| Only two complete turbo shell hooks were found in the 2007 excavations, and these were both found in the upper C layer. This confirms the absence of turbo shell hooks generally in the ATIAHARA deposits and suggests that such hooks were only made near the end of the sequence. Some authors have speculated that turbo shell hooks appear late in the sequence due to a shortage of pearl-shell. This possibility raises an interesting point in relation to the question of chronology for the ATIAHARA deposits. At the present time we do not have any reliable information concerning the chronology of the various layers found well below the surface at ATIAHARA #3. These layers are in some cases over 1 meter in thickness, and little is known as to how in fact these thick cultural deposits form and or the length of time required for their formation. Some have suggested that the entire sequence from top to bottom is not more than a few decades, while others evoke centuries. The Turbo shell fishhooks may suggest that the time involved was the amount of time it took for the Tubuai fisherman to exhaust all the available pearl-shell for their manufacture of fishhooks. (for further reading see Allen, M.S. 1992. Temporal Variation in Polynesian Fishing Strategies: The Southern Cooks in Regional Perspective. Asian Perspectives 31(2):183-204. |
| After a search through the bags of scanned shell material, I found only a few turbo shell fishhook fragments, all are from the C layer and come from the same general area as the complete specimens, no turbo shell blanks were recovered. These fragments, pictured above. are in comparison to pearl-shell, very rare. It is then, very fortunate that we have two complete specimens, of two different types to add to our catalogue. Click on the image at the top of the page to see an enlargement, notice also that the line attachment devices are quite different in each example. |
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