From Pleistocene to Present: obsidian sources in west New Britain, Papua New Guinea

  • Author
    Robin Torrence; Jim Specht; Richard Fullagar; R. Bird
  • Year
    1992
  • Journal
    Records of the Australian Museum, Supplement
  • Publisher
    The Australian Museum

Abstract

Artefacts made of obsidian derived from outcrops in the Talasea area of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea, have been found on archaeological sites dating from the late Pleistocene up to the present day and extending over about 8,000 km from west to east of Talasea. The research described here examines the nature of past obsidian exploitation at the Talasea sources and forms part of a larger project on the history of human settlement and resource use in West New Britain. Two aspects of this work are reported here: field studies of the source exposures around Talasea, and the fine-grained discrimination between the sources through PIXE-PIGME ion beam analyses of their chemical compositions.

 
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Bibliographic Data

Short Form
Torrence et al., 1992, Rec. Aust. Mus., Suppl. 15: 83–98
Author
Robin Torrence; Jim Specht; Richard Fullagar; R. Bird
Year
1992
Title
From Pleistocene to Present: obsidian sources in west New Britain, Papua New Guinea
Serial Title
Records of the Australian Museum, Supplement
Volume
15
Start Page
83
End Page
98
DOI
10.3853/j.0812-7387.15.1992.86
Language
en
Date Published
16 October 1992
Cover Date
16 October 1992
ISBN
ISBN 0-7305-9990-6
ISSN (print)
0812-7387
CODEN
RAMSEZ
Publisher
The Australian Museum
Place Published
Sydney, Australia
Subjects
ANTHROPOLOGY; NEW BRITAIN
Digitized
28 July 2009
Reference Number
86
EndNote
86.enw
Title Page
86.pdf
File size: 91kB
Complete Work
86_complete.pdf
File size: 3809kB