Maori social networks revealed by obsidian

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on August 05, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Australasia, New Zealand, Oceania

Maori in the Auckland and Northland regions were historically quite social, a recent study employing "social network analysis" of obsidian rock has found.

The grey obsidian artefact, left, is from Great Barrier Island and the green obsidian is from Mayor Island. Both were recovered from Mt Wellington [Credit: Mark McCoy]

Obsidian was used as a tool by Maori before European contact and it turns up in archaeological sites across the country.

The most prolific source for obsidian was Mayor Island, about 35 kilometres off the Coromandel Peninsula. It's particularly common in archaeological sites across top of the North Island.

Indeed, in a data set of 2404 obsidian artefacts from 15 northern archaeological locations, 915 of the artefacts were from Mayor Island, almost twice the number of the next most prolific quarry.

Armed with this data set, researchers led by Thegn Ladefoged, an archaeologist at the University of Auckland and a principal investigator at Te Punaha Matatini, employed "social network analysis" to map the sources and final locations of obsidian.

It has nothing to do with Facebook, but is an analytical tool recently developed overseas and adapted for New Zealand by Auckland's Dion O'Neale and Caleb Gemmell.

The researchers found that Maori were getting obsidian from far off sources, including Mayor Island, even though there were obsidian sources closer to home. They must have been doing this for social reasons, Ladefoged, Alex Jorgensen? and colleagues concluded in the article in the science journal Plos One.

Their opening hypothesis was that "people directly accessed the closest, or easiest, obsidian sources in terms of travel time" and effort. But this turned out to be untrue. These people were accessing obsidian from all over the north.

"The obsidian found at archaeological sites is not a direct reflection of geographic distance or the least-cost ease of obtaining the obsidian. There's some sort of social processes going on," he said in an interview.

Ladefoged declined to speculate on these social processes, stating he wanted to stay close to the archaeological data and it doesn't speak to motivation. He couldn't rule out that some obsidian was of better quality than others.

"Most obsidian tools were fashioned and used for short periods of time on an ad hoc basis," the researchers wrote. "Very few 'formal' obsidian tools (adzes, drill-points) are ever archaeologically recovered; the overwhelming majority of obsidian artefacts are unstandardised or 'informal' flake tools."

It's likely these tools were used for all-purpose cutting and scraping, particularly for the working of flax, food and wood. They were probably discarded rather quickly.

Ladefoged was clear, however, that social analysis of obsidian is relatively crude compared to other knowledge.

"Oral traditions are incredible rich, and [offer] far more detailed evidence than archaeology does in many respects," he said in an interview. We see our work as complimentary to those traditions," he said.

The researchers were not seeking to match the archaeological record to Maori knowledge. Rather archaeology produced "different" knowledge about "gross level processes that were going on back in time".

Obsidian is a proxy for levels of interaction between groups. It feeds into a narrative that the culture of the Polynesian settlers changed over time, especially in the north.

Population density increased, farming grew more sophisticated, and after about AD1500, Maori society became more competitive and intense.

That is reflected in the obsidian record. After AD1500, Mayor Island declined as a source of the rock and Maori increasingly accessed obsidian from more local sources.

Author: Will Harvie | Source: Stuff Co NZ [August 05, 2019]

Human migration in Oceania recreated through paper mulberry genetics

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on June 19, 2019 / comment : 0 Anthropology, Genetics, Indigenous Cultures, Oceania

The migration and interaction routes of prehistoric humans throughout the islands of Oceania can be retraced using genetic differences between paper mulberry plants, a tree native to Asia cultivated for fibers to make paper and introduced into the Pacific in prehistoric times to make barkcloth. Daniela Seelenfreund of the University of Chile and Andrea Seelenfreund of the Academia de Humanismo Cristiano University, Chile report on prehistoric human movements based on the genetic analysis of this plant in a new paper published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Paper Mulberry - Broussonetia papyrifera [Credit: Didier Descouens/WikiCommons]

The colonization of the remote, long-uninhabited Pacific islands has fascinated early European explorers, current scientists and members of Pacific Island communities today. One way to study this migration, which occurred over the last 3,000 years, is to track the plants and animals that humans carried with them.

