Bryce Barker

Holocene palynology of Whitehaven Swamp, Whitsunday Island, Queensland, and implications for the regional archaeological record

Palynological study of Whitehaven Swamp, Whitsunday Island, provides the first Holocene palaeoenvironmental record for the Whitsunday region on the central Queensland coast. Sediment stratigraphy and radiocarbon dating indicate continuous freshwater swamp conditions since around 7000 radiocarbon years Before Present (BP). Pollen and charcoal analyses provide local and regional vegetation and fire histories for the site and surrounding area. Varying representation of swamp elements, particularly Leptocarpus and Cyperaceae, provides evidence for phases of permanent and ephemeral swamp conditions. The regional vegetation record is dominated by rainforest, sclerophyll and beach strand elements. Strongest rainforest representation occurs around the mid-Holocene, while sclerophyll elements increase from the late Holocene to present. Charcoal analyses indicate that fire has been a constant component of the Whitsunday environment throughout the period represented. Negative correlation between high charcoal and Leptocarpus pollen concentrations suggests a strong local component to the charcoal record and a history of on-site burning during ephemeral swamp phases. The vegetation reconstruction suggests moister than present conditions at Whitehaven between approximately 7000 to 4500 BP. This complies with claims for a mid-Holocene climatic optimum based on pollen records from the Atherton Tableland to the north, but contrasts with suggested mid-Holocene aridity based on a surrogate lake water level record from Fraser Island to the south. Comparisons with the regional archaeological record provide no evidence for direct links between major environmental change and archaeologically identified cultural change. In particular, claims for late Holocene population intensification are not matched by changes in the charcoal record. This may suggest that widespread vegetation burning was not a predominant feature of hunter–gatherer strategies that were focused towards marine resources, and/or that human-induced fire regimes were already well entrenched prior to intensification.

Lapita sites in the Central Province of mainland Papua New Guinea

Abstract For over forty years, archaeologists working along Papua New Guineas southern coastline have sought evidence for early ceramics and its relationship with Lapita wares of Island Melanesia. Failing to find any such evidence of pottery more than 2000 bp, and largely based on the excavation of eight early pottery-bearing sites during the late 1960s into the early 1970s, synchronous colonization some 2000 bp along 500km of the south Papuan coastline by post-Lapita ceramic manufacturers has been posited. This paper presents conclusive evidence for the presence of Lapita ceramics along the Papuan south coast between c. 2500 and 2900 cal. bp, thereby indicating that current models of colonization by ceramicists for the region need to be rethought. We conclude with a brief reflection as to why these Lapita horizons were missed by previous researchers.

The Emo site (OAC), Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea: Resolving long-standing questions of antiquity and implications for the history of the ancestral Hiri maritime trade

Abstract Since the 1970s the site of Emo (aka ‘Samoa’, ‘OAC’) in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea has been cited as one of the earliest-known ceramic sites from the southern Papuan lowlands. This site has long been seen as holding c.2000 year old evidence of post-Lapita long-distance maritime trade from (Austronesian-speaking) Motu homelands in the Central Province, where pottery was manufactured, to the (non-Austronesian) Gulf Province some 400km to the west where pottery was received and for which large quantities of sago were exchanged (the ancestral hiri trade). However, until now the only three radiocarbon dates available for Emo were out of chronostratigraphic sequence, and few details on the site had been published. This paper presents the results of new excavations and the first detailed series of AMS radiocarbon determinations from Emo, thereby resolving long-standing uncertainties about the age of the site and its implications for the antiquity of the long-distance Motuan hiri maritime trade.

Massacre, Frontier Conflict and Australian Archaeology

Abstract This paper examines the nature of archaeological evidence relating to frontier conflict/violence in the Australian context. Because of the unique nature of Aboriginal/European frontier encounters, it is argued that a focus on locating archaeological evidence for massacres is problematic. It is suggested that rather than focus on frontier conflict in terms of massacre sites, archaeologists employ a broader social landscape archaeological approach, thus allowing a more holistic contextualisation of Aboriginal/European frontier interactions.

The social construction of caves and rockshelters: Chauvet Cave (France) and Nawarla Gabarnmang (Australia)

Caves and rockshelters are a key component of the archaeological record but are often regarded as natural places conveniently exploited by human communities. Archaeomorphological study shows however that they are not inert spaces but have frequently been modified by human action, sometimes in ways that imply a strong symbolic significance. In this paper the concept of ‘aménagement’, the re-shaping of a material space or of elements within it, is applied to Chauvet Cave in France and Nawarla Gabarnmang rockshelter in Australia. Deep within Chauvet Cave, fallen blocks were moved into position to augment the natural structure known as The Cactus, while at Nawarla Gabarnmang, blocks were removed from the ceiling and supporting pillars removed and discarded down the talus slope. These are hence not ‘natural’ places, but modified and socially constructed.

Evidence for Early Holocene Change in the Whitsunday Islands: A New Radiocarbon Determination from Nara Inlet 1

This report describes a recently obtained radiocarbon determination from the Nara Inlet 1 rockshelter site on Hook Island, off the Central Queensland coast. The new date was obtained in order to more clearly refine changes in stone artefact discard densities within the site as part of a wider technological study, centring on the South Molle Island quarry.

