Towards a Prehistory of the Kone Region, New Caledoniia: A Reanalysis of the Pioneering Archaeological Excavations of E. W. Gfford Edited by Patrick V. Kirch, Marshall I. Weisler, and Eleanor Casella Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers Number 82,1997 The Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, Number 82 ? 1997 Kroeber Anthropological Society Editorial Committee: David Kojan, Rachael Stryker, William T. Whitehead Printed by Copy World, San Francisco, CA Membership: Subscription is by membership in the Kroeber Anthropological Society. Dues for student members are $18.00. for regular members (including institutions) are $20.00, and all foreign subscribers $27.00 in US currency. Back issues of the Papers are available for $10.00 per issue plus $2.00 shipping and handling in the United States, Mexico, and Canada; foreign orders should add $4.00 shipping and handling. Prices subject to change without notice. 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All inquiries should be sent to: Kroeber Anthropological Society Department of Anthropology University of California Berkeley, CA 94720-3710 email: kas@qal.berkeley.edu On the World Wide Web- (httpJ/www.qal.berkeley.edul-kas) NblicWien thu vo1Ma~e wa~ m~We pessibIe_ -h par~ by financi support from the Cfat I CMbJIutd~ thtLJnivervit of Calsforniau Berkeley. Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers No. 82, 1997 Special Edition Towards a Prehistory of the Kone Region, New Caledonia: A Reanalysis of the Pioneering Archaeological Excavations of E. W. Gifford Edited by Patrick V. Kirch, Marshall I. Weisler, and Eleanor Casella Contents Introducton: E. W. Gifford, New Caledonia, and Oceanic Prehistory Patrick V. Kirch ................... A Geoarchaeological Analysis of Sediments from Sites 14 and 26 Mahlon Leonard .18 Mollusk Exploitation and Paleoenvironmental Change in the Kone Region: A Reanalysis of the Site 13 Mollusk Assemblages Laura J. Miller ..................... 25 A Re-Examination of the Bird Bones from Archaeological Sites Excavated in 1952 on New Caledonia David W. Steadman ..................... 38 A Formal Analysis of the Lapita Ceramic Assemblage from Site 1 3A David Ultan ............ 49 A Formal Analysis of Diagnostic Ceramics from Site 14, Podtanean Elizabeth Manning ........................................................................ 58 A Technological Analysis of the Ceramics from Site 14, Podtanean Mary Reiten ............. 69 Stylistic 'ariation in Pottery from Site 26, Oundjo Timothy Plowman .81 A Case Study in Ceramic Technology: Site 26, Oundjo Eleanor C. Casella .100 Re-Evaluating the Flaked Stone Artifacts from Lapita Sites 13 and 1 3A Anthony Marais .109 An Analysis of Lithic Artifacts from Site 26, Podtan6an David T. Price . 20 An Analysis of Shell Net Sinkers from Kone Sites David Rapp ..128 Concluding Remarks on Kone Region Prehistory Patrick V. Kirch .13....................,,,.,., 137 References Cited .142 Appendixes .150 Prof Edward W. Gifford seated in front of the small rockshelter at Site 17, Navatu, Fiji, during his pioneering fieldwork in 1947. (Courtesy of the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology) Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers No. 82, 1997 Special Edition Towards a Prehistory of the Kone Region, New Caledonia: A Reanalysis of the Pioneering Archaeological Excavations of E. W. Gifford Edited by Patrick V. Kirch, Marshall L Weisler, and Eleanor Casella Contents Introduction: E. W. Gifford, New Caledonia, and Oceanic Prehistory Patrick V. Kirch ..................................................... 1 A Geoarchaeological Analysis of Sediments from Sites 14 and 26 Mahlon Leonard ..................................................... 18 Mollusk Exploitation and Paleoenvironmental Change in the Kone Region: A Reanalysis of the Site 13 Mollusk Assemblages Laura J. Miller ..................................................... 25 A Re-Examination of the Bird Bones from Archaeological Sites Excavated in 1952 on New Caledonia David W. Steadman ..................................................... 38 A Formal Analysis of the Lapita Ceramic Assemblage from Site 13A David Ultan ..................................................... 49 A Formal Analysis of Diagnostic Ceramics from Site 14, Podtanean Elizabeth Manning ..................................................... 58 A Technological Analysis of the Ceramics from Site 14, Podtanean Mary Reiten ..................................................... 69 Stylistic Variation in Pottery from Site 26, Oundjo Timothy Plowman ..................................................... 81 A Case Study in Ceramic Technology: Site 26, Oundjo Eleanor C. Casella ..................................................... 100 iii Re-Evaluating the Flaked Stone Artifacts from Lapita Sites 13 and 13A Anthony Marais ....................................................... 109 An Analysis of Lithic Artifacts from Site 26, Podtanean David T. Price ....................................................... 120 An Analysis of Shell Net Sinkers from Kone Sites David Rapp ....................................................... 128 Concluding Remarks on Kone Region Prehistory Patrick V. Kirch ....................................................... 137 References Cited ....................................................... 142 Appendixes ....................................................... 150 iv Preface The papers in this volume are the fruit of an experiment in pedagogy. In the spring se- mester of 1990, about a year after I had joined the anthropology faculty at Berkeley, I decided to teach an intensive laboratory course in the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (Anthropology 132). The course already existed in the Berkeley catalog, but had previously been taught more as a review of the main categories of archaeological remains, than as an actual laboratory meth- ods course. I decided to experiment with a somewhat different format. It is my contention that students learn best when they are engaged not in constructed "exercises" but when they are challenged to actually tackle a real problem in archaeology. My plan for restructuring the Analysis of Archaeological Materials course was thus to provide the class with a set of real archaeological assemblages--replete with all the "messy" variation such collections entail--and to assign