Aboriginal Sites Research Articles

A 6-foot deep mystery: The 1961 excavation at Cave Cliffs Rockshelter (Warne’s Cave) on the Murray River, South Australia

ABSTRACT This article reviews and analyses documented reports about the Aboriginal site variously reported in the literature as Cave Cliffs Rockshelter and Warne’s Cave located on the Murray River in South Australia. The site is also considered in relation to broader historical and archaeological contexts. Numerous inconsistencies within the documentation are explored including: 1) The traditional Aboriginal narrative/s attributed to the rockshelter; 2) The nomenclature assigned to the rockshelter; 3) The nature of the archaeological investigations at the rockshelter (and personnel involved); and 4) The outcomes of the archaeological research, including the housing of any collected assemblage/s. The results of recent archaeological surveys of the site (including geophysical investigations) are also reported and opportunities for potential future work are outlined. Given the nature and context of the site, we argue that the site should have been afforded significantly more respect and recognition than reflected in the level of documentation and informal nature of excavations.

Determining the origin and changing shape of landscape‐scale rock formations with three‐dimensional modelling: The Borologa rock shelters, Kimberley region, Australia

AbstractArchaeologists often wonder how and when rock shelters formed, yet their origins and antiquity are almost never systematically investigated. Here we present a new method to determine how and when individual boulders and rock shelters came to lie in their present landscape settings. We do so through 3D laser (LiDAR) mapping, illustrating the method by example of the Borologa Aboriginal site complex in the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia. Through a combination of geomorphological study and high‐resolution 3D modelling, individual blocks of rock are refitted and repositioned t680their originating cliff‐line. Preliminary cosmogenic nuclide ages on exposed vertical cliff faces and associated detached boulders above the Borologa archaeological sites signal very slow detachment rates for the mass movements of large blocks down the Drysdale Valley slopes, suggesting relative landscape stability over hundreds of thousands of years (predating the arrival of people). These findings offer hitherto unknown details of the pace of regional landscape evolution and move us toward a better understanding of patterns of human occupation in a context of relatively stable rock outcrops both within the sites and across the region.

Huts and stone arrangements at Hilary Creek, western Queensland: Recent fieldwork at an Australian Aboriginal site complex

This paper reports on an Aboriginal site complex, incorporating hut structures, ceremonial stone arrangements, an extensive surface artefact assemblage of lithics and mussel shell, and a silcrete quarry, located along Hilary Creek, a tributary of the Georgina River in western Queensland, Australia. At least two phases of occupation are indicated. The most recent huts have their collapsed organic superstructure still present, while those of a presumably earlier phase are distinguished as bare, circular patches of earth which are conspicuous amongst the ubiquitous gibber, with or without stone bases, and lacking any collapsed superstructure. Immediately adjacent to the huts and also a few hundred metres away are clusters of small stone arrangements, and about 2 km to the southwest, along the same creekline, is another series of larger, more substantial stone arrangements; these features speak to the importance of the general Hilary Creek area for ceremonial purposes. Radiocarbon dating reveals use of the Hilary Creek complex dates to at least 300 years ago; the absence of any European materials suggests it was likely not used, or only used very sporadically, after the 1870s when pastoralists arrived in the area, and when traditional lifeways were devastated by colonial violence.

How the upstream oil and gas industry can leverage interdisciplinary research to more effectively engage with Indigenous communities