One such plant is the paper mulberry. Native to Asia, it was transported by humans in their colonizing voyages across Oceania, and planted from New Guinea to Fiji, and to the remote islands to the east, such as Hawaii and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). In the current study, researchers analyzed 313 modern-day plant samples and 67 preserved specimens from herbariums with various genetic tools.

The analysis demonstrates the existence of a clear genetic structure in paper mulberry populations in Oceania, in spite of having been introduced only 3000 years ago into the region. The researchers also found that current plant populations have less genetic diversity than herbarium samples collected in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Map of the Pacific showing prehistoric and historical dispersal of paper mulberry in Oceania [Credit: Seelenfreund et al, 2019]

The observed genetic structure reveals a general tendency of dispersion of the plant from west to east in agreement with archaeological, linguistic and other genetic data that indicates that the region was colonized and settled in this general direction. They also detected three centers of dispersion and interaction: one that includes the Tonga and Fiji archipelago, another between the islands of Samoa, Wallis and New Caledonia and finally a center of dispersion and interaction that includes all the islands and archipelagos of the east of the Polynesian triangle , that is, between Tahiti, Hawaii, Marquesas Islands, Austral Islands and Rapanui. The results obtained from this study allow inferring dispersion patterns that reflect the interactions between past human populations that inhabited the different island groups.

The genetic connections between modern and herbarium samples of paper mulberry detected in the study provide the most comprehensive picture to date of prehistoric human movements across Oceania. The genetic connections detected in contemporary and herbarium samples from paper mulberry reflect prehistoric human movements between multiple islands in Remote Oceania and, to date, provide a more comprehensive picture than other model species.

Making barkcloth from paper mulberry bark in Buda village, Viti Levu, Fiji [Credit: A. Seelenfreund]

A. Seelenfreund adds: "This is the first study of a commensal species to show genetic structuring within Remote Oceania. Our data, based on the combined analysis of extant and herbarium paper mulberry samples from Oceania, is the result of a comprehensive sampling of 33 islands of Remote Oceania, and compared to samples from New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Asia. Our data detect a complex structure of three central dispersal hubs linking West Remote Oceania with East Remote Oceania. despite its vegetative propagation and short timespan since its introduction into the region by prehistoric Austronesian speaking colonists."

Source: Public Library of Science [June 19, 2019]

New fossil evidence claims first discovery of taro in Māori gardens

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on April 09, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, New Zealand, Oceania, Polynesia

The first discovery of Polynesian taro grown in Māori gardens in the 1400s can be claimed by an archaeological research project on Ahuahu-Great Mercury Island.

Photomicrographs of the invertebrate fossil taxa. B, A1 (head, EA204, 210 cm to 220 cm, early garden), B, A2 (head, RAIDA4, 90 cm to 95 cm, late garden), B, A3 (elytron, EA204, 210 cm to 220 cm, early garden), B, A4 (thorax, EA204, 210 cm to 220 cm, early garden), and B, A5 (prothorax, EA204, 210 cm to 220 cm, early garden) are C. desjardinsi; B, B (forceps, TUKOU2, 58 cm to 60 cm, late garden) is E. annulipes; B, C1 and C2 (elytra, EA204, 170 cm to 180 cm, late garden) are Ataenius cf. picinus; B, D1 and D2 (heads, EA204, 170 cm to 180 cm, late garden) are Aleocharinae spp.;  B, E1 (head, EA204, 190 cm to 200 cm, early garden) and B, E2 (pronotum, EA204, 190 cm to 200 cm, early garden) are Carpelimus sp.; B, F1 (elytron, EA204, 80 cm to 90 cm, PEC) is Dactylosternum cf. marginale; B, F2 (elytron, RAIDA4, 100 cm to 105 cm, late garden) is D. abdominale; B, G1 (elytron, EA204, 190 cm to 200 cm, early garden) is Saprosites sp.; B, G2 (elytron, RAIDA4, 50 cm to 55 cm, PEC) is S, pygmaeus; B, H (head, TUKOU2, 74 cm to 76 cm, late garden) is Tetramorium pacificum (Formicidae); B, I (head, EA204, 90 cm to 100 cm PEC) is Hypoponera cf. punctatissima (Formicidae); and B, J (head, RAIDA4, 95 cm to 100 cm, late garden) is Nylanderia sp. (Formicidae). (Scale bar, 0.5 mm.) [Credit: Nicholas Porch and Matthew Prebble]

Jointly carried out by the University of Auckland and Auckland War Memorial Museum, the project's new evidence displays the sophistication with which early Māori first utilised the New Zealand environment, and also that they developed wetland gardens for taro.

