Stone Axe Factories in the Highlands of East New Guinea

Abstract

The writer spent three months, during late 1963 and early 1964, journeying through the New Guinea Highlands in an attempt to trace sites where stone axes have been made in the recent past. In the Simbai (Tsembaga) and Kaironk areas steel has effectively replaced stone only within the last ten years, though some steel had been traded in a decade or so earlier (Rappaport, n.d.; Bulmer, personal communication). In the other Highlands area discussed in this paper, stone working axes had probably dropped out of use by the early 1940's. Of the ten quarry sites then examined, three had been visited before by earlier workers, two were reported to the writer by an anthropologist, C. Criper, working in the Upper Chimbu, and the others were found by walking about the country pursuing local information.