Geochemical sourcing of obsidians from the Pūrākaunui site, South Island, New Zealand

Abstract

AbstractWe report the first well‐documented case of a South Island site where Mayor Island obsidian is not the dominant source represented. At the Pūrākaunui site (I44/21), located in coastal Otago, we find that most obsidians come from the Taupo Volcanic Zone, including sources near Lake Taupo (52%) and Rotorua (27.7 %). A small proportion of the collection comes from Mayor Island (10.8%) and the Coromandel Peninsula (9.5%) obsidian. The results point to early effects of regionalisation in source exploitation on the South Island.