Raided and Traded: New Insights into How the Marind Anim of Indonesian Papua Obtained Stone Club Heads Based on Analysis of Museum Collections in the Netherlands

Ian McNiven1* and Max Webb2

1Monash University, Australia; 2Heriot‑Watt University, United Kingdom; *ian.mcniven@monash.edu

New Guinea is famous in the anthropological and archaeological world for its complex and indeed paradigmatic trade and exchange networks. Social mechanisms for the movement of objects are complex, and in the New Guinea context the role of headhunting expeditions in the provisioning and movement of objects is hinted at anthropologically but is lacking in research detail. This paper presents preliminary results of a project aimed at determining the raw materials and potential geological sources of igneous and metamorphic rocks used to manufacture club heads used by the Marind anim of the stoneless region of southeast Indonesian Papua. The Marind anim are famous for their large‑scale headhunting expeditions that extended into Papua New Guinea and the adjacent Torres Strait of northeast Australia. Our study is based on the examination of 36 Marind anim stone club heads (hafted and unhafted) housed in the Wereldmuseum in Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Of the five morphological types of club head identified, most were circular in shape and had a bi‑convex or bi‑plano‑convex cross‑section. Phased manufacture included flaking, pecking, drilling, grinding, and polishing. Geological characterization reveals a range of intrusive igneous (microgranodiorite and microdiorite), volcanic (basaltic‑andesite and rhyolite), and metamorphic (meta‑sandstone and hornfels) raw materials. Most of these outcrop within mountains inland of the Marind, specifically the Star Mountains region, but some may outcrop in the Torres Strait islands. These varied sources map onto ethnographically known raiding and trading networks and reveal the extreme measures employed by the Marind to provision their society with stone implements.