Landscapes of exchange in the Willaumez Peninsula, West New Britain, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

The well preserved tephrostratigraphy stretching across the Willaumez Peninsula in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea provides a unique opportunity to monitor landscapes of cultural exchange over a considerable period of human history, extending from the Pleistocene to the recent past. An approach integrating pXRF geochemical characterisation and measurements of reduction intensity was used to analyse a substantial sample of obsidian artefacts from the FRI site and 25 test pits in the Isthmus region, located at the base of the Willaumez Peninsula. Exchange is shown to have been a persistent feature of social life, but variations in the mix of sources used and the kinds of objects transferred also indicate changes in how networks were constructed by social groups. As the frequency and severity of volcanic events decreased through time and population rose in response, the importance of obsidian for creating links may have diminished in favour of other objects, such as stone axe blades.