Stone Artefacts From The Beltana Region, South Australia

Short Reports recording session, in PAD 8 only four were found and in DMC 8, seven were found. Whether (or which of) the artefacts are now beneath the surface of the deposit, or have eroded downhill in front of the shelters, or are obscured by vegetation is not known. In one shelter (DMC 7) a section of deposit is situated behind large rocks. Ten artefacts were placed in this section, only one was visible in 2000. In this case it seems likely the others are now buried, probably by treadage and scuffage (it is close to a popular walking track). At the end of the project patterns of movement for each artefact will be drawn (excavation may be undertaken to find missing artefacts). A full evaluation of the project will be reported at a later date. Acknowledgements Until 2000 partial funding of the program was provided by the Upper Parramatta River Catchment Trust. This funding is now available only to record data after flooding events. Voluntary and other assistance has been contributed by a number of people who will be fully acknowledged later, including several archaeology students from the University o f Sydney who were of immense help. The then Daruk (now Deerubbin) Local Aboriginal Land Council and the Darug Link (now Darug Tribal Aboriginal Corporation) were also involved in original investigations and planning. References Corkill, T. 1992 Darling Mills Creek Stormwater Management Strategy: Preliminary survey for Aboriginal archaeological sites. Report to Upper Parramatta River Catchment Trust, Sydney, New South Wales. Corkill, T. 1993 Test Excavation of Five Rockshelters in the Darling Mills Creek Valley. Report to the Upper Parramatta River Catchment Trust, Sydney, New South Wales. Corkill, T. 1996 Darling Mills Creek Stormwater Management Strategy. Aboriginal Archaeology: Monitor of three rockshelters. Background, Proposal, Procedure and Collection of Baseline Data. Report to Upper Parramatta River Catchment Trust, Sydney, New South Wales. Lenihan, D.J., Carrell, T.L., Fosberg, S., Murphy, L. and Rayl, S.L. 1981 The Final Report of the National Reservoir Inundation Study. Volume 1 - Summary; Volume 2 Technical Reports. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of the Interior. Manidis Roberts Consultants 1994 Darling Mills Creek Stormwater Management Strategy: Environmental Impact Statement. Prepared on behalf of The Upper Parramatta River Catchment Trust, Sydney, New South Wales. Sefton, C. 1990 Archaeological Survey of the Wedderburn Lease Area and Proposals for Monitoring of Sandstone Overhangs for the Effects of Mining Subsidence. Report to Kembla Coal and Coke Pty Ltd, Sydney, New South Wales. STONE ARTEFACTS FROM THE BELTANA REGION, SOUTH AUSTRALIA Bianca Di Fazio Archer Archaeology, 20 Princess Street, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia Amy Roberts Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia This paper will present some aspects of a lithic analysis that was conducted at Beltana, South Australia, as part of a larger research project investigating Indigenous fringe occupation sites (Di Fazio 2000). The town of Beltana is located south of Leigh Creek in the Flinders Ranges (Fig. 1). This predominantly arid area is characterised by cliffs, boulder slopes and gorges (Fox 1991 :16). Beltana was established in 1870, taking its name from the Adnyamathanha word for running water (Beverley Today Beltana is Patterson 2000, pers. corn.). predominantly known as a ghost town, however, in its heyday it offered a number of services including a telegraph repeater station, a railway station, and a mining exchange. The Adnyamathanha people were in continuous occupation of the Beltana area from the pre- to post-invasion periods, however during the post-invasion period they were primarily confined to the fringe camps on the outskirts of the town. Figure l Australian Archaeology, Number 52, 200 1 Places mentioned in text (map adapted from Lampert and Hughes 1988) Short Reports Previous archaeological studies of the area include site reports'0 Bctty F. Ross (1979) and Keryn Waishe (1998). In relation to lithic studies of the immediate and wider region little has been published regarding raw material sources andlor artefact types, with the exception of two articles by Lampert and Hughes (1987, 1988). Consequently, this article seeks to provide a preliminary report on the lithics of the Beltana environs that may be useful for future comparative studies. Materials and methods Each individual stone artefact within three main study areas was recorded and surveyed as part of a landscape analysis, and were plotted into detailed site plans of the study areas. The artefacts were recorded using both a technological and typological approach, therefore all debitage, non-formal and formal tool types are represented in the database created for this project (see Di Fazio 2000). Raw materials Preliminary research suggests that there are few documented and published raw material sources for the Beltana area and wider region, thus it is difficult at present Raw Material Pale Beige Chert Clear Quartz Green Silcrete GreyIBeige Chert Purple Chert RedIBeige Chert Red~WhiteChert