Prehistoric Stone Artefacts on Some Offshore Islands in Western Australia

Abstract

Aboriginal sites on Australian offshore islands reflect one or more of the following forms of occupation. 1. Prehistoric occupation of elevated areas which were later cut off by glacio-eustatic sea-level rise to become islands. In the case of Tasmania, this occupation continued uninterrupted until the modern era, though several of the larger islands in Bass Strait occupied during the later Pleistocene, and Kangaroo Island off South Australia, were uninhabited when first visited by European explorers (Baudin 1803; Flinders 1814; Jones 1977; Lampert 1981:l). 2. Regular or sporadic visits to islands by mainland tribes from, presumably, the latter half of the Holocene until the modern era. In northwestern Australia, for example, there are ethnohistorical and ethnographic records of coastal Aborigines periodically visiting islands of the Bonaparte, Buccaneer and Dampier Archipelagos (Dampier 1699:117, 123; King 1827:36-56; Davidson 1935; Akerman 1975). 3. Irregular visits or prolonged occupation under abnormal, almost always adverse conditions, following the arrival of Europeans, including maroonings, kidnappings and various kinds of internment. For example, less than a century ago Aborigines afflicted with European-introduced diseases were quarantined on Bernier and Dorre Islands near Shark Bay (Bates 1938:96-104). All three kinds of occupation are taken into account in this paper, which describes new evidence for prehistoric occupation of Middle Island, and several neighbouring islands in the Archipelago of the Recherche in southwestern Australia. Also discussed are the first isolated finds of prehistoric stone artefacts on Rottnest and Garden Islands near Fremantle, and the fragmentary record of Aboriginal occupation sites on offshore islands as far north as Barrow Island.