Since 2010, mining companies have requested permission for the destruction of over 463 Aboriginal heritage sites. Recent high-profile events have profoundly impacted culturally significant Indigenous sites, and mining companies are under intense pressure to demonstrate greater sensitivity in their relationships with stakeholders. The Australian Disputes Centre uses several case studies to explore how the upstream petroleum industry can leverage current interdisciplinary research to engage with Indigenous communities more effectively, both nationally and internationally. Interest-based negotiation frameworks are considered as actionable mechanisms that are as applicable in day-to-day business operations as they are in supporting consistent, culturally-sensitive stakeholder agreements. The application of a range of communication strategies and skills to harness intersectional decision-making is reviewed, and asks the extent to which engagement with external stakeholders reflects internal corporate culture. Obtaining and retaining a social licence to operate is top of mind for all resource companies, but it does not come without a congruent culture of principled negotiation. This study considers the emerging challenges within the sector, including how to empower all parties to negotiate more fulsome outcomes. Using various case studies, including one involving the conservation of submerged Indigenous heritage, an holistic, interdisciplinary methodology for managing cross-cultural sensitivities while companies undertake technical investigations, liaise with archaeological and ethnographic experts and negotiate with local community leaders has been reviewed. Clearly, inclusive communication is just the beginning.

Aboriginal heritage as ecological proxy in south-eastern Australia: a Barapa wetland village

ABSTRACT Aboriginal archaeology has a central role to play among the myriad government agencies and professional disciplines involved in land and water management of the Murray River Basin in south-eastern Australia. In this study, we examine managed water flows against the archaeological record which provides secure evidence of how people lived at the Murray River floodplain wetlands before European colonisation. Seasonal residential patterns and economic activities of large populations have been reconstructed using archaeological, environmental, and hydrological information. The result is a picture of people living in large groupings – villages and hamlets – around water bodies that we suggest are ecological ‘hot spots’ within the forest. In identifying the preferred locations of village sites, we present the case for modification of environmental water delivery from large area forest flooding to targeted smaller water bodies that form ecological hot spots throughout the river floodplain landscape. Traditional Aboriginal land use in the form of the distribution of Aboriginal sites can act as an environmental proxy to inform heritage, land and water management policy and practices that seek to restore the health of the Murray River.

Hidden Sites, Hidden Images, Hidden Meanings: Does the Location and Visibility of Motifsand Sites Correlate to Restricted or Open Access?

Using an ethnographic approach, this research assesses common assumptions in rock art research in terms of their validity for Aboriginal rock art sites in the Barunga region of the Northern Territory, Australia. In particular, we assess the potential and limits of the commonly held assumption that open or restricted access to sites and/or the meaning of motifs can be assessed by determining the visibility of the site or image within the landscape. This research calls into question some assumptions that are core to contemporary archaeological method and theory. Our results challenge the notion that a secluded location, or difficulty of access, is needed to restrict access to a site. “Hidden” sites do not need to be hidden, as site access is controlled by a plethora of cultural rules. Moreover, sites that appear to be hidden within the landscape may be open access sites, although access may be restricted for periods of time. Conversely, sites that are visible and accessible from a landscape perspective can be subject to restricted access, regulated through social rules. In addition, the results question the notion that the control of secret information in rock art sites is determined by the visibility and location of motifs and sites. Hidden meanings are not necessarily related to hidden locations or the low visibility of the art, since cultures can have many other ways of hiding meaning. Finally, the results of this study challenge the commonly held dichotomy between sacred/restricted access and secular/open access.

The Southeastern Sindica Frontier: The Raevskoye Fortified Settlement

The expansion of the Bosporan Kingdom (the interior colonization of Bosporus) was caused by the need for commercial grain in the Greek markets of the Mediterranean. The steep rise in the Bosporan rulers’ incomes followed the annexation of Sindica—one of the most fertile lands of the Northern Pontic region, situated in the Lower Kuban basin. This study discusses the history of the vast chora of the Greek Gorhippia in the southeastern fringes of Sindica, focusing on findings from a Bosporan fort—the Raevskoye fortified settlement. We reconstruct the evolution of the anthropogenic landscape of the area over four centuries (Hellenistic and Early Roman period). The chronology is based on a collection of Bosporan coins from the fortified settlement. We analyze the factors due to which the habitation layers of the fortified settlement span a period from the Early Bronze Age to the High Middle Ages. We provide a new topography of the Early Iron Age aboriginal site, along with that of the fortified site existing during the three Bosporan stages. Special attention is paid to the fortification system, arranged in the Hellenistic period. Studies in recent decades have suggested that the fortifications were constructed according to the typical Bosporan technique of adobe-stone architecture. The fortified settlement evolved over a long period as an economic and political center of a large borderland zone between the Greek civilization and the archaic societies of the Caucasian piedmonta peculiar frontier of the classical era.

