Abstract
This paper introduces the collection assembled by geologist and anthropologist O.W. (“Bud”) Hampton (1928-2017) among the Dani of the Baliem Valley in western New Guinea, recently donated by his widow, Fleur Hampton, to the Tracing Patterns Foundation (“TPF”) of Berkeley, California. The collection includes about 1,000 items of material culture and 20,000 slides of Baliem Valley life, along with his Ph.D. thesis and his book “Culture of Stone: Sacred and Profane Uses of Stone among the Dani” (1999). This collection is now the subject of a collaboration between TPF and the Asian Cultural History Program of the Smithsonian Institution, working with Indonesian partners, to catalog and interpret the collection, and to repatriate it to Papua. Hampton collected a wide range of Baliem Valley material culture, including objects made from wood and fiber, fur, and feathers; but it is the stone objects that attract the most admiration and interest. The Dani and their neighbors, the Yali and Wano peoples, had many uses for stone. Flakes of chert were used as knives; thin, flat blades held in the hand were used as scrapers; and small chissels were used for woodworking. However, their finest achievements in stone were their ground polished axe and adze blades, along with their spectacular wealth stones.
Key takeaways
- The Hampton Collection comprises about 1,000 items and 20,000 slides of Dani cultural heritage.
- O.W. Hampton’s work includes his thesis and the book ‘Culture of Stone’ from 1999.
- The collection highlights the significance of stone tools, especially polished axe and adze blades.
- Collaboration between TPF and the Smithsonian aims to catalog and repatriate the collection to Papua.
- The Dani’s diverse material culture includes wood, fiber, fur, and feathers alongside stone artifacts.
Related papers
Raided and traded: Sourcing Marind-anim exotic stone objects, south-east Papua (Indonesia)
Friedrich von Gnielinski, Ian J . McNiven
Terra Australis series, No. 57, 2024
The Marind-anim of the south-east corner of Papua, Indonesia, live in a stoneless world but venerate stone objects. As expected, stone objects of the Marind, such as axes, club heads and ‘spearthrower’ attachments, are exotic, with ethnographic information pointing to acquisition through a complex portfolio of trading and raiding (headhunting) relationships with multiple neighbours who had either direct or indirect access to tool stone. Ethnographic and geological information indicates that the two closest sources of tool stone to the Marind are located over 100 km away—the southern flanks of the Central Ranges (especially the Upper Digul River) to the north and Torres Strait to the south-east. These two source options are consistent with our petrographic assessment of a sample of three Marind stone club heads and three ‘spearthrower’ stones. Beyond ethnographically documented trading and raiding processes of stone implement provisioning, we hypothesise that the Marind may have manufactured their own stone implements by accessing igneous outcrops at Mabaduan on the northern mainland coast of Torres Strait during headhunting expeditions.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Ethnographic and archaeological aspects of a flaked stone collection from Seram, eastern Indonesia
1975
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
An Archaeological review of Western New Guinea
Journal of World Prehistory, 2013
Western New Guinea occupies a frontier zone physically, politically, culturally and conceptually between Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Despite the region’s pivotal position, effectively being the boundary between Island Southeast Asia and Pacific, archaeological information for the region is sparse due to limited investigations, limited publication and the multilingual nature of publications. Consequently, little archaeological information about western New Guinea has percolated into the mainstream archaeological literature. This paper aims to rectify this gap and provides a detailed review of archaeological research, including rock art, published in Dutch, English, French, German and Indonesian. The resultant findings are discussed in terms of continuities and discontinuities with Papua New Guinea and Island Southeast Asia.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Dr. Denis Shine: An Archaeological Review of Western New Guinea
Irish Archaeology Field School
Western New Guinea constitutes a frontier zone physically, politically, culturally and conceptually between Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Despite this pivotal position, archaeological information for the region is scarce due to limited investigations, limited publication and the multilingual nature of publications. Consequently, little archaeological information about western New Guinea has percolated into the mainstream literature. This paper aims to fill this gap and provides a detailed review of archaeological research, including rock art, published in Dutch, English, French, German and Indonesian. The resultant findings are discussed in terms of continuities and discontinuities with Papua New Guinea and Island Southeast Asia.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Finding the right question: Learning from stone tools on the Willaumez Peninsula, Papua New Guinea
Archaeology in Oceania, 2011
As the most abundant, and frequently the only, archaeological evidence preserved within the volcanic soils of the Willaumez Peninsula, Papua New Guinea, stone artefacts carry a heavy burden for scholars seeking to write the prehistory of subsistence and land use. Efforts to squeeze information from these recalcitrant informal assemblages of obsidian tools have produced contradictory and unsatisfactory results. Although alternative approaches should certainly be sought to find ways to make these silent stones speak about topics that archaeologists want to hear, other important stories concerning social process and exchange are beginning to be told by ongoing research being developed in West New Britain. These new results raise broader questions about the social functions of humble stone tools in other parts of the world.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2020
