Archaeology in Oceania最新文献

According to written histories, trepang fishers from Island Southeast Asia (“Makassans”) frequented coastal northern Australia from c.1750 to 1907 CE. Yolŋu oral traditions and old Austronesian borrow words in coastal Aboriginal languages suggest a long and complex history of foreign voyaging to northern Australia. Yet archaeological radiocarbon chronologies for the Southeast Asian trepang industry and earlier voyaging encounters are few and the dates have never been comprehensively reviewed. Only one Arnhem Land trepang fishery site has been dated extensively, and others have produced unusually old dates of c.1200–1500 CE. The Groote Eylandt rockshelter of Dadirrigka yielded an enigmatic sherd of friable earthenware above a radiocarbon date of c.1100 CE. Here we have compiled, reviewed and recalibrated all 49 radiocarbon dates directly associated with Southeast Asian contact sites, stratigraphy and rock art in northern Australia. We discuss the dates and their archaeological contexts region by region to assess their reliability. We also report for the first time Yanyuwa (southwest Gulf of Carpentaria) oral traditions which shed light on their past kinship and exchange relationships with Makassan visitors. The radiocarbon dates provide tentative support for four phases of interaction in northwest Arnhem Land and Groote Eylandt, including pre-Makassan encounters and the organised trepang industry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There is a paucity of archaeological excavations and radiocarbon data from northeast Arnhem Land, the Kimberley and the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria, where historical writings, linguistics and oral traditions are still the most reliable indicators of the timing and nature of cross-cultural interaction.

Technological analysis of the late Holocene component of the stone artefact assemblage recovered from the Kings Table rockshelter in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, provides the basis for an assessment of the site's role in broader late Holocene settlement-subsistence systems. Drawing on Kuhn's widely employed “provisioning model”, as well as Kelleher's general pre-contact occupation model for the Blue Mountains National Park (BMNP), we argue that the Kings Table rockshelter functioned as a short-term field camp for logistically-organised hunter-gatherers whose principal residential bases were located in “off-mountains” contexts. It is argued that the late Holocene component of the Kings Table assemblage has a technological “signature” entirely consistent with individual provisioning. Aboriginal groups occupying this site over the course of the late Holocene employed a mobile toolkit whose lithic component was dominated by artefacts manufactured out of high-quality, transported silicified tuff and incorporated both backed artefact-bearing composite tools and hafted edge-ground hatchets (axes) as key elements.

Adze quarries and sources are some of the most visible, unique and well-preserved Polynesian archaeological sites where stone technology, intensification of production, other aspects of economy, social organisation and ritual practices are anchored together on the landscape. The production and exchange of adzes are associated with complex interaction networks connecting islands and archipelagos up to 4000 km distant making adzes amongst the most widely transferred tools in the Neolithic world. Our review of Polynesian adze quarries and sources demonstrates that site descriptions are uneven hampering regional comparisons based on size, production output and internal complexity. We therefore provide suggestions for future research with the overall goal of making comparisons between these sites more meaningful. We believe it is an exciting time to be studying one of the most important site classes in archaeology not just to know how stone adzes were made, but what we can also learn about the development and variability of complex societies across Polynesia.

Across the Australian continent, backed artefacts are produced in enormous numbers during the mid-late Holocene. Previous examinations have revealed variation in the average shape of these artefacts, at both continental and regional scales. To better understand the factors creating this variability, we examine a large assemblage of backed artefacts from Ngungara (Weereewa/Lake George), in south-eastern Australia. This is one of the few open sites in Australia which has high-resolution evidence for spatially distinct, short-term workshops. Within these well-bounded workshops both locally manufactured and imported backed artefacts are present. However, across this landscape the shape of these artefacts is not uniform; rather, similarly shaped backed artefacts are concentrated in different workshop areas. Through the analysis of backed artefacts in different workshops, we suggest that “insert copying” or the replacement of spent inserts with similarly shaped, locally manufactured artefacts creates variability in backed artefact shape.

The Wellington Range region, in far Northern Australia, provides a remarkable record of cultural encounter. Cathedral-sized rock art galleries include contact imagery referencing Macassan and European visitors while lithic artefact assemblages echo social mobility between Indigenous groups occurring from at least the mid Holocene period. In this paper, we continue the trajectory of archaeological research in this region by examining community entanglement over the longue durée, focusing on the Mayarnjarn rock-shelter complex. Specifically, and following advice from traditional custodians, the authors complement archaeological excavation results with reflections on interactions between Traditional Mawng speaking Owners and archaeologists occurring during the 2016 and 2018 field seasons. This paper provides a cultural chronology built around both OSL and radiocarbon dates, a first for the region, indicating site activities dating from the terminal Pleistocene. An increase in exotic artefacts and presence of paintings belonging to a pan-Arnhem land rock art tradition suggests widening social networks during the Holocene. Insight into the nuanced nature of interactions, also the role of animate objects as relationship referents, emerge through ethnography and experience as the field season unfolds.