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
