Stone club.

[fearn]

Hi Tim,

Why not use flint stone? This is where the geology lesson comes in. Islands come in three basic flavors (so long as a geologist is not reading this :-)): 1) continental, 2) volcanic and oceanic, and 3) coral.

Basically, flint will only occur on continental islands. Micronesia is composed exclusively of volcanic high islands and coral atolls. On coral atolls, the stone is (you guessed it) coral. This is why atoll dwellers use things like Tridacna shell for tools and put shark teeth on their clubs. On volcanic islands, the only stones available are volcanic, things like basalt and obsidian.

Flint only occurs on continental rocks (ditto with chert). There are no continental islands in Micronesia, and in Polynesia, only New Zealand is continental (and Fiji, if you're going to count Fiji as a Melanesia/Polynesia intermediate). Melanesia contains islands of all three types, and thus it is the only possible source for a flint rock. Even then the rock would have had to come from some place on or near New Guinea, the larger Solomon Islands, or New Caledonia. It could also have come from Australia, of course.

This assumes, of course, that the club actually came from the islands.

Bottom line: identifying the rock is pretty important, because it will help define a source.

Hope this helps.

F