Stone artifacts and a fossil tooth point to Homo sapiens living at Grotte Mandrin 54,000 years ago, at a time when Neanderthals were still living in Europe.
Stone artifacts and a fossil tooth point to Homo sapiens living at Grotte Mandrin 54,000 years ago, at a time when Neanderthals were still living in Europe.
Widely held assumptions about static societies during the early-middle Holocene (c. 10,000–3300 BP) in the Willaumez Peninsula, Papua New Guinea are challenged by a hypothetical reconstruction of social negotiations that we propose were embedded within the manufacture of large obsidian stemmed tools that circulated as cultural valuables. Made by skilled knappers, these artefacts were manufactured in stages (quarrying, preform production, shaping, hafting, and re-hafting) often segregated in discrete and possibly restricted locations. The successful completion of a large obsidian stemmed tool may have required effective management to negotiate multiple social networks, thereby enhancing the status of those who directed the process. Social connections forged and re-inforced to support the production process may also have been enhanced by ritual practices. Through the social links created and strengthened by the process of its crafting and the subsequent ceremonies and exchanges in whic