A comparative study of Melanesian hafted edge-tools and other percussive cutting implements

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to examine the contributions which factors such as style, use, materials and manufacturing methods make to artefact variance. The study is set in an ethnographic frame where some of these factors may be controlled by circumstances of collection and other ethnographic testimony, and the data are examined comparatively in a Melanesia-wide frame. The material used is held in Australian, New Zealand and Papua New Guinean collections, or is reported in the ethnographic literature. All material comes from Melanesia, a division of Oceania defined in map 1. The study is based upon complete implements belonging to a mechanically defined artefact class percussive cutting implements. All these are used with a chopping motion and effect the intended cutting action by a percussive blow. The term is taken from Leroi Gourhan (1945:187-95). The mechanical definition of the class extends over a wide range of implements hafted as axes, adzes or at intermediate positions and used for many different tasks in woodworking, domestic and agricultural contexts. A variety of nonutilitarian roles is also recorded. This information has previously been surveyed by Hinderling (1949) but it has not before been collated or analysed in a quantitative sense. Appendix I is a compendium of the information available to me. Part II (Chapters 3-23) summarises the details of Appendix I on an area basis. Each chapter includes other ethnographic and environmental data, allowing preliminary generalisations to be made. Part I documents recording, descriptive and grouping procedures. The artefacts have been measured according to a standardised procedure which is partly based upon existing techniques, but innovative where measurements of whole implements are employed. A population method of classification was employed, and this, through the choice of grouping criteria (collection data), allowed the evaluation of various contributions to artefact variability, which are tested in Part III. Four comparative analyses were undertaken, one (Statistics, Chapter 24) generated from internal sources, two (Function and Technology, Chapters 25 and 26) from broad cultural sources, and one based on local cultural and environmental contexts which gives possible regional units (Chapter 27). Parts II and III contain a large amount of information pertinent to local prehistories and to the culture history of Melanesia as a whole. The concluding chapter summarises the results of the various analyses and examines the geographic distributions which result for their concomitance with other cultural and environmental distributions. Show more