Setting the Agenda for the Next Phase in Obsidian Studies in Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Studies of obsidian artifacts from sites across Aotearoa (New Zealand) in the 1960s-80s, were critical to identifying a major decrease in mobility, just prior to the onset of endemic warfare, marked by the construction of thousands of fortifications by the ancestors of Māori. Unfortunately, initial enthusiasm was followed by stagnation in research. A number of factors are implicated in the sluggish rate of novel findings, including: a lack of faith in the reliably of geochemistry-based source assignments; small sample sizes; poor spatial-temporal controls; and failure to publish primary data on artifacts. Over the past decade, we have seen a resurgence of research with the adoption of pXRF. We now have reliable source assignments and lithic technology data on thousands of individual artifacts. Our interdisciplinary research group has used this data to model social networks as a window in to the origins of Māori society. This new chapter in obsidian studies brings with it new and lingering issues, likely common to other regions, that must be overcome: what to do with legacy data; how to combine data to create appropriate spatial-temporal units; and how to visualize the complex links between communities evident in social network analyses.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• 2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23422