Pub Date : 2023-10-09DOI: 10.25120/qar.26.2023.4022
Anthony Pagels, Heather Burke, Lynley A. Wallis, Bryce Barker
Firearms were critical to the activities of the Queensland Native Mounted Police, a frontier force tasked with suppressing Aboriginal resistance in the colony of Queensland, Australia, between 1848 and 1929. Wider colonial processes meant that arming the Native Mounted Police was never straightforward, despite a dedicated program to standardise and update police weaponry from 1864 onwards. In this paper we use historical, archaeological and museum collections data to produce, for the first time, a definitive list of nine weapons and the ammunition known to have been issued to, and used by, the Native Mounted Police. In general, these weapons transitioned to ever more sophisticated and lethal breech-loading technology, and arms were quickly superseded, although older models were retained in use, resulting in detachments often being armed with an assortment of weaponry. This heterogeneity may have contributed to the use of different tactics by detachments in varying environmental zones. Although the identification of the weapons and ammunition outlined here has value for other contexts, the chief contribution of this research lies in its potential to provide an archaeological dataset to identify putative events of frontier conflict involving the Queensland Native Mounted Police.
{"title":"Weapons of the frontier wars","authors":"Anthony Pagels, Heather Burke, Lynley A. Wallis, Bryce Barker","doi":"10.25120/qar.26.2023.4022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/qar.26.2023.4022","url":null,"abstract":"Firearms were critical to the activities of the Queensland Native Mounted Police, a frontier force tasked with suppressing Aboriginal resistance in the colony of Queensland, Australia, between 1848 and 1929. Wider colonial processes meant that arming the Native Mounted Police was never straightforward, despite a dedicated program to standardise and update police weaponry from 1864 onwards. In this paper we use historical, archaeological and museum collections data to produce, for the first time, a definitive list of nine weapons and the ammunition known to have been issued to, and used by, the Native Mounted Police. In general, these weapons transitioned to ever more sophisticated and lethal breech-loading technology, and arms were quickly superseded, although older models were retained in use, resulting in detachments often being armed with an assortment of weaponry. This heterogeneity may have contributed to the use of different tactics by detachments in varying environmental zones. Although the identification of the weapons and ammunition outlined here has value for other contexts, the chief contribution of this research lies in its potential to provide an archaeological dataset to identify putative events of frontier conflict involving the Queensland Native Mounted Police.","PeriodicalId":37597,"journal":{"name":"Queensland Archaeological Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135044472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.25120/qar.26.2023.4019
Eilis Brien, Lynley A. Wallis, Heather Burke, Yinika L. Perston, Lorna Bogdanek, Trevina Rogers, Tanya Rice, Pearl Eatts, Robert Jansen, Vladimir A. Levchenko
There is considerable discourse around the timing of Australia’s interior colonisation and whether environmental or technological impacts pushed people into occupying more arid environments. However, the general scarcity of rockshelter sites and the limited amount of research undertaken to date in central western Queensland has meant this region has only been peripherally considered in such debates. It is well recognised that, by the time Europeans began documenting lifeways in the region in the late 1870s, central western Queensland had given rise to complex and thriving Aboriginal societies, despite the boom-or-bust nature of its seasonal cycles. One of these is the Pitta Pitta people, who had a pivotal role in a vast trade network that traversed the Lake Eyre Basin, extending north to the Gulf of Carpentaria. The Pitta Pitta are also seemingly unique in that, as far as available data suggest, they are the only group in western Queensland to have used stone in their construction of gunyahs (huts), despite similar environmental and geographic conditions in adjacent areas to the east (Diamantina National Park) and south (Mithaka Country). Here we describe 70 stone-based huts spread across four site complexes on Marion Downs Station and use these to underpin discussions about Pitta Pitta lifeways in the late Holocene.
