Geochemical sourcing of obsidians from the<scp>P</scp>ūrākaunui<scp>s</scp>ite,<scp>S</scp>outh<scp>I</scp>sland,<scp>N</scp>ew<scp>Z</scp>ealand

Abstract

Abstract We report the first well‐documented case of a S outh I sland site where M ayor I sland obsidian is not the dominant source represented. At the P ūrākaunui site (I44/21), located in coastal O tago, we find that most obsidians come from the T aupo V olcanic Z one, including sources near L ake T aupo (52%) and R otorua (27.7 %). A small proportion of the collection comes from M ayor I sland (10.8%) and the C oromandel P eninsula (9.5%) obsidian. The results point to early effects of regionalisation in source exploitation on the S outh I sland.