AN ASSESSMENT OF THE CURRENT APPLICATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS OF OBSIDIAN SOURCING STUDIES IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH*

2012/08/08 by K. P. FREUND, Kyle P. Freund · 8 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Maritime and Coastal Archaeology

paper · doi:10.1111/j.1475-4754.2012.00708.x

Abstract

This paper thematically characterizes a large body of recent obsidian sourcing discourse as a means of highlighting the current place of obsidian provenance studies in larger archaeological discourse. It is shown that the field of obsidian sourcing is flourishing, with a clear upward trend in the number of published studies in the past decade. This paper further argues that sourcing is a means to an end, a way to determine where artefacts originate, and thus a means of addressing broader archaeological problems. Through this contextual framework, obsidian sourcing studies—and indeed all provenance studies—are seen as relevant because they transcend the increasingly specialized world of archaeological discourse.

Citations

• Social networks and the spread of Lapita

Cited by

• Characterizing centrality: Obsidian consumption, supra-regional connectivity, and social reproduction at the Early Bronze Age sanctuary of Keros (Cyclades, Greece)
• pXRF Analysis of Obsidian Artifacts from a Rural Spanish Household: Investigating Spanish-Pueblo Interactions in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico
• Carpathian obsidian exchange and social connectivity in eastern central Europe between the 7th and 3rd millennia BCE
• A long-term perspective on the exploitation of Lipari obsidian in central Mediterranean prehistory
• Social Network Analysis of Ancient Japanese Obsidian Artifacts Reflecting Sampling Bias Reduction
• Evaluating machine learning techniques for archaeological lithic sourcing: a case study of flint in Britain. [europepmc]
• Raw material choices and technical practices as indices of cultural change: Characterizing obsidian consumption at 'Mycenaean' Quartier Nu, Malia (Crete). [europepmc]
• Characterizing centrality: Obsidian consumption, supra-regional connectivity, and social reproduction at the Early Bronze Age sanctuary of Keros (Cyclades, Greece). [europepmc]

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