Dr. Space Junk vs the Universe: Archaeology and the Future

Dr. Space Junk vs the Universe: Archaeology and the Future

Aboriginal historical archaeological site, Kanyanyapilla camp, McLaren Vale, South Australia

Removal of olive trees along a closed public road at McLaren Vale inadvertently revealed a scatter of archaeological material. Subsequent investigation resulted in the identification of an Aboriginal historical camp site. The abundant worked glass associated with the site, and our analysis published here, provides evidence for intensive occupation from the late 1800s to the late 1940s, with overall site use spanning the1860s to1960s. This site, Kanyanyapilla camp (field site no. K50PoC1), provides the first detailed archaeological evidence from the greater Adelaide region of resistance by Aboriginal people against institutional inducement onto missions. Instead, a camp was established away from the immediate township now known as McLaren Vale and the occupants engaged in a range of economic activities in the region. Indeed, Aboriginal people occupying this camp site were engaged in 'hybrid economies' as well as utilising traditional practices, all of which defies the standard notion that Aboriginal people during the latter half of the 19th Century were induced, and later forced, onto missions. That some Aboriginal people may have avoided missions and instead retained a sense of autonomy outside the mission/government inspired nexus of welfare dependency now finds archaeological resonance in South Australia.

The Pearson Site (41RA5) at Lake Tawakoni on the Sabine River, Rains County, Texas

The Pearson site (41RA5) in the Blackland Prairie of East Texas is one of a number of aboriginal archaeological sites recorded during a 1957 archaeological survey of the flood pool of then proposed Lake Tawakoni on the Sabine River; the site is now inundated. The Pearson site was located on several low sandy rises across ca. 25 acres in the Hooker Creek-Sabine River floodplain, and these rises had both aboriginal and European artifacts on the surface. Johnson and Jelks, and Duffield and Jelks have argued that the Pearson site was the Tawakoni-Yscani village visited by a Spanish missionary in 1760 and part of a recently defined Norteno focus, a complex of sites apparently associated with the Wichita tribes. Schambach, by contrast, considers the Pearson site to be an 18th century Tunican entrepot.

Deliberate selection of rocks in the construction of the Gummingurru Stone Arrangement Site Complex, Darling Downs, Queensland

This paper uses statistical analyses to examine the hypothesis that the creators of the Gummingurru Stone Arrangement Site Complex, southeast Queensland, deliberately selected rocks, based on size and shape, for the production of motifs at the site. As Gummingurru is an Aboriginal site, the literature that frames the research concerns Aboriginal cultural Law and worldviews. However, because the data are archaeological measurements, quantitative statistical methods are also employed. These quantitative results demonstrate deliberate selection of rocks occurred in the construction of four of the motifs at Gummingurru. We conclude that there are archaeological signatures of human behaviour in response to the requirements of cultural Laws with respect to the choice of raw materials, at least in stone arrangement sites.

Mid-to-Late Holocene Aboriginal Flaked Stone Artefact Technology on the Cumberland Plain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia: A View from the South Creek Catchment

ABSTRACTDespite being one of the most intensively investigated archaeological regions in Australia, the flaked stone technologies employed by Aboriginal people occupying the Cumberland Plain of western Sydney, New South Wales, remain poorly documented in the published literature. Here we present and discuss the results of a technological analysis of a sizeable cultural lithic assemblage recovered from a compliance-based salvage excavation completed within Woorong Park Residual Rise 1, an open air Aboriginal archaeological site located in the northwestern portion of the Plain, in the South Creek catchment. The flaked stone technology evidenced by this assemblage is characterized through descriptions of observed raw materials, reduction techniques and methods, flake attributes and tool types. The behavioral implications of the assemblage are considered in light of the region’s existing archaeological dataset and with particular reference to McDonald’s [(2008). Dreamtime superhighway: Sydney Basin rock art and prehistoric information exchange (Terra Australis 27). Canberra: Australian National University Press] comprehensive behavioral land use model for the broader Sydney region, which wholly encompasses the Cumberland Plain.