{"title":"The distribution, chronology and significance of late Holocene aged stone-based structures on Pitta Pitta Country, western Queensland","authors":"Eilis Brien, Lynley A. Wallis, Heather Burke, Yinika L. Perston, Lorna Bogdanek, Trevina Rogers, Tanya Rice, Pearl Eatts, Robert Jansen, Vladimir A. Levchenko","doi":"10.25120/qar.26.2023.4019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/qar.26.2023.4019","url":null,"abstract":"There is considerable discourse around the timing of Australia’s interior colonisation and whether environmental or technological impacts pushed people into occupying more arid environments. However, the general scarcity of rockshelter sites and the limited amount of research undertaken to date in central western Queensland has meant this region has only been peripherally considered in such debates. It is well recognised that, by the time Europeans began documenting lifeways in the region in the late 1870s, central western Queensland had given rise to complex and thriving Aboriginal societies, despite the boom-or-bust nature of its seasonal cycles. One of these is the Pitta Pitta people, who had a pivotal role in a vast trade network that traversed the Lake Eyre Basin, extending north to the Gulf of Carpentaria. The Pitta Pitta are also seemingly unique in that, as far as available data suggest, they are the only group in western Queensland to have used stone in their construction of gunyahs (huts), despite similar environmental and geographic conditions in adjacent areas to the east (Diamantina National Park) and south (Mithaka Country). Here we describe 70 stone-based huts spread across four site complexes on Marion Downs Station and use these to underpin discussions about Pitta Pitta lifeways in the late Holocene.","PeriodicalId":37597,"journal":{"name":"Queensland Archaeological Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135372358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-16DOI: 10.25120/qar.25.2022.3890
Kelsey M. Lowe, Eric H. F. Law
The Spanish Influenza of 1919 had a devastating effect on Aboriginal Australian communities, particularly Cherbourg (formerly known as Barambah Aboriginal Reserve), which resulted in a loss of ~15% of their population. Deaths happened so quickly that coffins were not built and, in some cases, trenches or mass graves were used to inter the dead in addition to individual graves. Although the trench locations were formally unknown by the Cherbourg community today, a major concern of the Cherbourg Elders is that they wanted to memorialise those affected by the 1919 pandemic, especially 100 years later. One attempt to locate the mass graves was to apply geophysical methods in the New and Old Cherbourg cemeteries to detect these unmarked burials. Our paper demonstrates how ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetic gradiometry were used along with oral histories and Indigenous knowledge to detect three mass graves associated with the Spanish Influenza. Outcomes such as this play an important role is supporting ‘Truth Telling’ for the Cherbourg Aboriginal community.
{"title":"Location of historic mass graves from the 1919 Spanish Influenza in the Aboriginal community of Cherbourg using geophysics","authors":"Kelsey M. Lowe, Eric H. F. Law","doi":"10.25120/qar.25.2022.3890","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/qar.25.2022.3890","url":null,"abstract":"The Spanish Influenza of 1919 had a devastating effect on Aboriginal Australian communities, particularly Cherbourg (formerly known as Barambah Aboriginal Reserve), which resulted in a loss of ~15% of their population. Deaths happened so quickly that coffins were not built and, in some cases, trenches or mass graves were used to inter the dead in addition to individual graves. Although the trench locations were formally unknown by the Cherbourg community today, a major concern of the Cherbourg Elders is that they wanted to memorialise those affected by the 1919 pandemic, especially 100 years later. One attempt to locate the mass graves was to apply geophysical methods in the New and Old Cherbourg cemeteries to detect these unmarked burials. Our paper demonstrates how ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetic gradiometry were used along with oral histories and Indigenous knowledge to detect three mass graves associated with the Spanish Influenza. Outcomes such as this play an important role is supporting ‘Truth Telling’ for the Cherbourg Aboriginal community.","PeriodicalId":37597,"journal":{"name":"Queensland Archaeological Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48432631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-10DOI: 10.25120/qar.25.2022.3889
M. J. Rowland, Ray Kerkhove
The prospect that First Nations Australians were in contact with cultures beyond Australia prior to European arrival has fascinated theorists for over a century. Early views tended to see Aboriginal culture as too primitive to have independently developed ‘higher level’ cultural traits. Once this view was abandoned, further enquiry into external contact largely ceased. However, it has been gradually recognised that transformations occurred within Australia not only independently but also through external elements arriving from the north (Macassans and Papuans). This paper offers perhaps the first comprehensive overview of a less studied potential conduit: the eastern seaboard of Australia. Given the vast scale of the eastern seaboard (and its geographic position directly opposite the seafaring cultures of the Pacific Basin it is surprising that the notion of contact between these two realms has received such limited attention. The east coast is a potentially very large target for contact. Queensland and New South Wales mainland and island coastlines comprise in excess of 15,000 km. The Pacific Basin is similarly a huge potential source for contact, covering over one-third of the world’s surface, and containing over 20,000 islands. Our paper first considers the contrast between studies of the eastern and western edges of the Pacific Basin, and then the means (and evidence) by which ‘contact’ is normally discerned. We next consider the potential for contact based on ocean currents and similar factors. The bulk of the paper assesses specific source regions and purported evidence of contact from these regions: Papua New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia and two islands between these areas (Norfolk and Lord Howe). Our study concludes that evidence for Pacific-Australian contact ought to be relatively abundant, given the size of the source area (the Pacific Basin) and the target area (the eastern seaboard). Instead, contact must have been very limited and sporadic, as most evidence has been either inconclusive or requires further substantiation. Equally, the impact of these cultures on the development of Australian First Nations seems to have been negligible. On the other hand, this review accumulated enough evidence to suggest there was considerable potential for such contacts. We conclude that archaeological frameworks should be developed to investigate purported and possible Pacific-Eastern seaboard contacts.
