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Long-Distance Obsidian Trade in Indonesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2011

Robert H. Tykot  and
Stephen Chia
Robert H. Tykot
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, U. of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, [email protected]
Stephen Chia
Affiliation:
Pusat Penyelidikan Arkeologi Malaysia, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang, Malaysia
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Abstract

Long-distance trade in obsidian from sources in the southwest Pacific has been well-documented for the Lapita culture complex, beginning about 1600 BC. Analyses of obsidian artifacts from recent excavations at Bukit Tengkorak in southeastern Sabah (Borneo, Malaysia) indicate the use of obsidian from multiple sources in Melanesia as early as the 5th millennium BC. The archaeological presence of obsidian, up to more than 3500 km from its source, is the surviving evidence of what was almost certainly the longest Neolithic trade route in the world. In addition, these results indicate that long-distance trade networks existed in Indonesia at least 2500 years prior to the Lapita culture, and strengthen hypotheses of its origins in southeast Asia.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 462: Symposium DD – Materials Issues in Art and Archaeology V , 1996 , 175
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1997

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