The Best Gifts come in Small Packages? Coring Volcanic Landscapes in New Britain

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Research and CRM Are Not Mutually Exclusive: J. Stephen Athens—Forty Years and Counting" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A volcanic environment built up by characterised and well dated airfall tephras is paradise for landscape archaeology because in any excavation the cultural material is placed accurately in time. Shouldn’t this setting also be ideal for environmental data? With expertise provided by Steve Athens, we tried to recover a long-term record in the Willaumez Peninsula on New Britain, Papua New Guinea, a long way from his usual field sites. A beautiful, but nearly inaccessible, crater lake proved an insuperable challenge due to the depths and coarseness of the volcanic sediments. Adopting a slightly altered research question, our activity shifted to a somewhat less intractable sequence of peats and tephras. On the final day of Steve’s visit, coring under difficult conditions produced a short but tantalizing record with exciting implications for early forest management. We offer this paper as a tribute to Steve’s outstanding creativity, expertise, flexibility and collegiality.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Research and CRM Are Not Mutually Exclusive: J. Stephen Athens—Forty Years and Counting   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22956