More Bits and Bobs of Interest

-
Kia ora,

As a follow up to my recent posts about the recent New Zealand Archaeological Association conference in Blenheim and the Wairau Bar archaeological site, I have found a piece on the Radio New Zealand website about the conference and the history of the site. There is a wee bit of footage from the conference fieldtrip to Wairau Bar and radio interviews with representatives of Rangitāne O Wairau, the local tangata whenua, as well as some of the researchers that have been involved in the recent study of the site.

I've also found a couple of other 'bits and bobs of interest' discussing recent archaeological research around Oceania.

In one study, appearing in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, and reported by Live Science, researchers from the Australian Museum, University of Sydney, and the University of Auckland employed a methodology known as experimental archaeology in order to test ideas about how ca. 3000 year old flaked stone tools excavated at sites in the Solomon Islands had been used. Experimental archaeology is where researchers try and recreate aspects of the archaeological record (in this example the distinctive type of damage that has been found to occur on the edges of the stone tools). After using replicas of the tools as tattooing implements the researchers found that the resulting edge damage (or 'use-wear') was similar to that on the archaeological specimens when examined using a high-powered microscope. They therefore concluded that the archaeological specimens were likely used for a similar purpose.

Tattooing is an important part of many Pacific cultures, including that of the New Zealand Māori. Source image here.



In the other study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and reported by ABC News in Australia, researchers geochemically 'fingerprinted' stone artefacts previously excavated from a well-dated site in the Cook Islands. The results indicate the existence of an extensive inter-archipelago exchange network, possibly lasting centuries (ca. 1300 AD to the 1600s), with the artefacts (or at least the raw materials used to manufacture them) coming from as far as the Marquesas Islands, more than 2,400 km away.


Thanks for reading,
Nick

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Importance of Context in Archaeology

-
Image
In my last post I mentioned the importance of context to archaeological research. That is, knowing PRECISELY where an object was found and its relationship to other objects in the archaeological record.  The goal of archaeology is to understand past human behaviour and how that behaviour changes over time. The primary (and in some cases, the only!) source of evidence available to help achieve this goal is the archaeological record, or the material record of that behaviour. So, how do archaeologists get from ruins, pieces of dirty stone and pottery and patterns of dark patches in the soil to an understanding of human behaviour in the past and how this changes over time? This is where context is important!   To recap from the last post - Excavation, the principal method of data acquisition in archaeology, involves the systematic uncovering of archaeological remains through the removal of the deposits of soil and other material covering them and accompanying them. Two ...
Read more

Problems with Prehistory

-
Within archaeology, prehistory has a fairly straightforward meaning: prior to recorded (i.e. written down) history. In theory, the use of this term within the field to describe a time period in the past is free of value judgments. The key distinction between prehistoric and historical archaeology is one of differences in the resources that are available to archaeologists when trying to piece together peoples' behaviour in the past. In both cases, we are interested in the material remains of that behaviour. That is, in a nutshell, the definition of archaeology: the investigation of the human past by the study of the material remains left behind. British archaeologist Stuart Piggott once called archaeology 'the science of rubbish' because it predominantly involves the study of things that people have thrown away. Historical Archaeology In historical archaeology the study of material remains is complemented by the study of historical records - whether they be written histo...
Read more

Motupore Island continued

-
Image
The following is a slightly edited version of a report I originally wrote for PAST, the newsletter of the Prehistoric Society , which provided me with some funding to attend the Motupore Island excavation in Papua New Guinea in 2016. This did not end up appearing in PAST, so I thought I would post it here. In June 2016 the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) ran an archaeological field school on Motupore Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Because my research as a graduate student at the University of Otago had looked at the archaeology of sites and regions thought to be linked to Motupore Island, I was invited to attend as an overseas student. A short report on the excavation follows.  Motupore Island in Bootless Bay is a small, waterless island located some 16km east of Port Moresby, the national capital of PNG. The island is about 800m long, 275m wide at its widest point, and rising to a maximum 61.4m above sea level. On the protected northern (shoreward) end of the island, a cu...
Read more