Since 1909, patrol officers, anthropologists, archaeologists, and others have identified evidence of a pre-contact trading network linking New Guinea with the Torres Strait. Current research in the Lower Sepik River Basin reported various ethnographic descriptions relating to cultural material objects stenciled on various rock art sites in Auwim, Upper Karawari-Arafundi region, East Sepik, Papua New Guinea (PNG). In addition to the rock art, the broader area has one of the most environmentally intact freshwater basins with lowland rainforests in Melanesia, and is famous for its architectural carvings and spirit houses. This paper reports new research that articulates local ethnographic knowledge about rock art with the art-work itself. The rock art panels contain a wide range of stencils primarily consisting of hands but also, importantly, several objects, one of which is the kina, gold-lip pearl (Pinctada maxima) shell. The kina shell stencils are, among other things, indicative of the remarkable distance over which the shells were traded and traditionally used. The Auwim case study is important because it is one of the relatively few sites across PNG for which we still have ethnography of rock art and therefore provides us with important insight into the pastpresent rock art practices, and concurrently notions of cultural continuity.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2019
Since 1909, patrol officers, anthropologists, archaeologists, and others have identified evidence of a pre-contact trading network linking New Guinea with the Torres Strait. Current research in the Lower Sepik River Basin reported various ethnographic descriptions relating to cultural material objects stenciled on various rock art sites in Auwim, Upper Karawari-Arafundi region, East Sepik, Papua New Guinea (PNG). In addition to the rock art, the broader area has one of the most environmentally intact freshwater basins with lowland rainforests in Melanesia, and is famous for its architectural carvings and spirit houses. This paper reports new research that articulates local ethnographic knowledge about rock art with the art-work itself. The rock art panels contain a wide range of stencils primarily consisting of hands but also, importantly, several objects, one of which is the kina, gold-lip pearl (Pinctada maxima) shell. The kina shell stencils are, among other things, indicative of the remarkable distance over which the shells were traded and traditionally used. The Auwim case study is important because it is one of the relatively few sites across PNG for which we still have ethnography of rock art and therefore provides us with important insight into the past-present rock art practices and, concurrently, notions of cultural continuity.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Stone Axe Trade in Prehistoric Papua
Explaining the development of prehistoric Papua trade typically ignores an important source of evidence – ground stone axes. This paper summarises ethnographic accounts of Papuan axe exchange systems, describes the archaeological stone axes recovered from sites in the Kikori region, Papuan Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea, and reports on a sourcing analysis of these finds. The meaning and significance of the results suggest new avenues for research into the evolution of prehistoric Papua trade systems.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Australian …, 2009
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
In search of the archaeology of portable art from Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and Australia
Archaeology of Portable Art, 2018
Research into prehistoric Eurasian, American, and African portable art is well established. Similar such artefacts from Australian, Pacific, and Southeast Asian archaeological contexts, however, remain proportionally underreported-and consequently-widely unknown outside of these regions. This volume aims to highlight research into portable art taking place in this region, the immense diversity and richness of these works, and raise issues which transfer across international contexts. The term ‘portable art’ will be used in this volume to describe personal ornamentation (beads, pendants, body painting, clothing), figurines, and engraved, painted, or otherwise decorated objects able to be moved from one location to another. Also included is any day-today item in which ‘messages’ are held and transmitted through their morphology and/or decoration (sensu Wiessner 1983; Wobst 1977). While recognising that this definition goes beyond the traditional assessment of portable art, we suggest that in this regional context (Southeast Asia, Pacific, Australia), ethnographic studies reveal that it is unwise to be restrictive. We have in mind the ethnographic study of stone axes in West Papua, considered ritual and art objects (war trophies, sacred axes, stones for barter, and exchange at weddings and funerals), as much as they were utilitarian items (Pétrequin and Pétrequin 1993:361, 371). We also have in mind the nuanced and changing role of Kimberley points from Western Australia, which initially served practical functions and later became widely sought-after portable art objects (Harrison 2004). The inherent symbolic function of these items provides archaeologists with incredible insights into a range of important topics, including human cognitive development, cultural variability, interaction between communities, and interaction with environments (e.g.