{"title":"Evidence of external contact between the Pacific Basin and the east coast of Australia during the Holocene: A review","authors":"M. J. Rowland, Ray Kerkhove","doi":"10.25120/qar.25.2022.3889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/qar.25.2022.3889","url":null,"abstract":"The prospect that First Nations Australians were in contact with cultures beyond Australia prior to European arrival has fascinated theorists for over a century. Early views tended to see Aboriginal culture as too primitive to have independently developed ‘higher level’ cultural traits. Once this view was abandoned, further enquiry into external contact largely ceased. However, it has been gradually recognised that transformations occurred within Australia not only independently but also through external elements arriving from the north (Macassans and Papuans). This paper offers perhaps the first comprehensive overview of a less studied potential conduit: the eastern seaboard of Australia. Given the vast scale of the eastern seaboard (and its geographic position directly opposite the seafaring cultures of the Pacific Basin it is surprising that the notion of contact between these two realms has received such limited attention. The east coast is a potentially very large target for contact. Queensland and New South Wales mainland and island coastlines comprise in excess of 15,000 km. The Pacific Basin is similarly a huge potential source for contact, covering over one-third of the world’s surface, and containing over 20,000 islands. Our paper first considers the contrast between studies of the eastern and western edges of the Pacific Basin, and then the means (and evidence) by which ‘contact’ is normally discerned. We next consider the potential for contact based on ocean currents and similar factors. The bulk of the paper assesses specific source regions and purported evidence of contact from these regions: Papua New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia and two islands between these areas (Norfolk and Lord Howe). Our study concludes that evidence for Pacific-Australian contact ought to be relatively abundant, given the size of the source area (the Pacific Basin) and the target area (the eastern seaboard). Instead, contact must have been very limited and sporadic, as most evidence has been either inconclusive or requires further substantiation. Equally, the impact of these cultures on the development of Australian First Nations seems to have been negligible. On the other hand, this review accumulated enough evidence to suggest there was considerable potential for such contacts. We conclude that archaeological frameworks should be developed to investigate purported and possible Pacific-Eastern seaboard contacts.","PeriodicalId":37597,"journal":{"name":"Queensland Archaeological Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45370811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-03DOI: 10.25120/qar.25.2022.3883
D. Wright, Rod Mitchell, Bronnagh Norris
Archaeologists and anthropologists have long been interested in the study of past human interaction. In the Indo-Pacific, research has focused on the age and processes by which islands were settled and the role that intermediary communities played in these histories. Torres Strait, on Australia’s northern border, represents one such frontier zone. For millennia this 48,000 km2 area (containing at least 274 islands) separated predominately horticultural and pottery-using Melanesians and hunter-gatherer Australians, a contrast considered by some to be ‘starker and more perplexingly than anywhere else in the world’ (Walker 1972:405). Mirroring archaeological explanations and theoretical interests elsewhere, Coral Sea chronicles have transitioned between those prioritising large-scale migration to narratives of entanglement on the periphery of ancient globalisations. This paper develops the theme of entanglement, exploring distinctive regionally diverging histories of innovation and interaction occurring in Western, Central and Eastern Torres Strait. We suggest that traditional histories, involving the wandering trackways of Culture Heroes, provide useful insights into the deep history of human interactions, thereby helping us to understand patterns observed in the archaeological and linguistic record.
