ELIZABETH HEALEY

Elizabeth Healey is an Honorary Research Fellow (Archaeology) at the University of Manchester, UK. Throughout her archaeological career, Elizabeth Healey has been involved, one way or another, with the study of stone tools. She has studied lithic assemblages of Neolithic and later date from various excavations in the UK and Near East. Currently, much of her research involves the provenancing of obsidian (through the Manchester Obsidian Laboratory: http://manchesterobsidian.rocks) from a number of sites in the Near East. In her interpretation of that data, she tries to focus on the socio-economic and symbolic aspects of the origins, acquisition and use of obsidian and how the exploitation of obsidian compares or contrasts to the exploitation of flint/chert.

The lithics (flint and obsidian) from Atchana are especially interesting because they form an series of unusually well-contexted assemblages throughout the Bronze Age. Additionally, obsidian was not only used to make tools but also prestige items, including beads, pendants, and vessels, in a way that other tool-stone, such as flint, was not.