Previous archaeological evidence favoured kumara as the only viable crop in New Zealand's cooler climates but this new research, which explored the history of Māori settlement on the island, indicates taro was also an important crop in the early Māori diet, alongside leafy greens such as pūhā and watercress.

During extensive field work on the private island off the eastern coast of Coromandel, palynologist Matthew Prebble of the Australian National University, alongside a team of archaeologists from the University of Auckland and Auckland War Memorial Museum, analysed buried sediments from swamps which contained the pollen of taro and other leafy greens.

The deposits have been radiocarbon-dated to the 14th century, around 600 to 700 years ago. Along with the taro and kumara, some of the green leafy plants were probably introduced by Tūpuna Māori, and the gardens on Ahuahu are among some of the earliest known of in New Zealand.

This is a map of the South Pacific Ocean showing the southern Polynesian islands (brown dashed line) examined in this study (blue boxes). Insets A-C show the study islands, including sediment core locations  and high elevation points [Credit: Matthew Prebble]

Team member, the University of Auckland's Professor Simon Holdaway, says archaeologists have long considered the cooler climate of New Zealand, compared to the warmer climate of Polynesian islands, hindered early attempts Māori's early attempts to grow traditional Polynesian crops such as taro.

"This evidence for early taro production refutes the long-held view that only kumara could be grown in New Zealand," he says.

"It indicates Tūpuna Māori may have initially focused on taro and created specialised wetland gardens for the purpose; kumara then became the main crop after AD 1500."

Pre-European Māori gardens were also thought to have been relatively weed free, but the fossil pollen remains from Ahuahu suggest indigenous edible leafy herbs such as watercress and pūhā were common. The early Māori diet was balanced by a range of vegetables.

He Waitetoke Mire on Ahuahu-Great Mercury Island where the team found the taro and puha pollen [Credit: Matthew Prebble]

Based on this information, it's now thought that Ahuahu was used by Tūpuna Māori to grow gardens because of the limited amount of kauri and rimu forests which were difficult to clear with fire, the limited exposure to frosts and the similarity of the island to the Polynesian homeland islands.

Matthew Prebble has also analysed swamp cores from islands in southern French Polynesia, in Raivavae and Rapa, which showed many of the same weeds also lived in early taro gardens in the subtropics and tropics.

The new evidence suggests that Polynesians gardeners were inventive and adapted the environment to continue growing their staple food, taro.

A paper on this ground-breaking research, authored by Matthew Prebble, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Author: Julianne Evans | Source: University of Auckland [April 09, 2019]

Hepatitis B virus sheds light on ancient human population movements into Australia

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on March 17, 2019 / comment : 0 Anthropology, Australasia, Australia, Genetics, Oceania

Australian researchers have used current hepatitis B virus (HBV) genome sequences to deduce ancient human population movements into Australia, adding weight to the theory that the mainland Aboriginal population separated from other early humans at least 59 thousand years ago and possibly entered the country near the Tiwi Islands.

The initial migration route for HBV/C4 into the Tiwi Islands / East Arnhem (orange arrow) [Credit: Dr Lillli Yuen/Doherty]

The discovery was made as an offshoot of the Characterising Hepatitis B in Indigenous Australians thRough Molecular epidemiology (CHARM) study, commenced in 2010 by the Menzies School of Health Research (Menzies). Chronic HBV infection is endemic in Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and is an important cause of morbidity and mortality due to liver disease and liver cancer.

As part of caring for patients with hepatitis B infections in the CHARM study, the research team collected HBV samples from people living in over 30 communities across the NT and found HBV isolated from Aboriginal Australians is a unique strain not found anywhere else in the world, known as HBV/C4.

In the same way that human genome sequences are used to trace ancient human migration, the researchers predicted they could use modern day viral genomes to infer the movement of the people that have carried these viruses over many generations.

Published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, the study used cutting-edge evolutionary analyses of the HBV DNA sequences together with archaeological fossil and human genome data.

