The Far Northeast: 3000 BP to Contact is the first volume to synthesize archaeological research from across Atlantic Canada and northern New England for the period spanning from 3000 years ago to European contact. Recently, notions of the "Woodland period" in the broader Northeast have drawn scrutiny from experts due to increasing awareness that its hallmarks-such as horticulture, village formation, mortuary ceremonialism, and the advent of various technologies-appear to be less synchronous than once thought. By paying particular attention to the Far Northeast and its unique (yet sometimes marginal) position in Woodland discourse, this work offers a much-needed in-depth look at one of the best-documented cases of hunter-gatherer persistence and adaptation at the eve of European contact. Penned by academic, government, and cultural-resource-management archaeologists, the seventeen chapters in The Far Northeast: 3000 BP to Contact draw on decades of research in considering this period, both in terms of variability within the region, and integration with broader cultural patterns in the Northeast and beyond. Published in English.

New Guinea, and especially Papua New Guinea, is the last country in the world where ethnologists were able to closely observe, film and photograph the whole manufacturing chaines operatoires of polished stone felling tools, from quarry extraction to finished tool use. Research on the polished blades of PNG has evolved over the years, following changing philosophies and research agendas. While it is clear that an exceptional sum of information has been gathered, it remains centered on that small part of the Highlands where conditions for field research were more pleasant than elsewhere. Our presentation of Irian Jaya axes therefore tackles a topic that remains mostly unexplored. Until now, stone tool research in New Guinea has followed an anthropocentric approach, in which tools are seen more as vectors for social exchanges than as means of acting on the environment. This monograph will take a different approach. Here, polished stone blades are placed at the center of the world, between, on one side, the transformed natural environment, and, on the other, the social and economic environment. This approach will allow us to suggest new avenues of inference in archaeology, as well as to test and abandon existing ones.In this volume, the stone blade is considered as a living being, existing in balance within its biotope. This idea is not far removed from the beliefs of Irian Jaya farmers, for whom life animates certain objects of their material culture. Following a brief presentation of Irian Jaya, we will describe the function of polished stone blades in Irian Jaya societies and the distribution of hafting styles, define and study the quarrying zones and the areas of diffusion and use of their production, and, if possible, the different trends noted in each area of polished blade production and exchanges. Finally, we will conclude with a discussion of the ethnoarchaeological potential of these contemporary observations.