by Pioneering archaeological research may have added to the long held belief that Aboriginal Australians did not make pottery.
A paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews on Wednesday details the discovery of 82 pieces of pottery from one dig site on the Great Barrier Island, dates them between 3,000 and 2,000 years old and concludes that the pots were most likely made by Aboriginal people. using local clay and spirit.
The pieces are the oldest reliably dated pottery found in Australia and weave Indigenous Australians into a maritime network of people in Papua New Guinea, Torres Strait and the Pacific Islands who formed a “cultural community across the Coral Sea”, finds the paper. . Pottery fragments have also been found on Torres Strait.
The archaeologists say their discoveries have opened a “new chapter in Australian, Melanesian and Pacific archaeology”.
The chairman of the Walmbaar Aboriginal Corporation, Kenneth McLean, is a member of the Daing clan and is a traditional owner of the group of islands where the pottery was discovered.
“For our ancestors Jiigurru has always been a sacred place,” said McLean. “It has always been a place of trade and ceremony.”
Renowned James Cook University Professor Sean Ulm, who led the dig along with Monash University’s Professor Ian McNiven and the communities of Daing and Ngurrumungu, says the discoveries not only overturn beliefs about Aboriginal people and pottery are just some “very common tropes” about Indigenous Australians.
One is that they were all cut off from the rest of the world. Another related to the simplicity of Aboriginal watercraft.
The chain of Jiigurru islands – the largest of which is Lizard Island at 10 square km – surrounds a lagoon about 33km from Cape Flattery.
The 2.4-metre deep excavation revealed evidence of continuous occupation dating back more than 6,000 years on the islands, cut off from the mainland by rising sea levels at least 10,000 years ago.
It is a small insight into the extraordinary information we have yet to reveal
John Ulm
McLean believes his ancestors would have used the clay pots to carry resources such as water and shellfish on long canoe trips to the islands.
“The pieces of pottery that were made locally, on land, that were feeling the presence of my ancestors,” he said. “It was an emotional moment, holding something ancient.”
There is still much to learn about how the pots were made and what they look like. The average size of the bubbles is less than 2cm – too small and fragmented to reveal much of their original form and function.
Such an important story told by tiny pieces of the civilized world explains why the research took years to publish, Ulm says.
Excavation began in mid-2017 and ended 14 months later. But his findings would challenge the view that has been widely held among academics since a holiday archaeologist from New Zealand first spotted pottery shards on Jiigurru while snorkelling in the shallow lagoon in 2006.
Attempts to date these pieces of pottery have been inconclusive, although they have been interpreted by many as direct evidence of the presence of the Lapita people in Australia.
From the eastern islands of Papua New Guinea and over a few centuries, the Lapita and their descendants settled much of the remote Oceania, bringing pigs, dogs and chickens, taro and breadfruit, and their distinctive pottery to the Solomon Islands and east across the Pacific to Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.
The Ulm paper describes it as “one of humanity’s great achievements in maritime settlement”.
But when Ulm and his colleagues went looking for more pieces of pottery using the kind of methodical excavation that could shed light on who made Jiigurru pottery and when, they found none of the telltale signs – chicken bones or banana tracks – which would suggest Lapita. job. Instead the well site’s shellfish and fish bones spoke of continuous Native occupation. And none of the ceramic chips bore the distinctive designs of the Lapita pots.
The discovery raises the question of why no pieces of pottery were found at the site after about 2,000 years ago, even though seasonal occupation continued. That, Ulm says, is a question that cannot be answered from an excavation site alone and will require more research to resolve.
McLean also hopes the research will encourage more collaboration between Indigenous communities and archaeologists who “will find more of the ancient artefacts that could rewrite Australia’s ancient history”.
University of Southern Queensland professor Bryce Barker, who was not involved in the study, says it is “certainly very significant” and an “excellent piece of research”.
“The science in that paper is excellent – you can’t fault the science,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any question there’s pottery at 3,000.”
But the claim that Aboriginal people made the pottery, he said, was “a bit controversial”.
“Perhaps the more straightforward explanation of why that pottery is on Esk Island is that it was part of that trade and interaction with the people from the north, rather than something that was done by Aboriginal people,” said he.
The researchers involved argue that the ancient pottery of the Great Barrier Reef “indicates the likelihood” that more remains, possibly including Lapita, are scattered along the “vast and archaeological northeast coast of eastern Queens”.
“To me, that’s what’s exciting about the discovery, that it’s a small glimpse into the extraordinary knowledge we have yet to uncover about the deep history of this country,” said Ulm.
“If digging one metre-by-metre can tell us all these ‘new things’, what does the rest of the coast have to teach us?”