Blue Chert PinWGrey Chert YellowIGrey Chert PinWBeige Silcrete YellowIBeige Chert BeigetWhite Chert RedIBrown Chert Red Chert White/Yellow Chert Red Silcrete Yellow Chert Sandstone Beige Silcrete Brown Silcrete WhiteIGrey Chert GreenIGrey Silcrete White Chert BrowntWhite Silcrete Quartz Redflellow Chert GreenIGrey Chert Brown Chert Brown Mudstone Beige Chert Quartzite Orange Chert Grey Silcrete Table 1 Count of Raw Material 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 5 5 5 6 7 7 10 11 12 13 14 22 21 29 55 58 94 213 Lithic Raw Materials from the Bettana Study Areas, South Australia to assess how stone was procured and transported across the iandscape. However, Lampert and Hughes (1988) have published the following raw material sources: Mt Painter small outcrops of igneous rocks and silcrete; Mt Murteree high quality silcrete outcrop; Hawker Lagoon - located between steep quartzite ridges, Yourambulla Range to the east and Yappala Range to the west. In addition, they also note that the predominant rock type throughout the Ranges is quartzite which grades out to sandstone and siltstone. Limestone is also fairly extensive. These recorded and published sites are, however, all well over a hundred kilometres from Beltana. The abundance of certain raw materials at Beltana itself may indicate that quarrieslsources are in the general vicinity. Further comparative studies in the region using databases such as the one used in this research may help to resolve such issues. Indeed, a Flinders University field school south of Beltana in the Hawker area (conducted by Keryn Walshe and Pauline Coulthard) may soon provide a useful comparative analysis. A wide range of raw materials were found in the Beltana area (Table 1). Most artefacts were less than 5 X 5cm, excepting cores and choppers. As is evident in Table 1, many of the coloured cherts are only minimally represented, and as such it can be postulated that these were traded into the area from further afield. However, it has been noted that the greenlgrey chert is more abundant in the Hawker region suggesting that the area is one of the likely sources of this material. Quartz is generally believed to be sourced throughout the Flinders Ranges region (Neale Draper 2000, pers. corn.). A large quartz outcrop of reasonable quality has been observed by the authors at the Lyndhurst ochre mine. The stone artefacts in the Beltana region, however, primarily consist of artefacts manufactured from grey silcrete, which was significantly represented in all three study areas. In one of the three study areas this raw material made up a large blade manufacturing site. Large amounts of grey silcrete do not appear to be represented in the Hawker region and as such it is postulated that the raw material source is probably located closer to the Beltana environs. In addition to these raw materials brown mudstone was also reasonably well represented. This raw material appears to have been used for specific artefact types, such as choppers, which occurred along the line of the Warrioota Creek. This suggests that these stone implements were used in the manufacture of wooden artefacts, such as carrying dishes, shields, etc. Further comparative studies in the region will allow archaeologists to gain a greater understanding of the procurement, transportation, modification and discard of stone artefacts of the wider Flinders Ranges region. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Beverley and Stuart Patterson, Indigenous custodians of the Beltana region, for allowing us to conduct fieldwork in their country. We would also like to thank Dr Neale Draper for his comments on likely raw material sources in the Flinders Ranges. Due thanks also go to the Beltana project field team, Aidan Ash, Susan Briggs, Darren Griffin, Andrew H o h a n n , Nathan Richards and Lara Richardson. Australian Archaeology, Number 52, 2001 Short Reports References Di Fazio, B. 2000 Living on the Edge: An Exploration of Fringe Occupation in Beltana, Flinders Ranges. Unpublished BA (Hons) thesis, Flinders University, Adelaide. Fox, A. 1991 Geology of the Flinders Ranges. In D. Tunbridge (ed.) The Story of the Flinders Ranges, pp. 16. Kenthurst, New South Wales: Kangaroo Press. Lampert, R.J. and Hughes, P.J. 1988 Early human occupation of the Flinders Ranges. Records of the South Australian Museum 22: 139- 168. Lampert, R.J. and Hughes, P.J. 1987 The Flinders Ranges: A Pleistocene outpost in the arid zone? Records of the South Australian Museum 20:29-34. Ross, B.F. 1979 Beltana Site Documentation. Archaeological survey, Department of Planning, Adelaide. Walshe, K. 1998 Archaeological Survey of Aboriginal Sites and Objects in the Beltana Township and Environs, South Australia. Adelaide: ALLCAMPS. WHAT TO DO WHILE YOU'RE WAITING TO DOARCHAEOLOGY?PROCESSESOF DECAY IN THE 21" CENTURY Rhondda Harris Consultant , Archaeology and Research Services, 23 Oxenbould St, Parkside, SA 5063, Australia. While trying to get work as an archaeologist I do some casual work in estate management. This involves sorting out the belongings of people who have died or who have moved to a nursing home. Work is usually at the request of Trustee Companies or a Funeral