The researchers found that the precursor of the modern HBV/C4 virus entered Australia over 51 thousand years ago, and then separated into two groups; one centred in the northwest region, and a second in the central/eastern region of the NT. Strikingly, the two groups share a similar geographical distribution to the two main divisions of Aboriginal Australian languages spoken in Australia today.

The team collected HBV samples from people living in over 30 communities across the Northern Territory [Credit: Dr Jay Roberts]

Co-author on the paper, the Royal Melbourne Hospital's Dr Margaret Littlejohn, who holds an honorary position with the University of Melbourne and is a Senior Medical Scientist in the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory at the Doherty Institute, said that the entry point and timing of ancient human migration into continental Sahul - the combined landmass of Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania - are subject to debate.

"As we were analysing the sequences of HBV isolated as part of this study, we noted that the virus sequences had very strong geographical connections to the communities we visited," said Dr Littlejohn.

"This led us to postulate that we might be able to use this geographical relationship to find out the origin of HBV and how long it might have been in Australia. This is the first time viral genomes have been used in this way in Australia."

Another co-author on the paper, Professor Josh Davis, Senior Principal Research Fellow at Menzies, said the discovery had generated great interest with Aboriginal research partners and patients.

"Most pleasingly, it has raised the profile of hepatitis B in communities. Community members have asked to find out more about hepatitis B and how they can be tested and treated," said Professor Davis.

There’s a more than 60 per cent probability that the HBV/C4 virus entered through either the Tiwi Islands or East Arnhem regions [Credit: WikiCommons]

"It's really exciting to take a novel approach, and use viral genetics to help tell the story of Australia's first people".

The study was endorsed by an Indigenous Reference Group comprised of members representing six different remote communities from across the NT and established by the Menzies Hepatitis B Research Program. The researchers also ensured that results were fed back to the main communities where samples came from.

Senior Aboriginal Health Practitioner, Sarah Bukulatjpi, who is also a co-author on the paper, said: "I am really pleased that we are finding out more details about HBV found in Aboriginal people. This can only help to eliminate hep B for the future.

"It is good for us to learn about this and for us not to be silent or feel shame; the fact the virus is so old helps to add to the evidence that Aboriginal people have been in Australia for a long long time," she concluded.

Source: The University of Melbourne [March 17, 2019]

New evidence suggests humans may have arrived in Australia 50,000 years earlier than first thought

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on March 16, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Australasia, Australia, Oceania

New evidence discovered by a team of scientists in south-western Victoria suggests people may have been living in Australia 120,000 years ago – more than 50,000 years longer than previous estimations.

Credit: First Australians (2008)

The team, which includes Dr John Sherwood from Deakin University, has spent more than 10 years investigating the Moyjil site in Warrnambool, Victoria, searching unusual shell deposits and burnt stones for evidence of human origin.

Researchers believe the site could contain "middens" created by Aboriginal people during the period known as the last interglacial age – which was roughly 115,000 to 130,000 years ago.

Dr Sherwood, an earth scientist and Honorary Associate Professor within the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at Deakin's Warrnambool Campus, said Moyjil could confidently be assigned as a remnant of the last interglacial age, well beyond the currently accepted ages of the oldest known human sites in Australia and New Guinea.

"The site contains the remains of shellfish, crabs and fish in cemented sand, together with charcoal, blackened stones and features which resemble fireplaces," Dr Sherwood said.

"What makes the site so significant is its great age. Dating of the shells, burnt stones and surrounding cemented sands by a variety of methods has established that the deposit was formed about 120,000 years ago. That's about twice the presently accepted age of arrival of people on the Australian continent, based on archaeological evidence.

"A human site of this antiquity, at the southern edge of the continent, would be of international significance because of its implications for the movement of modern humans out of Africa."

Cliffed headland on the west side of the Hopkins River mouth, Warrnambool. The Moyjil site occurs on the surface of West Stack and along the headland cliff [Credit: John E. Sherwood, 2019]

Along with Dr Sherwood, the core investigatory team includes the University of Melbourne's Professor Jim Bowler; Professor Ian McNiven of Monash University's Indigenous Studies Centre and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage; and Dr Stephen Carey, an earth scientist from Federation University.

