Australian Indigenous Archaeology

This special issue addresses the possible connections and mutual benefits of examining together two analytic concepts – memory and periphery. These concepts receive much attention in various scholarly discussions, yet they have done so rather independently from each other. The potential applications and utilities of combining memory and periphery and the epistemic insights they provide for various disciplins are presented in the different contributions to this issue.

Indigenous archaeology is an expression of archaeological theory and practice in which the discipline intersects with Indigenous values, knowledge, practices, ethics, and sensibilities, and through collaborative and community-originated or -directed projects, and related critical perspectives. Indigenous archaeology seeks to (1) make archaeology more representative of, responsible to, and relevant for Indigenous communities; (2) redress real and perceived inequalities in the practice of archaeology; and (3) inform and broaden the understanding and interpretation of the archaeological record through the incorporation of Aboriginal worldviews, histories, and science. ...

Historian of science David Pingree defines science in a broad context as the process of systematically explaining perceived or imaginary phenomena. Although Westerners tend to think of science being restricted to Western culture, I argue in this thesis that astronomical scientific knowledge is found in Aboriginal traditions. Although research into the astronomical traditions of Aboriginal Australians stretches back for more than 150 years, it is relatively scant in the literature. We do know that the sun, moon, and night sky have been an important and inseparable component of the landscape to hundreds of Australian Aboriginal groups for thousands (perhaps tens-of-thousands) of years. The literature reveals that astronomical knowledge was used for time keeping, denoting seasonal change and the availability of food sources, navigation, and tidal prediction. It was also important for rituals and ceremonies, birth totems, marriage systems, cultural mnemonics, and folklore. Despite this, the field remains relatively unresearched considering the diversity of Aboriginal cultures and the length of time people have inhabited Australia (well over 40,000 years). Additionally, very little research investigating the nature and role of transient celestial phenomena has been conducted, leaving our understanding of Indigenous astronomical knowledge grossly incomplete.

This thesis is an attempt to overcome this deficiency, with a specific focus on transient celestial phenomena. My research, situated in the field of cultural astronomy, draws from the sub-disciplines of archaeoastronomy, ethnoastronomy, historical astronomy, and geomythology. This approach incorporates the methodologies and theories of disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. This thesis, by publication, makes use of archaeological, ethnographic, and historical records, astronomical software packages, and geographic programs to better understand the ages of astronomical traditions and the role and nature of eclipses, comets, meteors, impact events, and certain variable stars. I also test the hypothesis that certain types of stone arrangements have preferred orientations that probably relate to astronomical phenomena.

This research shows that Aboriginal astronomical traditions explain the motions of celestial bodies and the relationship between events in the sky and events on Earth. I explore how Aboriginal people perceived and made use of particular astronomical phenomena, such as meteors and comets, and show that Aboriginal people made careful observations of the motions of celestial bodies. I provide evidence that Aboriginal people noticed the change in brightness of particular stars, described the kinematics of eclipses, explained how lunar phases are related to ocean tides, and acknowledged the relationship between meteors, meteorites, impact events, and impact craters. I then show that linear stone arrangements in New South Wales have a preferred orientation to the cardinal points and explore astronomical reasons for this. In the Appendix, I include biographical details of William Edward Stanbridge, one of the first people to write in depth about Aboriginal astronomical traditions, which were compiled from historic records.

Modernity and a True Return to Nature 0. Point of Departure Question How are human-nature relations and the attainment of virtue through human-nature relations understood in the classical urban theory of Geddes and Mumford? How is technology and technological power seen as mediating the relationship between humans and nature?

Four stars in the night sky have been formally recognised by their Australian Aboriginal names. The names include three from the Wardaman people of the Northern Territory and one from the Boorong people of western Victoria. The Wardaman star names are Larawag, Wurren and Ginan in the Western constellations Scorpius, Phoenix and Crux (the Southern Cross). The Boorong star name is Unurgunite in Canis Majoris (the Great Dog). They are among 86 new star names drawn from Chinese, Coptic, Hindu, Mayan, Polynesian, South African, and Aboriginal Australian cultures.