Assistance Program and mostly involves sorting out the houses of people with no relatives or where the condition of the house is such that relatives seek help to sort it out. Sometimes a house will look like anybody's house who lives in a way you expect people to live, cluttered but reasonably clean, with some vague sort of order such as kitchen things in the kitchen and bedroom things in the bedroom, but often enough they are much more interesting. In fact, often enough they resemble the houses from hell which current affairs programs frequently put to air, the ones where the tenants have fled and the Council comes in and fills up three rubbish trucks just to get in the door. As an archaeologist these houses are full of interest. They represent the most amazing opportunity to watch the processes of a house's decay, to see what happens when you don't clean the bath for twenty years (it turns black), when you forget where you put the loaf of bread (it explodes when you touch it), when you leave the takeaway on the floor (it goes black but retains its shape) or when your mother dies seven years ago and you do no housework from then on (the lace cloth on the dining room table rots and the bird which flew in and couldn't get out is still there in a very dried out form behind the lounge chair). I am always stunned to see how quickly decay sets in and to be able to watch the results of moths and white ant, the melting of rubber, and even the invasion of couch grass, often while a person still lives in the house. We find some interesting things (such as glass eyes and petrified rubber gloves) and some even more interesting decay, but mostly 1 find myself :lustralian . . l r c h a e o l o ~Number ~. 52. 200 1 again and again thinking about the archaeology of the situation, I contemplate the spatial distribution of the artefacts, the material correlates of age and sickness and dementia and I imagine what would be left in 10 years, 50 years and hundreds of years if all were to be left just as it is. What assumptions might be made by archaeologists on hand at the time? Would they focus on the keys from a grand piano, sequins and beads from exquisite clothes, and scattered piles of coins, suggestive of great wealth and status, or would they notice the remains of dog hair, once ankle deep? Would they imagine the layer of cobwebs, now decayed, reaching from the ceiling down to just above the head height of this tiny woman? Would they assume that the skeleton of the rat in the middle of the lounge room floor was part of a post occupation phase or would they guess that it simply died trying to find the other side of the room? Would they assume that the cans of food once in a cupboard behind the kitchen door were the sign of a house well stocked at the time of this woman's death or would they guess that the decayed use-by dates of the contents of this forgotten cupboard preceded her death by nearly twenty years? Moving to another house, what about the plastic spiders and just discernible sticky rubber snakes. Were children here or could we guess that these items guarded small stashes of valuables against imagined intruders? We can imagine the perfect housewife in the perfectly preserved lime-green and orange synthetic frocks (which appear to have a half life of millions of years). Does the rather large pile of small buttons give some clue that even in her son's lifetime these frocks stood oddly uncontaminated and still with their shop tags on in a cupboard where the bulk of the clothes had been slippers and plain woolen cardigans with little front pockets, all of which fell apart when touched, demolished by moths? Perhaps an archaeologist would do a flotation and notice these thousands of moth carcasses, the remains of generations of moths continuing to live and breed and die, trapped in a cupboard for 20 years and gradually filling the space at its base. At another house, what would we make of the abundance of metal in the bathroom and the mound of ceramic and glass covering the rest of the house? Would the remains of 20 nylon wigs and 15 shopping trolleys, the tools of an obsessive shop lifter, be recognised amongst the rubble? Would we know the bathroom had been filled with saucepans and the rest of the house stacked to the brim with all manner of other things and if the goods had already been removed and the house was only partially decayed, would we gather the significance of the perfect linoleum except for the single well worn track from kitchen to bed? After only a year of this work my impressions are still forming, but so far, it seems to me that with social isolation at any age, but especially that which goes with old age, the spatial variations of artefacts within a house increasingly appear to blur. The distinction between the house and the shed stays fairly clear but inside the house it's a different story. The kitchen and bathroom seem to lose their distinctiveness first. They become less and less used and end up as general storage rooms. The rest of the rooms take on various functions, depending on the character of the individual. One room might be used to throw dirty clothes into until it is full and the door is shut, another room might 49