Stone Axes and Flake Tools: Evaluations from Two New Guinea Highlands Societies

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Abstract
When Europeans entered the New Guinea Highlands in the 1930s, they discovered peoples using two main kinds of stone implements—polished axes and simple flake tools. The prominence of the axe has been well documented (S. Buhner, 1964; R. and S. Bulmer, 1964; Salisbury, 1962; Tischner, 1939; Vial, 1940 et al.). Crucial to subsistence, it was also used widely in exchanges and payments of all kinds and had a value as a ceremonial object. This seems to have been the case throughout the Highlands. Nevertheless, there were probably variations in the precise range of uses to which the axe was put, and consequently in its ‘value’. This comment is prompted by a consideration of two societies—Hagen in the Western Highlands and Wiru in the Southern Highlands Districts—whose traditional evaluations of the stone axe seem to have had differing emphases. In the past the axe was probably less important as a ceremonial object to the Wiru than it was to the Hageners, and its use as a tool more limited. The situation seems to have been correspondingly reversed in the case of the flake tool, however, which had generally more importance in Wiru.

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