Cross-Cultural Interaction across the Arafura and Timor Seas

Abstract

Abstract Prior to sustained contact with Europeans, Aboriginal people in parts of northern Australia—coastal regions of the Kimberley, Arnhem Land, and the Gulf of Carpentaria—interacted with people from South Sulawesi and other parts of eastern Indonesia, especially Makassar. The visitors (often called ‘Macassans’) arrived on Australian shores annually in sailing ships (praus) to harvest trepang (also called sea cucumber, bêche-de-mer) and to exchange things and ideas with Aboriginal people. Within Australia, evidence for these interactions can be seen in Macassan trepang processing sites (often associated with introduced tamarind trees); the inclusion of Indonesian borrow words in local Aboriginal languages; paintings of praus in Aboriginal rock art sites; and Aboriginal archaeological deposits containing Asian pottery, metal, and glass. More broadly, the histories of these interactions are found within oral traditions from either side of the Arafura and Timor Seas. Archaeology has begun to show that Aboriginal people selectively engaged in exchange with Indonesian people, using traded items to sustain customary exchange and new maritime technology to transform how they engaged with coast and sea. Macassan trepanging visits to northern Australia date from the eighteenth century to c. CE 1907, though some archaeological and oral historical evidence suggests that initial encounters occurred before CE 1664. Yet key questions remain regarding the nature of Macassan-Aboriginal interactions, and, fundamentally, the chronology of cross-cultural contact in northern Australia.