Scott Fitzpatrick, Stones of the Butterfly: Archaeological Investigation of Yapese Stone Money Quarries in Palau, Micronesia
For centuries, peoples from the island of Yap in the western Pacific voyaged southward to the Palauan archipelago to quarry their famous stone money. The carving and transport of these massive objects remains one of the most archaeologically dramatic and least understood instances of “portable” artifact exchange in the Pacific. Scott Fitzpatrick, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Oregon, adds a new dimension to the understanding of how these megaliths were quarried and transported, highlighting the importance that stone money had in Micronesian interisland exchange systems.
Co-sponsored by Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.