{"title":"Histories of Torres Strait Islander interaction and mythological geography","authors":"D. Wright, Rod Mitchell, Bronnagh Norris","doi":"10.25120/qar.25.2022.3883","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/qar.25.2022.3883","url":null,"abstract":"Archaeologists and anthropologists have long been interested in the study of past human interaction. In the Indo-Pacific, research has focused on the age and processes by which islands were settled and the role that intermediary communities played in these histories. Torres Strait, on Australia’s northern border, represents one such frontier zone. For millennia this 48,000 km2 area (containing at least 274 islands) separated predominately horticultural and pottery-using Melanesians and hunter-gatherer Australians, a contrast considered by some to be ‘starker and more perplexingly than anywhere else in the world’ (Walker 1972:405). Mirroring archaeological explanations and theoretical interests elsewhere, Coral Sea chronicles have transitioned between those prioritising large-scale migration to narratives of entanglement on the periphery of ancient globalisations. This paper develops the theme of entanglement, exploring distinctive regionally diverging histories of innovation and interaction occurring in Western, Central and Eastern Torres Strait. We suggest that traditional histories, involving the wandering trackways of Culture Heroes, provide useful insights into the deep history of human interactions, thereby helping us to understand patterns observed in the archaeological and linguistic record.","PeriodicalId":37597,"journal":{"name":"Queensland Archaeological Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45992962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-03DOI: 10.25120/qar.25.2022.3885
Ian J. McNiven
For over 200 years, Western scholarship has presented Torres Strait variously as a bridge and barrier to cultural influences between mainland New Guinea and Australia. An alternative approach is to see Torres Strait as neither a bridge (permeable boundary) nor a barrier (impervious boundary) but as a socially and culturally co-constructed border zone. Central to this new approach is conceptualisation of the Coral Sea Cultural Interaction Sphere (CSCIS) that centres on a series of ethnographically-known, canoe-based, long-distance maritime exchange networks that linked communities and information on objects over a distance of 2000 km along the south coast of Papua New Guinea and the northeast coast of Australia. The CSCIS emphasises Indigenous agency and the shared/selective uptake of objects and ideas by potential recipient communities across Torres Strait and their New Guinea neighbours to the north and mainland Australian neighbours to the south. Object distribution maps created using data derived from anthropological texts and museum online catalogues reveal continuities and discontinuities in the distribution of selected objects across the study area. These maps illustrate three forms of object uptake: (1) shared uptake of double-outrigger canoes and bamboo smoking pipes between New Guinea, Torres Strait and Australia; (2) selective uptake of dog-tooth necklaces and cone shell armbands between New Guinea and Torres Strait and not Australia; and (3) selective uptake of nautilus bead headbands and shell-handled spearthrowers between Australia and Torres Strait and not New Guinea. Archaeological evidence for temporal changes in the geographical spread of pottery indicates that the CSCIS was historically dynamic, with numerous reconfigurations over the past 3000 years. Enhanced understanding of the CSCIS requires the addition of contemporary Indigenous perspectives.
{"title":"Beyond bridge and barrier: Reconceptualising Torres Strait as a co-constructed border zone in ethnographic object distributions between Queensland and New Guinea","authors":"Ian J. McNiven","doi":"10.25120/qar.25.2022.3885","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/qar.25.2022.3885","url":null,"abstract":"For over 200 years, Western scholarship has presented Torres Strait variously as a bridge and barrier to cultural influences between mainland New Guinea and Australia. An alternative approach is to see Torres Strait as neither a bridge (permeable boundary) nor a barrier (impervious boundary) but as a socially and culturally co-constructed border zone. Central to this new approach is conceptualisation of the Coral Sea Cultural Interaction Sphere (CSCIS) that centres on a series of ethnographically-known, canoe-based, long-distance maritime exchange networks that linked communities and information on objects over a distance of 2000 km along the south coast of Papua New Guinea and the northeast coast of Australia. The CSCIS emphasises Indigenous agency and the shared/selective uptake of objects and ideas by potential recipient communities across Torres Strait and their New Guinea neighbours to the north and mainland Australian neighbours to the south. Object distribution maps created using data derived from anthropological texts and museum online catalogues reveal continuities and discontinuities in the distribution of selected objects across the study area. These maps illustrate three forms of object uptake: (1) shared uptake of double-outrigger canoes and bamboo smoking pipes between New Guinea, Torres Strait and Australia; (2) selective uptake of dog-tooth necklaces and cone shell armbands between New Guinea and Torres Strait and not Australia; and (3) selective uptake of nautilus bead headbands and shell-handled spearthrowers between Australia and Torres Strait and not New Guinea. Archaeological evidence for temporal changes in the geographical spread of pottery indicates that the CSCIS was historically dynamic, with numerous reconfigurations over the past 3000 years. Enhanced understanding of the CSCIS requires the addition of contemporary Indigenous perspectives.","PeriodicalId":37597,"journal":{"name":"Queensland Archaeological Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45254295","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.4324/9781003128793-13
P. Peregrine
{"title":"Historic Preservation and the Practice of Archaeology","authors":"P. Peregrine","doi":"10.4324/9781003128793-13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003128793-13","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37597,"journal":{"name":"Queensland Archaeological Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87092438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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