"Selected proceedings of the “First International Conference on Ethnoastronomy: Indigenous Astronomical and Cosmological Traditions of the World”held at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 5-9 September 1983."

Available on Amazon.com  - see link in listing. Ships internationally from the USA.

Song and dance are a traditional means of strengthening culture and passing knowledge to successive generations in the Torres Strait of northeastern Australia. Dances incorporate a range of apparatuses to enhance the performance, such as dance machines (Zamiyakal) and headdresses (Dhari). The dances, songs, headdresses and dance machines work together to transfer important knowledge about subsistence survival, social structure, and cultural continuity. This paper explores how celestial phenomena inspire and inform music and dance.

Aboriginal Australians carefully observe the properties and positions of stars, including both overt and subtle changes in their brightness, for subsistence and social application. These observations are encoded in oral tradition. I examine two Aboriginal oral traditions from South Australia that describe the periodic changing brightness in three pulsating, red-giant variable stars: Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis), Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri), and Antares (Alpha Scorpii). The Australian Aboriginal accounts stand as the only known descriptions of pulsating variable stars in any Indigenous oral tradition in the world. Researchers examining these oral traditions over the last century, including anthropologists and astronomers, missed the description of these stars as being variable in nature as the ethnographic record contained several misidentifications of stars and celestial objects. Arguably, ethnographers working on Indigenous Knowledge Systems should have academic training in both the natural and social sciences.

Images of animals are among the most frequent marks people made on rock surfaces. They occur around the world in more than 100 countries, in caves, rock shelters and in the open air. They were made as early as about 40,000 years ago until very recently. Between those dates and across those regions, there is much variation in the way images of animals have come down to us. Sometimes the species are difficult to identify, more often they are not, but the images are nevertheless variably stylised. The images occur singly (rather rarely) or in various combinations with other animals and with images of people. Scenes that take a form familiar to people accustomed to seeing paintings and sculptures in art galleries are rare for some times and places, but quite usual for others. Sometimes images of animals are combined with images of people either where the people wear parts of animals, or where images of the two appear in combination. Determining how to interpret images of animals is complicated by that fact that most ethnographic accounts of attitudes to animals and to making images depend on knowledge of the expressed views of the present day people. It is hazardous to attempt to infer the meanings from the images alone, at least in part because of variation through time and space. Nevertheless, it seems likely that differences between sets of images imply different worldviews, although similarities do not in themselves necessarily signify similar worldviews.

In this paper we explore Aboriginal oral traditions that relate to Australian meteorite craters. Using the literature, first-hand ethnographic records and fieldtrip data, we identify oral traditions and artworks associated with four impact sites: Gosses Bluff, Henbury, Liverpool and Wolfe Creek. Oral traditions describe impact origins for Gosses Bluff, Henbury and Wolfe Creek Craters, and non-impact origins for Liverpool Crater, with Henbury and Wolfe Creek stories having both impact and non-impact origins. Three impact sites that are believed to have been formed during human habitation of Australia. Dalgaranga, Veevers, and Boxhole do not have associated oral traditions that are reported in the literature.

Almost ten years ago, Denis Byrne noticed that Aboriginal heritage was gradually becoming foundational to our identity as a nation.  Australia’s quest for a “longer past” necessitated acknowledgement of the continent’s Indigenous roots (Byrne 1996: 82).  However, relatively little attention is being directed to analyzing the heritage of what Rapoport termed the more pragmatic manifestations of Aboriginal presence (Rapoport 1972) – for example, campsites. 

This paper proposes that considering increasing evidence for Aboriginal camping grounds not only surviving after settlement but became historic camps (‘fringe’ camps or town camps), these entities may have shaped the origin and character of our towns and suburbs to a far greater degree than is usually conceded. Examining the history of several camping grounds in and near Brisbane (Queensland), the author demonstrates their role in the founding of particular suburbs, and how the current location of many parks and reserves is a direct result of their endurance into the 1890s or even into modern times.