Exploring the hiri ceramics trade at a short-lived village site near the Vailala River, Papua New Guinea

Abstract Investigations at the newly discovered, once-coastal but now inland archaeological village site of Keveoki 1 allows us to characterise the nature and antiquity of ancestral hiri trade ceramics around 450-500 cal BP in the recipient Vailala River-Kea Kea villages of the Gulf Province of the southern coast of Papua New Guinea. This paper reports on the decorated ceramics from Keveoki 1, where a drainage channel cut in 2004 revealed a short-lived village site with a rich, stratified ceramic assemblage. It represents a rare account of the ceramic assemblage from a short duration village on a relic beach ridge in southern Papua New Guinea, and contributes to ongoing attempts to refine ceramic sequences in the recipient (western) end of the hiri system of long-distance maritime trade. Because of the presence of a single occupational period of a few decades at most, short duration sites such as Keveoki 1 allow for chronological refinement of ceramic conventions in a way that multilevel sites usually cannot, owing to the lack of stratigraphic mixing between chronologically separate ceramic assemblages in the former.

The Queensland Native Police and strategies of recruitment on the Queensland Frontier, 1849-1901

ABSTRACT Although historians have provided substantial insights into the structure, development and activities of the Queensland Native Mounted Police, they have rarely focused on the complex and sensitive issue of Aboriginal recruitment. A careful reading of historical records, however, identifies several methods, including coercion, intimidation, kidnapping and inducement, as well as “voluntary” enlistment. It is difficult to identify Aboriginal agency in recruitment processes as the records are entirely one-sided—the voices of the troopers themselves are absent from the archival sources. In this article, we examine the cultural and historical contexts of Aboriginal recruitment—for example, the dire social situations of Aboriginal survivors of the frontier war and the absence of future survival options for the potential recruits. We explore, through the framework of historical trauma, the impacts on vulnerable victims of violence and other devastating effects of colonisation. We conclude that the recruitment of Aboriginal troopers was far from a homogeneous or transparent process and that the concept of agency with regard to those who can be considered war victims themselves is extremely complex. Unravelling the diverse, conflicting and often controversial meanings of this particular colonial activity remains a challenge to the historical process.

The homestead as fortress: Fact or folklore?

Houses are quintessential statements of identity, encoding elements of personal and social attitudes, aspirations and realities. As functional containers for human life, they reflect the exigencies of their construction and occupation, as well as the alterations that ensued as contexts, occupants and uses changed. As older houses endure into subsequent social contexts, they become drawn into later symbolic landscapes, connoting both past and present social relationships simultaneously and connecting the two via the many ways they are understood and represented in the present. As historical archaeologist Anne Yentsch has argued: ‘Many cultural values, including ideas about power relationships and social inequality, are expressed within the context of the stories surrounding houses’.1 This paper is one attempt to investigate the stories surrounding a ruined pastoral homestead in central northern Queensland in light of relationships between non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal people on the frontier.

Postcards from the outside: European-contact rock art imagery and occupation on the southern Arnhem Land plateau, Jawoyn lands

The archaeomorphological study of Nawarla Gabarnmang in Australias Northern Territory challenges us to think in new ways about how Aboriginal people interacted with their surroundings; here a site of everyday engagement was a place of construction that retains material traces of past engagements. At Nawarla Garbarnmang, we show through archaeomorphological research how the changing physical layout of a site can be cross-examined against the impacts of human engagements through time. While the scope and scale of activities involved the anthropogenic removal over tens of thousands of years of rock pillars below the caves roof, other practices came and went over time, the complex sequence of rock art conventions being an apt example. These artistic transformations, much like the era of pillar clearances, are a clear example of changing cultural practices in a part of Australia where some 50,000 years of human occupation can be shown.The Arnhem Land plateau in northern Australia contains a particularly rich rock art assemblage. The area has a small number of large rockshelters with numerous and extensive suites of superimposed motifs (c. 2 per cent of 630 recorded shelters have >200 images). Studies of the rock art of Arnhem Land have primarily been concerned with attempting to understand the age of the art, with particular interest on the Pleistocene to mid-Holocene periods (Chaloupka 1977, 1984, 1985, 1993; Chippindale and Taçon 1993; Haskovec 1992; Lewis 1998; Taçon and Chippindale 1994). Most of these efforts have largely relied on interpretations of styles and their respective patterns of superimposition. Taçon (e.g. 1987, 1989a, 1989b, 1992) has written extensively on X-ray rock art from the northern perimeter of the plateau, and his work on ‘recent’ period art remains the most important study on this subject. The production of X-ray art has also been shown to have been popular during the European-contact period of the past 200 years or so (Chaloupka 1993; May et al. 2010; Wesley 2013). The most detailed study of rock art in the late Holocene period is the extensive radiocarbon dating of beeswax figures by Nelson et al. (2000), most of which fall within the past 500 years (but see Bednarik 2001).This chapter explores [the] incongruity in the distribution of Western-contact motifs contrasting northwestern and southwestern Arnhem Land in relation to the rich corpus of other kinds of rock art on the plateau. We stress from the onset that while images of ‘Western-contact art’ derive from a wide variety of responses to outsider influences, and include imagery that employs conventions akin and often indistinguishable to those of the pre–Western contact period, in this chapter we restrict our discussion to images of introduced objects and demonstrably foreign peoples.