Advances in Obsidian Studies of the Old and New Worlds

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Advances in Obsidian Studies of the Old and New Worlds," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

By means of geochemical sourcing of obsidian and its relationship to human behavior, including procurement, production, transport, trade, distribution, use, and discard, archaeologists have illuminated technological, economic, ritual, and political domains in a wide range of organizations from foraging hominins using the Oldowan stone tools to craft specialists in Teotihuacan. In addition to methodological advancement in the provenance studies of obsidian using standard analytical techniques (notably, portable-EDXRF), archaeologists have explored diversified theoretical, methodological, and empirical studies to squeeze potential knowledge regarding human use of obsidian (e.g., formation processes, micro-wears, surface modifications, obsidian hydration, and core/tool reductions). Because obsidian is globally exploited material, the goal of the present symposium is to enhance our understanding of the current variability in archaeological questions and approaches to complexity in human use of obsidian, through assembling archaeological studies of obsidian from various temporal settings from the Pleistocene to the contemporary world between the Old and New Worlds.