Early ethnographers and missionaries recorded Aboriginal languages and oral traditions across Australia. Their general lack of astronomical training resulted in misidentifications, transcription errors and omissions in these records. In western Victoria and southeast South Australia many astronomical traditions were recorded but, cur- iously, some of the brightest stars in the sky were omitted. Scholars claimed these stars did not feature in Aboriginal traditions. This continues to be repeated in the literature, but current research shows that these stars may in fact feature in Aboriginal traditions and could be seasonal calendar markers. This paper uses established techniques to identify seasonal stars in the traditions of the Kaurna Aboriginal people of the Adelaide Plains, South Australia.

This paper addresses the question of what is the central narrative of the archaeological past in Australia and its adjacent islands, particularly those that formed the continent of Sahul: the emergence of diversity identifiable in the historical record (Davidson 2009).

What has become known as “indigenous archaeology” took form in the 1990s through efforts to ensure a place for descendent communities in the discovery, interpretation of, and benefits from their heritage. This followed growing public awareness of the plight of indigenous peoples worldwide, the passage of federal legislation to protect tribal interests, and a commitment by anthropologists and archaeologists to counter the colonial legacy of their disciplines. Since its inception, indigenous archaeology has grown considerably in scope and become more nuanced in its practice; today it garners much attention in discussions of heritage management, stewardship, collaborative research practices, indigeneity, postcolonialism, and the sociopolitics of archaeology, among other topics. Indigenous archaeology now comprises a broad set of ideas, methods, and strategies applied to the discovery and interpretation of the human past that are informed by the values, concerns, and goals of Indigenous peoples. It has been defined, in part, as: “ ... an expression of archaeological theory and practice in which the discipline intersects with indigenous values, knowledge, practices, ethics, and sensibilities, and through collaborative and community-originated or -directed projects, and related critical perspectives”...

"The archaeology of colonialism can destabilize orthodox historical
narratives because of its critical engagement with multiple lines of evidence, revealing ways that different perspectives can complement or contradict what was assumed to be known about the past. In Oceania, archaeology that blends evidence from landscapes, sites, and artifacts with written documents as well as oral traditions reveals the role of indigenous people in shaping colonial encounters across the region over the last five centuries. The challenge lies with how to interpret this material in terms of ongoing struggles over land, resources, and identity in the region today, encapsulated by the tension between global and local."

NOTE: This is the Author's personal copy of this paper. For the authoritative version, please use the link below.""

We test the hypothesis that Aboriginal linear stone arrangements in New South Wales (NSW) are oriented to the cardinal points. We accomplish this by measuring the azimuths of stone arrangements described in site cards from the NSW Aboriginal Heritage Information Management System. We then survey a subset of these sites to test the accuracy of information recorded on the site cards. We find a preference recorded in the site cards for cardinal orientations among azimuths. The field surveys show that the site cards are reasonably accurate, but the surveyors probably did not correct for magnetic declinations. Using Monte Carlo statistics, we show that these preferred orientations did not occur by chance and that Aboriginal people deliberately aligned these arrangements to the approximate cardinal directions. We briefly explore possible reasons for these preferred orientations and highlight the need for future work.

Transient celestial phenomena feature prominently in the astronomical knowledge and traditions of Aboriginal Australians. In this paper, I collect accounts of the Aurora Australis from the literature regarding Aboriginal culture. Using previous studies of meteors, eclipses, and comets in Aboriginal traditions, I anticipated that the physical properties of aurora, such as their generally red colour as seen from southern Australia, would be associated with fire, death, blood, and evil spirits. The survey reveals this to be the case and also explores historical auroral events in Aboriginal cultures, aurorae in rock art, and briefly compares Aboriginal auroral traditions with other indigenous groups, including the Maori of New Zealand.

