‘What’s the Point’ Usewear Analysis and Functional Interpretations of the Auckland Museum Pitcairn Point Collection

Cochrane, EthanSheppard, PeterArrell, Lucy McMahon2023-10-092023-10-092023https://hdl.handle.net/2292/66258Stone drill points are a uniquely prolific part of the Pitcairn Island lithic industry, and comprise a large proportion of the stone artefacts found on the isolated island. The Pitcairn points are distinctly variable in their form and style, with a large range of proportions, manufacturing styles, and sizes, present across the collection. In this thesis I document and classify this variation in order to investigate Pitcairn tool use, and for future research into the collection. The Pitcairn points analysed by this study are organised into various relevant morphological categories, and wear patterns are used to construct 32 potential wear classes, and 14 motion classes, representing the ways in which the tools were manipulated during use. A total of 200 stone points from the Auckland War Memorial Museum were analysed for morphological and usewear patterning, to ascertain whether or not any variables had influence over the tool’s utilisation. This study investigates artefact standardisation, including proposing that certain uses held social meaning that influenced the ways in which the stone points were made and reused. Based upon prior research it was hypothesised that the majority of the Pitcairn points were used for drilling, and that the variable morphology would have an effect on wear patterning. The findings of this research indicated that point morphology had little influence over specific motions or uses. Instead, tool use was standardised, with the majority of the collection recording no obvious ‘contamination’ between uses, with one tool being used repetitively for the same use throughout its life. Certain points were found to be likely to have been used in canoe manufacture, as theorised by Marianne Turner (2010), as well as wood carving and fishhook construction. These findings were compared with other Pacific and global drill point uses, morphologies, and wear patterns.Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htmhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/nz/‘What’s the Point’ Usewear Analysis and Functional Interpretations of the Auckland Museum Pitcairn Point CollectionThesis2023-09-29Copyright: the authorhttp://purl.org/eprint/accessRights/OpenAccess