Sociality and the short distance trader: intra‐regional obsidian exchange in the Willaumez region, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

AbstractAn analysis of changes in the assemblage composition of obsidian from different sources was undertaken on 12 assemblages from sites dating over the past 6,000 years in the Willaumez region (including the peninsula and nearby islands) in West New Britain, in order to investigate Ambrose's (1978) prediction that Lapita obsidian trade differed from recent ethnographic systems. The history of obsidian use on Garua Island, where sites contain various mixes of local and imported obsidian, points to the existence of an intra‐regional system of exchange between communities specialising in one or more goods during the time of Lapita pottery (c. 3,500–2,000 BP). The method of obsidian procurement is shown to have been significantly different from both the earlier and later phases. It is argued that the widespread distribution of obsidian on Lapita sites in both Near and Remote Oceania is the result of movement between a loosely integrated series of local, intra‐regional systems and not long‐distance trade over the entire area as proposed by previous scholars.