Dr Sherwood said researchers had strived for years to rigorously test the hypothesis of a human origin for the site, but the findings were not yet conclusive, because the team had not discovered material such as stone artefacts or human remains which would provide absolute proof of human origin.

"The unusual shell deposit at Moyjil has been subjected to a degree of scrutiny rare if not unprecedented in Australian archaeology," he said.

"We recognise the need for a very high level of proof for the site's origin. Within our own research group the extent to which members believe the current evidence supports a theory of human agency ranges from 'weak' to 'strong'. But importantly, and despite these differences, we all agree that available evidence fails to prove conclusively that the site is of natural origin.

"What we need now is to attract the attention of other researchers with specialist techniques which may be able to conclusively resolve the question of whether or not humans created the deposit."

The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria.

Source: Deakin University [March 16, 2019]

American whalers left rock engravings on north Australian coast in 1840s

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on February 18, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Australasia, Australia, Oceania

A team of archaeologists from The University of Western Australia working with Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation and mining company Rio Tinto have discovered that Indigenous people were not the only ones to leave their mark in the Dampier Archipelago.

Colour filters bring out the inscriptions left by the crew of the American whaling ship Connecticut on a rock on Rosemary Island [Credit: Alistair Paterson]

Archaeologists working across the archipelago to document Aboriginal habitation and long-term creation of ancient rock art have found evidence that the area was visited by the whale ships Connecticut (1842) and Delta (1849), with crew members documenting their respective voyages to the other side of the world from their home ports in the north-eastern US.

Lead author Professor Alistair Paterson, from UWA’s Centre for Rock Art Research and Management, said whaling of the ‘New Holland Ground’ between the Indian and Southern Oceans was an overlooked aspect of early north-west Australian contact history.

“Throughout the 19th century American, British, French and colonial Australian whaling ships plied these waters. American vessels were successful at a time when the British colony at Swan River was young (founded in 1829),” Professor Paterson said.

Archaeologists believe the etchings were made in the rocks while crew members looked for whales [Credit: Alistair Paterson]

Whaleships followed migrating herds of humpback whales along the coast and fished the offshore grounds for sperm whales, also undertaking ship-based bay whaling, anchoring in protected bays for up to three months. It was likely that the ships’ crew members shared knowledge about safe anchorages, hazards and resources.

The discoveries are detailed in a research paper published n the journal Antiquity, asthe earliest report of North American whalers’ inscriptions discovered anywhere in Australia.

The Dampier Archipelago represents one of Australia’s most significant heritage sites and one of the world’s largest rock art complexes. Located about 1550km north of Perth, near the Pilbara mining town of Karratha, the National Heritage-listed archipelago comprises 42 islands as well as the Burrup Peninsula which is home to an estimated one million Indigenous rock carvings.

The carvings were discovered on Rosemary and West Lewis islands, off WA's Pilbara coast [Credit: Alistair Paterson]

Little is known about activity in north-west Australia before the arrival of pastoralists and pearlers in the 1860s and the subsequent, infamous, ‘Flying Foam Massacre’ of the Yaburara people in 1868.

Project leader Professor Jo McDonald said the research highlighted the activities of American whalers in the Dampier Archipelago.

“It shines a light on a brief period when Indigenous people and visiting whalers shared the same territory without obvious major conflict,” Professor McDonald said.

“The whaling inscriptions are both a rare example of maritime inscriptions on rock, and represent the only tangible evidence of this earliest phase of white colonisation of the Australian North West so far discovered.”

Humans colonized diverse environments in Southeast Asia and Oceania during the Pleistocene

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on January 28, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Asia, Early Humans, Oceania, South East Asia

Investigations into what it means to be human have often focused on attempts to uncover the earliest material traces of 'art', 'language', or technological 'complexity'. More recently, however, scholars have begun to argue that more attention should be paid to the ecological uniqueness of our species. A new study, published in Archaeological Research in Asia, reviews the palaeoecological information associated with hominin dispersals into Southeast Asia and Oceania throughout the Pleistocene (1.25 Ma to 12 ka).