Analysis with confidence: distinguishing pre-Bondaian and Bondaian silicified mudstone artefact assemblages from the Cumberland Plain of Western Sydney, New South Wales

Most Aboriginal open sites on the Cumberland Plain of Western Sydney were thought to have been occupied during the Bondaian phase after ca 7,000–8,000 cal. BP, based largely on the presence of backed artefacts, predominance of silcrete in assemblages and paucity of stratified sites and late Pleistocene dates. I propose here that sites with older pre-Bondaian artefacts are more common than that indicated by previous research. In the pre-Bondaian phase, silicified mudstone was the preferred raw material type. During the Bondaian phase people sometimes used silicified mudstone in addition to silcrete, but these assemblages have numerous backed artefacts and attributes relating to the manufacture of this artefact type. This paper proposes that differences between pre-Bondaian and Bondaian silicified mudstone assemblages can be detected by calculating the proportions of cortical-plus-plain platforms, faceted platforms and perhaps elongate flakes, in addition to the proportions of backed artefacts. Confidence intervals attached to those proportions take variation in sample size and the potential for random variation into account. The results indicate that sites with pre-Bondaian artefacts are more common than previously thought. This has implications for models which propose increased occupation of the Cumberland Plain during the Bondaian phase and for geoarchaeological studies of site histories.

Radiocarbon Dates from Aboriginal Sites in Cherokee, Henderson, and Tyler Counties in East Texas

The newly obtained radiocarbon dates discussed in this article were done by DirectAMS of Seattle, Washington. Three of the sites have only a single AMS radiocarbon date, while four radiocarbon dates have been obtained from the M. S. Roberts site (41HS8) on Caddo Creek in the Neches River basin. The radiocarbon ages obtained on these samples have been calibrated to 2 sigma using IntCal 13 (Reimer et al. 2013). These dates were obtained to continue to expand the utility of the East Texas Radiocarbon Database to better understand the age of archaeological components at sites in the region, as well as ascertain temporal trends in settlement by Native Americans in East Texas (cf. Selden 2012; Selden and Perttula 2013a, 2013b).

Kalla yarning at Matagarup: Televised legitimation and the limits of heritage-making in the city

This paper is directed towards furthering understandings of popular television news reporting on Aboriginal solidarity gatherings at Matagarup on Heirisson Island, a state-registered Aboriginal Heritage Site in Perth, Western Australia. In doing so, it also seeks to identify the practical limits of heritage making in disrupting the legitimization of state action not recognizing such heritage claims. In 2012 and 2015, Aboriginal citizens gathering and camping at the heritage site were subject to police raids legitimized by popular media organizations reporting a breach of municipal bylaws prohibiting camping and fires on Heirisson Island. This paper examines a shift in popular television reporting over the three years towards acknowledging that Aboriginal people should be able to assemble, without police harassment, around a fire at the site. The most radical shift in reporting is observable in Nine News coverage of events. For this reason, eight televised items from Nine News in 2015 are analysed alongside Nine News reporting described in the authors’ previous study of reporting of events at Matagarup in 2012. The paper identifies and discusses the implications of two key dialogical processes in the news production: Firstly, a process of cross-cultural reading and shared understandings of fire as hearth, and secondly a process of reproducing a dominant discursive tradition locating home for Aboriginal people outside the city.