each the task of carrying out a detailed analysis. This meant that each student would have to assess the specific research problems to be addressed, develop a "pro- tocol" or research methodology including a database structure, capture the necessary data through intensive work with the assemblages, and then carry out appropriate statistical and qual- itative manipulations of the resulting data. Fortunately, an ideal set of archaeological assemblages were available for use in this course: the vast collections excavated from several prehistoric sites on the island of New Cale- donia in 1952 by Professor E. W. Gifford of the University of California at Berkeley. As de- scribed in further detail in my Introduction, Gifford pioneered modern archaeology in Oceania, with a series of important expeditions to Fiji, New Caledonia, and Yap between 1947 and 1956. Although Gifford was emphatic about publishing his results, changes in archaeological method and theory since 1952, as well as a vastly increased understanding of the key problems in Oce- anic prehistory, suggested that a reanalysis of these early collections might be productive. For- tunately, Gifford had also been a great believer in the value of museum collections, and had devoted considerable effort to seeing that his New Caledonian and other Pacific island materials were thoroughly cataloged and deposited for safe-keeping in the Robert Lowie Museum of An- thropology at Berkeley (now the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology). With the enthusiastic support of Prof. Burton Benedict, then Director of the Lowie Mu- seum, the Gifford Oceanic collections were moved out of "dead" storage from a warehouse in Oakland, and into accessible quarters in the archaeology storage ranges of the Museum. An ini- tial "reconnaissance" of these vast materials (they include more than 40,000 cataloged "lots" of material) suggested that for the purposes of my laboratory course, those from three sites on New Caledonia would provide an especially good set of materials for teaching students the essentials of artifact analysis. These sites (13, 14, and 26 in Gifford and Shutler's [1956] numbering sys- tem) were all in close geographic proximity on the west coast of the island, and between them appeared to span much of the New Caledonian prehistoric sequence. To ensure a modicum of structure in the course, I subdivided the materials by major ar- tifact classes and by site, letting the students choose from among these according to their specific interests. Fortunately, many of the students taking this course had taken my class on Archaeology of Oceania and thus were already familiar with the key culture-historical issues that might be ad- dressed through a reanalysis of the New Caledonian collections. Others did the necessary back- ground reading and quickly caught up. A certain enthusiasm was evident as the students realized that they had an opportunity not merely to learn about laboratory methods in archaeology, but to v produce a set of integrated studies that had the potential to add useful knowledge to New Cale- donian and Oceanic prehistory. Indeed, as the semester progressed the class devoted an amazing amount of energy to their projects; visits to the lab in the evenings or weekends almost always found several students hard at work measuring and describing sherds and lithics, entering data, or puzzling over computer printouts. By semester's end, ten of the students had produced papers that not only displayed their newly-acquired grasp of how to design and carry out a successful analysis of an archaeological collection, but which in aggregate also added significantly to our understanding of the details of New Caledonian culture history. It was evident that with a little editorial polishing these papers could--indeed should--be published, and the Kroeber Anthropological Papers, as a student-edit- ed and run scholarly journal, seemed the appropriate outlet. Regrettably, it has taken a few years longer to produce this volume than originally envisioned. I mention this delay only because in the interim a number of new studies of New Caledonian prehistory have been undertaken and published by French scholars, as summarized in the Introduction. These works were, of course, not available to the 1990 class, and the students have not been able to revise their papers in light of them. Fortunately, this does not impinge on the value or quality of the reanalyses of the Gif- ford collections presented below. Acknowledgments First and foremost, I thank the students of Anthro 132 for their boundless enthusiasm and interest in this course. I hope that publication of this volume, delayed as it has been beyond initial expectations, nonetheless provides each of them some gratification in a job well done. I must also thank Prof. Emeritus Burton Benedict, formerly Director of the P. A. Hearst (then Lowie) Museum at Berkeley, for his support of this project. Prof. Benedict arranged to have the Gifford collections made accessible again, and put not the slightest obstacle in the way of their being used for this class. Prof. Roger Green (University of Auckland, New Zealand) happened to be in residence at Berkeley for part of the semester during which this course was running, and graciously gave of his time to work with several students and to answer their seemingly endless questions about Gifford, New Caledonia, and Oceanic prehistory. Prof. David W. Steadman agreed to examine and re-identify a set of archaeological bird bones from the Gifford collections, and to contribute a brief report on them for this volume. I particularly thank Dr. Marshall Weisler (University of Otago, New Zealand) who at the time served as the Graduate Student Instructor assisting with the Anthro 132 course, and who certainly devoted far more time to working with the students than he was compensated for! Dr. Weisler, along with Ms. Eleanor Casella (one of the original Anthro 132 students, and now a doc- toral candidate at Berkeley), have assisted in the editing of the papers and preparation of this vol- ume, for which I am grateful. Kroeber Anthropological Society Editor David Kojan gave the final draft a careful editorial reading, for which we are grateful. The printing of this volume was made possible, in part, by the Class of 1954 Endowed Chair fund at Berkeley. Patrick V. Kirch Class of 1954 Professor of Anthropology vi