Despite previous notions of tropical forests as "green deserts" not suitable for human habitation it is now clear that human occupation and modification of these habitats occurred as far back as 45,000 years ago. As our species expanded into these settings beyond Africa, they burnt vegetation to maintain resources patches and practiced specialized, sustainable hunting of select animals such as primates [Credit: Patrick Roberts]

Our species' ability to specialize in the exploitation of diverse and 'extreme' settings in this part of the world stands in stark contrast to the ecological adaptations of other hominin taxa, and reaffirms the utility of exploring the environmental adaptations of Homo sapiens as an avenue for understanding what it means to be human.

The paper, published by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History focuses on hominin movements across the supposed 'Movius Line' a boundary previously argued to separate populations with different cultural and cognitive capacities.

While such divisions and assumptions are now clearly outdated, the authors argue that focus on this part of the world may, instead, be used to study the different patterns of colonization of diverse tropical and maritime habitats by different members of our ancestral line.

Lowland Palawan, the Philippines -- Southeast Asia offers a particularly exciting region in regard of early hominin movements across the supposed "Movius Line" a boundary previously argued to separate populations. Records from the region can be linked to a variety of hominins throughout the Pleistocene, including Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis (or "the Hobbit"), and Homo sapiens [Credit: Noel Amano]

As Noel Amano, co-author on the study states, 'analysis of biogeochemical records, animal assemblages, and fossil plant records associated with hominin arrival can be used to reconstruct the degree to which novel or specialized adaptations were required at a given place and time'.

Southeast Asia offers a particularly exciting region in this regard as such records can be linked to a variety of hominins throughout the Pleistocene, including Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis (or 'the Hobbit'), and Homo sapiens.

As Patrick Roberts, lead author of the study states the accumulated evidence shows, 'While earlier members of our genus appear to have followed riverine and lacustrine corridors, Homo sapiens specialized in adaptations to tropical rainforests, faunally depauperate island settings, montane environments, and deep-water marine habitats.'

Cagayan, Northern Luzon, the Philippines -- Southeast Asia offers a particularly exciting region in regard of early hominin movements across the supposed "Movius Line" a boundary previously argued to separate populations. Records from the region can be linked to a variety of hominins throughout the Pleistocene, including Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis (or "the Hobbit"), and Homo sapiens [Credit: Noel Amano]

The authors hope that, in future, the growth of new methods and records for determining past hominin ecologies will enable similar comparisons to be undertaken in different parts of the world, further testing the unique capacities of our species during its global expansion.

Source: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History [January 28, 2019]

'Signatures of killings': legacy of frontier violence uncovered in Australia

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on September 30, 2018 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Australia, Indigenous Cultures, Oceania

Archaeologists from six universities are digging trenches across Queensland to find the “signatures of killings” buried in the earth by the frontline troops of the colonial frontier, the native mounted police.

An excavation at Boulia native police camp, central Queensland, Australia [Credit: Flinders University]

They have identified 196 distinct camps – sites where, over 50 years, the native police were based while they ranged out to “disperse” Aboriginal people and escort surveyors, pastoralists and prospectors further inland and further north.

“Out on patrol, that’s where violence would happen,” Heather Burke, an associate professor from Flinders University, told Guardian Australia. What we’re finding on the ground is the day-to-day material, the detritus of daily life: ceramics, buttons, cartridges. Really ordinary prosaic things,” Burke said.

A stone structure at a native police camp on the Burke River, outside Boulia in central Queensland[Credit: Flinders University]

“But you have to look at what that ordinariness obscures. The reason they’re there is to support this broad, statewide system of removing any kind of Aboriginal resistance to European expansion. Rather than just looking at it and saying it’s just like any other site, it’s about how that system could function so successfully,” she said. “By successful, what I mean is that it allowed them to kill more people.”

The native police were a state-sanctioned paramilitary organisation with groups of Aboriginal troopers under the leadership of a white officer.

Bullet used in a Snider-Enfield rifle, found at Peak Downs native police camp, central western Queensland[Credit: Flinders University]

Historians say troopers were survivors of massacres from their own lands in other parts of the country, recruited by coercion, intimidation, kidnapping and inducement, as well as voluntary enlistment.

Frontier killings across Queensland were systematic but predominantly of small groups at scattered locations. Archaeologists cannot detect those isolated sites using the usual methods. So, they hit upon the idea of locating native police camps instead.