Attributes, preservation and management of dendroglyphs from the Wet Tropics rainforest of northeast Australia

This paper describes the attributes, preservation and management of Aboriginal dendroglyphs in the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area of northeast Australia, the only known dendroglyphs recorded in a tropical rainforest environment worldwide. Our research identifies that dendroglyphs are usually single trees with abstract linear or figurative designs carved into their outer bark and are often associated with Aboriginal walking tracks and other cultural sites. Using existing historical field notes and records, including a fibreglass model of one carving made in 1991, we conclude that the dendroglyphs have changed little over 20 years. They appear to be more resilient to extreme climatic events than previously predicted, and the main threat to their preservation appears to be vulnerability from the effects of ageing, such as insect and fungal attack. Difficulties for traditional owners in accessing dendroglyphs within the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area highlight tensions between natural and cultural site management practices.

Malimup: A Tasmanian Aboriginal Hoabinhian site in the southwest of Western Australia?

The Hoabinhian technocomplex of Southeast Asia is characterised by distinctive pebble edge tools which are also found in Australia, but only in the southeast, including Tasmania. Charlie Dortch in the early 1970s reported a unique site with Hoabinhian tools in southwest Australia at Malimup, Western Australia (WA), dated to the recent past. An analysis of the pebble edge tools from Malimup showed they were similar to those from eastern Australia, which in turn were similar to the Southeast Asian ones. While it is possible that local Aboriginal people may have made these tools, it seems unlikely, given that no other such site has been found anywhere in WA. In considering the possibility that the site represents the presence of Aboriginal people from elsewhere in Australia during the early historical period, the most likely candidates are suggested to be Aboriginal women from Tasmania. Such women are documented as having lived with European sealers along the south coast of WA, and the site at Malimup is in a location suitable for a sealing camp, and near where sealers are reputed to have been active. It is further speculated that these tools may have been used for processing ochre, an activity of traditional significance to Tasmanian Aboriginal women, perhaps helping them come to terms with an unfamiliar environment. Such a suggestion may help shed light on the role of pebble tools elsewhere in Australia and indeed Southeast Asia.

Hyperlinking History and Illegitimate Imagination: The Historiographic Metafictional E-novel

‘Historiographic Metafiction’ (HM) is a literary term first coined by creative writing academic Linda Hutcheon in 1988, and which refers to the postmodern practice of a fiction author inserting imagined--or illegitimate--characters into narratives that are intended to be received as authentic and historically accurate, that is, ostensibly legitimate. Such adventurous and bold authorial strategies frequently result in “novels which are both intensely self-reflexive and yet paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages” (Hutcheon, A Poetics 5). They can be so entertaining and engaging that the overtly intertextual, explicitly inventive work of biographical HM can even change the “hegemonic discourse of history” (Nunning 353) for, as Philippa Gregory, the author of HM novel The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), has said regarding this genre of creative writing: “Fiction is about imagined feelings and thoughts. History depends on the outer life. The novel is always about the inner life. Fiction can sometimes do more than history. It can fill the gaps” (University of Sussex). In a way, this article will be filling one of the gaps regarding HM...

Assessing Thomson’s Model of Seasonal Change

Donald Thomson’s 1939 discussion of the effects of seasonality on Australian Aboriginal hunter gatherer subsistence has been acknowledged as a classic. Its title “The Seasonal Factor in Human Culture” reflects his argument that seasonality should be considered a part of human culture when archaeological interpretations are being made. Thomson wrote this critique of culture historical classification at the invitation of Grahame Clark, arguing that the seasonal cycle was a factor determining the location of Aboriginal camp sites and the activities performed at them. Placing the 1939 article alongside Thomson’s long term interest in Aboriginal society, ecology, technology, and material culture allows us to see this as a pioneering work exploring human behavior and its archaeological signature.

The Protohistoric Time Period in Northwest Ohio: Perspectives from the XRF Analysis of Metallic Trade Materials

This paper presents the results of an experimental study into the usefulness of X-ray florescence (XRF) in identifying the composition of metal artifacts found at aboriginal sites in northwestern Ohio. In the late 1990s, we subjected 96 samples to XRF and documented our results. We then compared our data to that collected by more precise spectrographic methods to assess the effectiveness of the XRF method for this application. While not precise enough to source native coppers, we conclude that XRF is a cheap, nondestructive method for differentiating native copper from its European counterparts at sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Late Woodland sites.