The archaeological records in the Old World and Australasia reflect a pattern of simple approaches to stone flaking in early stone tool assemblages followed by a later proliferation in more complex approaches. Although the pattern is similar in structure, the proliferation of complex flaking occurred much later in Australasia. ‘Simple’ stone flaking can be characterized as the arrangement of flake removals in chains and ‘complex’ approaches involved a hierarchical arrangement. Some archaeologists see the proliferation of hierarchical reduction sequences as a reflection of hominin cognitive changes, but Homo sapiens colonizers of Australia—carrying a toolkit made by simple chaining—were cognitively modern. The Australian proliferation has been explained as a response to ecological conditions but this proximate explanation fails to account for the complex nature of hierarchical reduction sequences. Demographic modeling that links the emergence of complex stone flaking to population structure or growth better accounts for the proliferations in both the Old World and Australasia. Efforts to reconstruct hominin migrations through Asia by focusing on the ‘derived’ parts of stone toolkits track demographically-linked trends rather than initial emigration events.

Novae and supernovae are rare astronomical events that would have had an influence on the sky- watching peoples who witnessed them. Although several bright novae/supernovae have been visible during recorded human history, there are many proposed but no confirmed accounts of supernovae in indigenous oral traditions or material culture. Criteria are established for confirming novae/supernovae in oral traditions and material culture, and claims from around the world are discussed to determine if they meet these criteria. Aboriginal Australian traditions are explored for possible descriptions of novae/supernovae. Although representations of supernovae may exist in Aboriginal traditions, there are currently no confirmed accounts of supernovae in Indigenous Australian oral or material traditions.

Throughout the Palaeolithic and across the globe small, regular cores were made using bipolar techniques,
in which the object was placed between an anvil and hammer. While there has been much discussion about
whether they might have been used as tools or were debris from a manufacturing process it is likely that
both are true in different locations and at different times. What is distinctive about the bipolar technique is
that it allows knappers to work artefacts down to a very small size, and this may facilitate the extension of
both core life and tool life. In this article a model of that miniaturization process is evaluated against
Holocene material from Australia and Middle Stone Age material from South Africa. It is likely that the
capacity to miniaturize lithic artefacts would have been valuable in a variety of Palaeolithic contexts.

This bibliography presents annotated entries for 352 theses completed at the University of Queensland between 1948 and 2000 of interest to researchers in the field of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. The theses included in the Bibliography embody a considerable amount of original research which is not available elsewhere.

The Bibliography is the result of a long-term project undertaken by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland to collect, abstract and index theses with Indigenous Australian content, which were accepted for a degree at the University of Queensland. The project was initiated in response to a perceived need to make the results of postgraduate research available not only to internal and external researchers but also to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

University of Queensland theses with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content have been included in several other thesis bibliographies and lists (e.g. Coppell 1977; Hall 1987; White 1975, 1994). However, these listings are either dated or discipline-specific and do not cover the full range of theses completed at the University of Queensland. More comprehensive searches were therefore carried out using the University of Queensland Library catalogue, supplemented by manual searches of departmental thesis collections and checked against entries in the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Library catalogue.

Descriptions of natural events, such as fireballs, and meteorite impacts, are found within Indigenous Australian oral traditions. Studies of oral traditions demonstrate that they extend beyond the realm of myth and legend; they contain structured knowledge about the natural world (science) as well as historic accounts of natural events and geo-hazards. These traditions could lead to the discovery of meteorites and impact sites previously unknown to Western science. In addition to benefiting the scientific study of meteoritics, this study can help social scientists better understand the nature and longevity of oral traditions and further support the growing body of evidence that oral traditions contain historical accounts of natural events. In a previous study led by the author in 2009, no meteorite-related oral traditions were identified that led to the discovery of meteorites and/or impact craters. This article challenges those initial findings.

In the Australasian region cultural differentiation, experimentation, and adaptation characterize the global
dispersion of Homo sapiens. The migration of humans out of Africa and into Australia was not a singular
process governed and guided by persistent traditions; normative and static images of social and economic
organization cannot explain the diversity of cultural evidence associated with the dispersion. This paper
reviews the evidence for a dynamic process of social, economic, and technological diversification associated
with the spread of humans and their adaptation to new social and physical environments. The evidence is
read as processes of adaptation, cultural connectedness, and isolation, interacting in complex and regionally
varying ways. In the case of Australia the patterns of occupational history and cultural trajectories were not
the product of conservative maintenance of social tradition or a diminished set of cultural practices following
serial founder events. The evidence is best interpreted as a radiation of cultural practices and perspectives
that reveals an adaptive response to the occupation of new lands.

