Sources and semiotics: obsidian studies in North-east Asia and Mesoamerica.

Golitko, Mark

AKIRA ONO, MICHAEL D. GLASCOCK, YAROSLAV V. KUZMIN & YOSHIMITSU SUDA (ed.). Methodological issues for characterisation and provenance of obsidian in Northeast Asia (British Archaeological Reports International series 2620). xviii+183 pages, numerous b&w illustrations, and tables. 2014. Oxford: Archaeopress; 978-1-4073-1255-2 paperback 34 [pounds sterling].

MARC N. LEVINE & DAVID M. CARBALLO (ed.). Obsidian reflections: symbolic dimensions of obsidian in Mesoamerica. xiii+331 pages, 73 b&w illustrations, 13 tables. 2014. Boulder: University of Colorado Press; 978-1-60732-300-6 hardback $65.

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These two volumes represent very different approaches to obsidian studies in archaeology. The papers in Methodological issues, edited by Ono et al., are concerned with the practical aspects of sourcing obsidian in North-east Asia (Japan, Korea, north-eastern China and far-eastern Siberia); those in Obsidian reflections, edited by Levine and Carballo, are primarily concerned with how to approach the meaning and significance of obsidian to people living in Mesoamerica, both before and after Spanish incursion (c. AD 1520). Obsidian has long been of interest to archaeologists as a means of approaching the past, although it may not be too much of a stretch to suggest that assigning archaeological obsidian pieces to geological sources has been the primary focus for decades.

The first volume is very much in this tradition, and is indeed dedicated to Renfrew and Cann on the fiftieth anniversary of their initial forays into the chemical sourcing of obsidian (Renfrew provides the preface to the volume). The 11 chapters stem from a workshop held during late 2011 at Meiji University, Japan, which aimed to standardise terminology and methodology for the source delimitation and geochemical measurement of obsidian sources in several primary areas, including those on Kyushu, Honshu, and Hokkaido, the Paektusan volcano on the China/North Korea border and sources in the Russian Far East (the Primorye region and the Amur Basin). The bulk of the volume (Chapters 2-7) deals with two primary issues: identifying the number and locations of geological sources of obsidian, and establishing the best practices for generating geochemical signatures that allow for the secure assignment of archaeological samples back to these sources. The final part of the book deals with case studies addressing prehistoric obsidian extraction and transport in Japan, Korea and the Amur Basin.

This volume provides a valuable delimitation of the locations and compositions of sources in North-east Asia, for instance by clarifying the known geochemistry of the Paektusan volcano on the China/North Korea border, where political restrictions on research have resulted in uncertainty about the assignment of chemical signatures found in archaeological artefacts to specific source flows. Chapter 11 by Kim conclusively identifies the three distinctive chemistries originating at the Paektusan volcano, while contributions by Kuzmin and Glascock (Chapter 6) and Grebennikov and colleagues (Chapter 7) review the location and chemistry of sources in the Russian Far East, including potential locations of sources for obsidian identified from archaeological sites for which the geological source has not yet been located. Additional chapters deal with issues of analysing archaeological materials with minimal destruction, including an excellent chapter by Ferguson and colleagues detailing a combined INAA/XRF approach to distinguishing the obsidian sources of Hokkaido.

Unfortunately--and despite indications that, as part of the workshop, comparison samples were distributed to the various laboratories represented in the volume--there is no systematic attempt to evaluate the comparability of data from different laboratories, at least in the present volume. As only a handful of papers in the volume indicate measurements on well-characterised certified standards or other comparison obsidians, it is unclear how comparable the data presented across the volume actually are. Some chapters primarily use element ratios (generally for the purposes of analysing very small samples or analysing samples nondestructively), and Kuzmin and Glascock (Chapter 6) caution that the state of analysis and publication at present does not allow for direct comparison between laboratories and publications. This volume is a valuable step in that direction, but one would hope that a future volume on the same topic could include a robust assessment of inter-laboratory comparability. This is all the more critical in an age when the availability of instrumentation (portable XRF in particular) is fast outgrowing the availability of source samples, and laboratories are consequently turning increasingly to published source data for the geological source assignment of artefacts.

