Shark tooth pendant from Buang Mebarak (Leavesley 2007: 312, Fig. 2).The discovery in itself is interesting. The tooth comes from a tiger shark probably as long as 4m, and was perforated using a drilling technique alternating from side to side. With or without perforation, this artifact and the few other non-perforated shark teeth found in the site (5 in total) suggest the presence of fishing in this region. Leavesley uses ethnographies to evaluate the fishing techniques of tiger sharks in New Guinea and concludes that this would have been a dangerous activity that would have necessitated the use of boats and cooperation of fishermen. The technique seems simple and quite effective, but its description gives me the impression that Leavesley assumes it was used 30,000 years ago. He states that this fishing technique was recorded as early as AD 1643, as if this proves its use in prehistory. I think it is obvious that a lack of change in 300 years does not necessarily imply stability over 30,000 years. Here we come back to the hard-to-put-in-practice fact that hunter-gatherers-fishers are not mirrors of the past societies. It is unfortunate that it is used like that in Leavesley’s paper, mostly because the techniques used by Pleistocene fishers of New Guinea do not have any impact on the broad question of ornaments making and symbolic thought. As far as we know, those particular shark teeth could have been gathered from a dead shark, it would not make its perforation less important.
The age of the tooth, if secured, is roughly contemporaneous with an assemblage in Sahul, Australia that yielded a few (22) perforated shell beads. Those two sites put together, one can say that ornaments were made and used as early as 30,000 years ago in Australasia. Leavesley uses this to fuel the debate of modern behavior’ appearance by saying that the presence of ornaments in those two sites suggests its happening before the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa. I think that this is a far-fetched argument. It looks like Leavesley is trying to use a well-known debate to publicize his own discovery. This makes me wonder: do archaeologists always need to relate their research to broad subjects in order to gain some visibility? It seems to me that the discovery of early ornaments is interesting in itself and should be studied deeply in its own context before being related to a larger debate, but this might be the naïvety of the beginner, I guess.
Edit: JRS added a picture of the pendant (Feb. 26, 2009).
Reference:
Leavesley, Matthew G. 2007. A shark tooth ornament from Pleistocene Sahul, Antiquity 81:308-315
Claudine -
ReplyDeletegreat first post! The issue here seems to be one of having to disentangle shark fishing and ornament making and relating one or both behaviors to 'modernity', which is a poorly defined concept. Insofar as this represents evidence of full-blown sea resource exploitation, it certainly implies sophisticated subsistence strategies that are more suggestive of 'modernity' than drilling a hole in an animal part. Also, it implies these people were - ca. 35,00BP - exploiting a breadth of the resources available to them. It'd be interesting to see how much evidence of shark fishing and other sea resource exploitation is documented at the site, to contextualize this instance in the broader framework of the foragers who accumulated the assemblage at Buang Merabak. Another interesting question to ponder is why, if ornaments were so important to a modern human expansion, most of the shark teeth at this site were not modified into ornaments. Food for thought...
I definitely agree that Leavesley is trying to attach his findings to the wider debate on what defines modern humans: the evolution of modern anatomical traits or the development of symbolic culture. What I wonder is why Leavesley focuses on the chicken-and-the-egg conundrum of which came first: dispersal or modernization? From a novice perspective, it would seem that both perpetuate each other; without dispersal, hominids may not have experienced new environmental conditions that pushed them to realize the evolution to modern anatomy or the use of environmental objects as symbols of communication. Concurrently, modern anatomical adaptations and the development of language and symbol systems may have been the catalyst to enable the possibility to travel further, leave Africa and live in new environmental conditions.
ReplyDeleteIn this vein, it would have been useful if Leavesley de-contextualized his findings and examined what this perforated shark tooth could mean other than an explosion of symbolic culture and imminent dispersal. For example, could the location of the perforated and non-perforated shark teeth have indicated trade? Could the prevalence of shark teeth indicate an increasing reliance on marine resources? As Leavesley mentions, fishing would have been a dangerous activity necessitating complex group dynamics and cooperation. What would this mean for the social structure of the hunter-gatherer group?
As well, the description of the “ornamental” tiger shark tooth and its role as a symbolic object rests on the assumption that the tooth itself was the final product. Leavesley describes the perforated hole in the tooth as being made by a “point rotated in a ‘drilling’ motion alternating from side to side” (Leavesley, 311). I wonder if the tooth could have been used to create, test or sharpen this “point”, or in other words, I wonder if the tooth was simply a bi-product in the production of a drill or micro-drill. I realize this would be unlikely, given the danger and rarity of procuring shark teeth and therefore their presumed heightened value as a rare object. As well I realize that as Leavesley mentions, other sites clearly show perforated shark teeth as symbolic objects (despite Leavesley’s potential fault in correlating these sites’ findings to his sole perforated shark tooth). However, the fact that there is only one perforated shark tooth leaves me to wonder whether the perforation was the intentional final product.
In this case, the actual use of drills (e.g., to aid hominid scavengers access animal bone marrow, to dig up tubers, to create bone or tooth beads) may not be relevant. Rather it is important to look at how drills are created or maintained. If drills in the Sahul area are made of bone rather than stone, then their maintenance would consist of rotating the end rather than pressure flaking (which is commonly used to maintain and re-sharpen stone drills)…would it not? And if so, then could it not be possible that the perforated shark tooth is not a form of cultural symbolism but rather simply a re-sharpening tool? Perhaps a little simplistic, but this is just a thought!
In the matter of drills, I am not sure if the hole in the tooth could have been used to resharpen it, especially if the drill was made of stone, for the simple reason that when creating the hole, the stone drill would slowly lose its edges and its point and would actually become more flat, which its the opposite of what Deborah suggested. I saw this process occuring this summer at an Archaeological Complex where we used replicates of Northern American drills to make holes in the wood. After a while, the drills were all in need of resharpening due to their constant friction with other material. If this happened with a material as soft as wood, I am convinced it would also happen with hard teeth...
ReplyDeleteIn order for this artifact to be used as a sharpening device, it seems to me that it should have been pierced first and then used, which seem a huge waste of energy for something that can be done more easily by, as Deborah mentioned, pressure flaking.