AN ASSESSMENT OF THE CURRENT APPLICATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS OF OBSIDIAN SOURCING STUDIES IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH*

Abstract

This paper thematically characterizes a large body of recent obsidian sourcing discourse as a means of highlighting the current place of obsidian provenance studies in larger archaeological discourse. It is shown that the field of obsidian sourcing is flourishing, with a clear upward trend in the number of published studies in the past decade. This paper further argues that sourcing is a means to an end, a way to determine where artefacts originate, and thus a means of addressing broader archaeological problems. Through this contextual framework, obsidian sourcing studies—and indeed all provenance studies—are seen as relevant because they transcend the increasingly specialized world of archaeological discourse.