Renfrew once argued that the advent of radiometric dating freed up archaeologists from simply asking when something happened in the past, to asking why it occurred. The now relatively inexpensive and readily available technique of assigning obsidian artefacts to well-defined geological sources is perhaps leading to a similar--although likely far less momentous--shift of focus, from simply delimiting technology and assigning a source, to using volcanic glass as a means of understanding and explaining social, economic and cultural change through time.

In this context, the ten chapters collected in Obsidian reflections attempt to use obsidian as a conduit into ancient cosmology and ontology in Mesoamerica. The volume's introduction, by Levine, sets the stage by reviewing earlier approaches to Mesoamerican obsidian, which have generally been situated within a technological or political economy framework, as well as newer agentive approaches drawing on Actor Network Theory that treat material culture as an active component of human-thing networks. Levine attempts to lay out a framework for understanding the symbolic via Peircian semiotics. While a useful schema for classifying potential categories of meaning (symbols, icons, indices), the Peircian framework advocated does not reappear in the volume except in the chapter by co-editor Carballo, who uses the framework to interpret the symbolism of ritual obsidian deposits at the site of La Laguna. The other authors largely follow their own sets of standards for interpreting meaning in the archaeological record. Aoyama, for instance, draws on the so-called 'ritual economy' approach, and Levine himself does not employ a Peircian framework in his contribution, instead arguing for the creation of hybrid meaning by different researchers approaching the same material. Without returning to the endless debate over etic and emic views of the past (including the now popular 'ontological turn'), this volume demonstrates the immense difficulty inherent in attempting to understand what something meant in a context removed by cultural differences and history from the authors of the papers.

Perhaps not surprisingly, and as noted in the excellent conclusion by William J. Parry, the plausibility of the reconstructions presented in these papers follows from the quantity of pertinent ethnohistorical data available for the most part, and from the chronological proximity of each particular archaeological context to those ethno-historical data. For instance, chapters by Darras and by Pastrana and Athie utilise early Spanish writings to explore the rich symbolism and meaning of obsidian in Contact Period Mexico, including associations with deities, medicinal practices, legends and origin stories, ones that are likely very substantially reflective of Tarascan and Aztec post-Classic belief systems. Monaghan provides an excellent chapter exploring how the symbolism, meaning and mythology surrounding cutting implements in the Mixtee community of Santiago Nuyoo have been transferred from their former associations with obsidian and other implements such as digging sticks to now refer mostly to metal machetes, which have taken over some of the uses and associations of both classes of Pre-Hispanic tools. These papers lay the baseline for how important obsidian might have been to Pre-Hispanic Mesoamericans, but the very richness of the information they present only serves to illustrate the relative poverty of the archaeological record itself for approaching the questions raised in this collection.

The second and third sections of the volume largely encompass archaeological case studies that rely on a combination of projecting Contact Period ethno-history back in time, archaeological context and the identification of potential ritual objects and uses. Generally, these chapters use some manner of contextual information to identify areas where obsidian might have been used in non-prosaic contexts such as temples, burials and so forth, or by assuming ritual and symbolic importance, and then examining how obsidian is distributed between contexts. One might ask, however, whether this really addresses the meaning and significance of the materials as understood by those who used them, or simply addresses the use contexts in which obsidian might have manifested a system of meanings that remain intangible to the archaeologist.

While an admirable attempt to move obsidian studies away from simply listing source assignments, Obsidian reflections fails to provide a consistent and coherent framework for approaching meaning in an archaeological context. This perhaps occurs because the chapters in the volume do not adequately situate meaning in a wider framework that is relevant to broader questions of interest to archaeologists studying the Mesoamerican past. It is worth wondering whether there is anything particular about obsidian that should make it the focus of a volume devoted to the search for meaning in the past, particularly given the concerns voiced by Parry and others about how context specific meaning is, and how readily meaning can shift or be split between classes of objects. 'Meaning' is a difficult term to approach even from a non-archaeological perspective, and a volume that focused on a particular component of pre-Hispanic symbolism or iconography may have produced a more coherent set of papers and resulted in a more unified and useful approach. The old adage still applies--in archaeology, context is everything.

doi: 10.15184/aqy.2015-58

Mark Golitko, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL 60605, USA (Email: mgolitko@fieldmuseum.org)