The use of computers and complex software is pervasive in archaeology, yet their role in the analytical pipeline is rarely exposed for other researchers to inspect or reuse. This limits the progress of archaeology because researchers cannot easily reproduce each other’s work to verify or extend it. Four general principles of reproducible research that have emerged in other fields are presented. An archaeological case study is described that shows how each principle can be implemented using freely available software. The costs and benefits of implementing reproducible research are assessed. The primary benefit, of sharing data in particular, is increased impact via an increased number of citations. The primary cost is the additional time required to enhance reproducibility, although the exact amount is difficult to quantify.

The Murrumbidgee Province of the Riverine Plain is three million hectares in extent, covering an area roughly the size of Tasmania. It is greater in size than the total area of protected heritage conservation land in the United Kingdom and only slightly less than the total area of protected heritage conservation land in New South Wales. As part of the 7 million hectare Riverine Plain, the Murrumbidgee Province shares 27,000 hectares of protected land. On archaeological grounds alone, protected areas in the Murrumbidgee Province warrant being increased to the proportion found throughout the rest of New South Wales.
A total of 918 sites were used in an analysis of the nature and distribution of sites in the Murrumbidgee Province. 307 archaeological sites and other features are held on the Sites Register of NP&WS. 347 sites (including more than 600 separate features) were added to this information during fieldwork in the present study. Other data were added from previous studies.
On the basis of the distribution of known sites and their location, we estimate that the Murrumbidgee Province contains more than 92,000 sites or features. Mounds, scarred trees, burials and open sites with stone tools are the most commonly encountered sites in the area.
A predictive map has been developed as part of this project. The map may be used with Arc View, a standard Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program used by many land managers. The map shows the likelihood of site occurrence throughout the study area. This map will prove valuable as a completely public document containing no confidential sites information. Recommendations on site conservation include checking actions such as unrestrained laser-levelling of large paddocks and old timber felling on river channel frontage without inspection for potential damage to places of significance to Aboriginal People. Damage to Aboriginal sites destroys these cultural assets and damages the right of Aboriginal people to access and enjoy their heritage.

Ethnographic evidence indicates that bora (initiation) ceremonial sites in southeast Australia, which typically comprise a pair of circles connected by a pathway, are symbolically reflected in the Milky Way as the ‘Sky Bora’. This evidence also indicates that the position of the Sky Bora signifies the time of the year when initiation ceremonies are held. We use archaeological data to test the hypothesis that southeast Australian bora grounds have a preferred orientation to the position of the Milky Way in the night sky in August, when the plane of the galaxy from Crux to Sagittarius is roughly vertical in the evening sky to the south-southwest. We accomplish this by measuring the orientations of 68 bora grounds using a combination of data from the archaeological literature and site cards in the New South Wales Aboriginal Heritage Information Management System database. We find that bora grounds have a preferred orientation to the south and southwest, consistent with the Sky Bora hypothesis. Monte Carlo statistics show that these preferences were not the result of chance alignments, but were deliberate.

Wurdi Youang is an egg-shaped Aboriginal stone arrangement in Victoria, Australia.  Here we present a new survey of the site, and show that its major axis is aligned within a few degrees of east-west. We conrm a previous hypothesis that it contains alignments to the position on the horizon of the setting sun at the equinox and the solstices, and show that two independent sets of indicators are aligned in these directions. We show that these alignments are unlikely to have arisen by chance, and instead the builders of this stone arrangement appear to have deliberately aligned the site on astronomically signicant positions.

