Uncovering Hidden Dynamics of Past Kinship and Exchange Relations on Papua New Guinea’s South Coast (650–300 cal BP) Through Scanning Electron Microscopy Automated Mineralogy Analyses of Pottery Sherds
Skelly, Robert, Etschmann, Barbara, Brugger, Joël, Urwin, Chris, Petchey, Fiona, and Beni, Teppsy (2025) Uncovering Hidden Dynamics of Past Kinship and Exchange Relations on Papua New Guinea’s South Coast (650–300 cal BP) Through Scanning Electron Microscopy Automated Mineralogy Analyses of Pottery Sherds. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 32 (2). 41.
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Abstract
Ethnographic accounts of Melanesian exchange systems, such as the Kula and Hiri, have significantly influenced the development of anthropology. These accounts primarily focus on male agency framed by heroic seafaring ventures, while the agency of women and their cultural practices—key to the interconnectedness of Melanesian societies—has often been overlooked. On Papua New Guinea’s south coast details of women’s cultural practices are available in ethnography, and the remains of the pottery they made survive well in archaeological contexts. This paper reports the results of Scanning Electron Microscopy based Automated Mineralogy (SEM-AM) analyses of selected pottery sherds from two regions on the Papua New Guinea’s south coast located 80 km apart. The sherds are very similar in form and decoration, so we employed precise mineral characterisations to assign the pottery sherds to mineralogical groups and test whether they originated in the same manufacturing location and were traded along the coast. The mineralogical analyses uncovered nuances of past social entanglements, revealing that seafaring alliances and networks were maintained through kinship. We argue that in this instance, pottery-making traditions spread along the coast through the movement of women and intermarriage.
| Item ID: | 88019 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1573-7764 |
| Keywords: | Automated mineralogy, Pottery, Scanning electron microscopy, Trade |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. |
| Date Deposited: | 18 Mar 2026 01:00 |
| FoR Codes: | 43 HISTORY, HERITAGE AND ARCHAEOLOGY > 4301 Archaeology > 430102 Archaeology of Asia, Africa and the Americas @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280113 Expanding knowledge in history, heritage and archaeology @ 100% |
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