de -tails of tool-use behaviour, even tens or hundreds of thousands of years in the past (e.g., Hardy and Moncel 2011). Unfortunately for those interested in the role of technology in the everyday lives of past people, however, such studies are often time-consuming and specialised, which can limit their wider application. !e result is that analysis of tool functions is frequently considered an optional ex-tra in lithic studies. In this light, Kononenko’s monograph on the Holocene obsidian tools of Garua Island, New Britain, is a timely reminder that functional anal-ysis is in fact a fundamental necessity for under -standing stone artifacts in their social and ecologi-cal contexts. Even such basic questions as which pieces of flaked stone were tools and which simply debitage require a functional perspective — analy -ses of artifact metrics or discard density or reduc-tion technique are insufficient. All archaeologists dealing with stone tools will benefit from reading this volume, and to add even greater incentive, it’s available free, as a 35 MB PDF file, downloadable from the Australian Museum website. !e monograph is organised into seven parts, with Part 1 being a short introduction that sets out the rationale for the work. Part 2 describes the criteria for assessing lithic function, including use-wear variables and the methods for prepar-ing artifacts for analysis. Parts 3 and 4 describe the methods and results of a comprehensive ex -perimental tool-use program, designed to provide reference materials for comparison with excavated artifacts. Parts 5 and 6 document the analysis of the archaeological sample, interpreting the results in terms of possible shifts in activities between the Mid and Late Holocene at the FAO site on Garua Island. Part 7 summarizes these results, offering a succinct perspective on domestic and subsistence tasks on the island, as well as mobility and settle -ment patterns, either side of the WK-2 volcanic eruption around 3,300 years ago. In its overall structure Kononenko’s volume re-sembles Hurcombe’s (1992) excellent monograph on obsidian use-wear, and the two publications are nicely complementary. Kononenko’s writing is concise and precise, and the study’s experimental and archaeological results are neatly tabulated fol -lowing the text. But the real gem follows these: 225 colour plates (totalling over 500 individual images) that meticulously document the physical modifica -tions on which the results are based. !is collection of images may be the most useful single resource for understanding the visual comparisons underly-ing use-wear analysis that has ever been published. Its free availability through the web makes it the next best thing to an online database of obsidian use-wear. !e monograph has three explicit aims, one of which is the assembly of the colour plates. !e other two are the use of experimental referents to identify archaeological tool-use activities at the FAO site, and to apply the findings of the archaeo -logical study to broader questions concerning the