What does being an archaeologist mean to those Indigenous persons who have chosen this profession? How did they become archaeologists? What led them down a career path to what some in their communities have labeled a “colonialist” venture, or, alternatively, what others see as a way to challenge colonialism’s legacy? What were the circumstances that brought them to this career, and what were the challenges they faced along the way? What were (and are) the motivations that have enabled their success? How have they managed to balance Indigenous traditional values and worldviews (that is, if they embrace these) with Western modes of inquiry? Finally, how are their contributions broadening the scope of archaeology? Such questions frame this collection of autobiographical chapters on what it means to become and be Indigenous archaeologists....

This presentation is based on honours research that
has been completed at James Cook University this past year.
The research examines prehistoric rock art from the herbert/Burdekin region in the dry tropics of far north Queensland.

The principal aim of this research was to identify a particular motif found throughout this region: the rainforest shield. These images are largely reminiscent of the ethnography, known from museum collections rainforest shields, which are artefacts that are rather distinctive and iconic of the Wet Tropics. These rock art depictions are therefore an anomaly, as the Townsville region is part of the Dry Tropics, an area adjacent to the Wet Tropics but beyond where the production of these shields were produced and (for the most part) collected. Analysis of these motifs has been undertaken by exploring the stylistic variability including shape and length:breadth ratios and design organisation. These attributes were then compared to ethnography. This research has been conducted through the lens of human agency, rather than the typical model of environmental. agency, providing scope for using humanism to explain why these rainforest shield motifs
were painted outside the area of the production and use.

For more than 50,000 years, Indigenous Australians have incorporated celestial events into their oral traditions and used the motions of celestial bodies for navigation, time-keeping, food economics, and social structure. In this paper, we explore the ways in which Aboriginal people made careful observations of the sky, measurements of celestial bodies, and incorporated astronomical events into complex oral traditions by searching for written records of time-keeping using celestial bodies, the use of rising and setting stars as indicators of special events, recorded observations of variable stars, the solar cycle, and lunar phases (including ocean tides and eclipses) in oral tradition, as well as astronomical measurements of the equinox, solstice, and cardinal points.

Historical evidence suggests that at the time of European settlement in the NSW Illawarra region, Dharawal groups, who came together for ceremonies, had an established regional network with movement of people, and items, via pathways linking the highlands west of the Illawarra escarpment and the coastal plain. The degree to which the established network described in European accounts reflects pre- colonial patterns or activity affected by early colonial settlement is unclear, however. This thesis examines this topic by comparing archaeological and historical evidence.

Ground edged hatchets, and raw material for their manufacture, are known to have moved within Aboriginal social networks and several sites in the Dharawal region have been identified as likely sources of stone for hatchets and other tools. Non- destructive archaeological provenancing of 148 ground edged hatchets from coastal plain and inland findspots in and adjacent to the Dharawal study area provides an opportunity to characterise pre-colonial patterns of raw material use, and movement of artefacts from source to find-spot. Matches to sources within Dharawal country, as well as beyond the region, trace the local and inter-regional social network within which these artefacts and/or raw materials moved. This provenancing research is a component of a broader, Australian Research Council funded, study of Aboriginal exchange systems and social networks in Southeastern Australia 2012-14: Axes, Exchange, Social Change: New Perspectives on Australian Hunter Gatherers (DP12010393), directed by Peter Grave (University of New England) and Val Attenbrow (Australian Museum).

Spatial reconstruction of Early European observations of movement and gathering of Aboriginal people across, and into and out of Dharawal country between 1788 and 1850, allows archaeological and historical social network patterns to be directly compared. Results suggest significant correlation between the two, as well as consistency in the historical pattern over time. This evidence suggests pathways linking Dharawal groups socially and economically, in place prior to the arrival of Europeans, continued to be used throughout the first fifty years of European colonisation. These results that support and enhance previous research findings in the region.

Evidence that this cultural pattern may have remained stable through a period of known social upheaval suggests that the network of pathways interconnecting Dharawal groups, pathways aligned with the distinctive physiography of country, may have also been stable through earlier times of change. If so, this may also shed light on the nature, and function, of this network in the culturally, socially and environmentally dynamic, deeper past.