Base of a pin fire cartridge, commonly used in breechloading revolvers of the late 1800’s. Found at Eyre’s Creek  in the channel country of Queensland [Credit: Flinders University]

“The native police proved to be far more interesting than even we knew at the time,” Burke said. “We found descendants of troopers and the survivors of massacres in the same community, even the same family.”

Firsthand accounts from the troopers themselves are absent from the historical record, but the stories told by their descendants form a “complex emotional mosaic”.

Victoria Regina: buttons from the uniforms of native police found at a camp at Mistake Creek, central Queensland [Credit: Flinders University]

“It gets really human and fraught and I never expected that. The knowledge of family involvement in this history can split a family. Some are OK to say they’re descended from that man, other parts refuse to acknowledge. It can cause ongoing issues."

"The more we talk to people, the more it’s clear they want these stories to get out there. Some white landowners say no, you can’t come on my property but we’ve never had any Aboriginal people say no, you can’t tell the stories,” Burke said.

The more they dig, the more complex the history becomes.

The lid of a tin of “Josephson’s Australian ointment” found at a native police camp at Laura on Cape York. Josephson’s billed itself as “the wonder of the age. A quick and instant relief from pain”[Credit: Flinders University]

“Some of the really interesting patterns are in those places where we know there was more than one camp over a period of time. Some camps lasted 10 or 20 years, some only one or two years. That tells you how much a police presence was needed to facilitate settlement. At Palmer River on Cape York, they had to have repeated camps coming back into the area, because Aboriginal people weren’t ‘pacified’."

“They had areas where they could retreat, mountainous areas, where they couldn’t be followed, where they could hide well. But in western Queensland, there were never those sorts of areas. You get a different pattern of peoples’ abilities to resist that force, and you can see that if you plot where the camps are and when the camps are,” Burke said.

Base from a stoneware meat paste jar with a polychrome Prattware print entitled ‘Charge of the Scotch Greys at Balaklava’, Peak Downs Qld [Credit: Flinders University]

Archaeologists are finding domestic debris: bits of pots and plates, occasionally shards of bone, to build a picture of daily life.

“We know there were women and children in those camps as well,” Burke said. “We’re looking to understand how a unit of native police worked, the demarcation between troopers and white officers, the class division. We’re using the debris to work out how they operated as a social structure, their hierarchy and relationships.”

Gary Luchi sieving, in trench four at Boulia, Central Queensland [Credit: Associate Professor Heather Burke/ Flinders University]

Two years in and with two years to go, the team has identified 196 sites, done 30 site visits, and excavated at four. Pinpointing the right place to look requires “a lot of archival research,” Burke said.

“We’ve accessed seven and a half thousand documents from Queensland state archives – old maps, any primary sources we can find – and then we go and talk to people on the ground, historical societies, land owners, Aboriginal communities to try and identify as many places as possible."

Dr Lynley Wallis from the University of Notre Dame, looking at a carte de visite photograph collection of officers and troopers, at John Oxley library in Brisbane [Credit: Flinders University]

“Then we go out and walk the country. If we think the camp is somewhere in a region, we might walk a five kilometre square to try and find it. And we might do that two or three times, just so we can actually locate it. It takes a long time. The names of waterholes, mountains and other landmarks can reveal what happened there."

“You go to a site called ‘Murdering Lagoon’ and that has a story attached to it, of a massacre of course. Not all place names are about killing Aboriginal people but one of the things about the topography of Australia is that there are lots of names like that and you wouldn’t ignore that.”

Excavations from above at Burke River, near Boulia in southwest Queensland [Credit: Andrew Schaefer]

The project winds up in 2020 with a plan to make public as much information as possible, and in the hope that the sites will be seen as worth preserving.

“Native police camps are almost always known at the local level by historical societies and passionate local historians, but none of them are listed on the state heritage resister,” Burke said.

Petition from the lessees of crown lands in the districts of Kennedy north and Cook, to the Commissioner of Police in  Brisbane, seeking native police reinforcement because “the depredations by the blacks on our stock are excessive” [Credit: Associate Professor Heather Burke/Flinders University]

“There’s a long history of the state not wanting to acknowledge that it was a state sponsored act. The history of the native police is so complex. It’s not just a black and white thing. People need to put together the parts of the story themselves, to figure out what they feel about it.”

Author: Lorena Allam | Source: The Guardian [September 30, 2018]