Dampier Archipelago petroglyphs: archaeology, scientific values and National Heritage Listing

McDonald, Jo; Veth, Peter

doi:10.1002/j.1834-4453.2009.tb00068.x

Cited by 53 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…By targeting a seasonally abundant resource, Aboriginal populations were able to “strengthen a weak link in the subsistence programme”, forming semisedentary gatherings after the wet season when shellfish were most abundant (Clune & Harrison : 79). They suggested that the close proximity of mounds to post‐contact ceremonial places and large rock‐art complexes supports a case for greater degrees of social interaction and ceremonial activity, and they raised the question of whether an increased emphasis on shellfish may have been accompanied by shifts in the economic role of women in late Holocene Aboriginal societies (see also McDonald & Veth ; O'Connor ).…”

Section: Intensive Shellfish Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Niche production strategies and shell matrix site variability at Albatross Bay, Cape York Peninsula

Morrison

2013

Archaeology in Oceania

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Albatross Bay, near Weipa on western Cape York Peninsula, is well known for the large number of anthropogenic late Holocene shell mound sites that occur in the region. Recent research on shell mound formation and use both here and elsewhere across northern Australia has focused upon the extent to which mound formation may have been tied to intensive use of periodically available gluts of the intertidal bivalve Anadara granosa. This paper explores whether such a model applies in the Albatross Bay region, drawing on data available from 477 shell matrix sites recorded in this region. Data on site size, morphology, composition, substrate type, proximity to contemporary shorelines and shell mound chronology support a model of Aboriginal people episodically and strategically targeting a highly variable niche estuarine resource base rather than intensively focusing on one species. It is proposed that these production strategies were characterised by a high degree of flexibility in terms of resource focus, at times involving a considerable emphasis on A. granosa, but also incorporating other estuarine resources, and that the level or intensity of production was able to be scaled up or down in line with resource availability and abundance. This production system was based upon nuanced knowledge of annual and intra‐annual ecosystem dynamics along with social organisation and communication networks that facilitated a high degree of flexibility around the strategic exploitation of variable estuarine resource bases.

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Section: Intensive Shellfish Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Niche production strategies and shell matrix site variability at Albatross Bay, Cape York Peninsula

Morrison

2013

Archaeology in Oceania

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“…This motif differs from ordinary anthropomorphs on the basis of extreme size (mean length is 5.2m; standard deviation = 1.4m) and by the amount of infilled decoration. Some of these motifs are therianthropes (Flood 1987;McDonald and Veth 2006b) with animal features including bird's and/or snake's heads. The two main forms of culture hero are the 'Daramulan' type (partially or fully in profile) and the 'Biaime' type (in plan, with limbs akimbo).…”

Section: Culture Heroesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dreamtime Superhighway (TA27) : Sydney Basin Rock Art and Prehistoric Information Exchange

McDonald¹

2008

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Terra Australis reports the results of archaeological and related research within the south and east of Asia, though mainly Australia, New Guinea and island Melanesia -lands that remained terra australis incognita to generations of prehistorians. Its subject is the settlement of the diverse environments in this isolated quarter of the globe by peoples who have maintained their discrete and traditional ways of life into the recent recorded or remembered past and at times into the observable present. List of volumes in Terra AustralisVolume 1: Burrill Lake and Currarong: Coastal Sites in Southern New South Wales. R.J. Lampert (1971) Volume 2: Ol Tumbuna: Archaeological Excavations in the Eastern Central Highlands, Papua New Guinea. J.P. White (1972) Volume 3 vi Dreamtime Superhighway: an analysis of Sydney Basin rock art and prehistoric information exchange FOREWORD I remember the visit with clarity: it was 1991 and my first trip to Australia. One day was spent at Sydney's West Head with the young and enthusiastic Jo McDonald, where we toured some of the rock engraving sites and the painted Great Mackerel rock shelter. I can still see the large flat curving rocks at West Head on which animals had been engraved -fish, kangaroos, a goanna. And, as is so often the case when I visit rock art sites, my imagination gets going as to the 'how's' and 'why's'. I try to run some sort of a show in my head as to the people who produced these, viewed these, and what kinds of significations the images and their makings played in the lives of past peoples. At the time of this visit, Jo McDonald was well into her 1994 dissertationthe work upon which this monograph is based. Already, in that PhD dissertation, she was able to touch on some of the things that my imagination was searching for. Thus, it is with great pleasure and even more enthusiasm that I am writing this Foreword to a revised and thoroughly up-dated monograph based on that initial dissertation research.At the time of the 1994 dissertation, the anthropological and archaeological study of 'rock art' was really emerging into new trends and new prominence. Surely Australia was one of the leaders in the training of students and in the research that contextualized the images and 'art', thanks to such scholars as Andrée Rosenfeld, Robert Layton, and John Clegg among others. By this time, the work of David Lewis-Williams and colleagues in southern Africa had set off numerous studies world-wide into the relationship between the production of rock art images and altered states of consciousness and the role of shamans in image-making practices. But this was not the direction or focus of rock art studies in Australia, and McDonald's original work would not be tempted either. Rather, she carried out an extensive project of contextualizing the rock art in question, and in two different ways. First, she wanted to give us an understanding of the rock art in its archaeological contexts-sheltered or open, dates and chronologies, site types and, in general, what the archaeology c...

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“…Underwater archaeology and submerged landscapes in Western Australia High-resolution bathymetry is already available over some parts of the shelf, showing submerged shorelines and other relict features of the ancient landscape (Brooke et al 2017), along with satellite imagery indicating stone fish-traps close to the present shoreline. Early stone fish-traps ( Figure 2), Holocene mounded shell-midden sites (Figure 3) and many thousands of rock engravings on the present-day coast (Figure 4) provide a basis for predictive modelling of underwater archaeological remains (McDonald & Veth 2009;Ward et al 2013). There is also a substantial body of Indigenous knowledge about this 'sea country' throughout coastal Australia, including memories of now inundated traditional land (Bradley 2010;Nunn & Reid 2016).…”

Section: Project Gallerymentioning

confidence: 99%

Underwater archaeology and submerged landscapes in western Australia

et al. 2018

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Dampier Archipelago petroglyphs: archaeology, scientific values and National Heritage Listing

Cited by 53 publications

References 21 publications

Niche production strategies and shell matrix site variability at Albatross Bay, Cape York Peninsula

Niche production strategies and shell matrix site variability at Albatross Bay, Cape York Peninsula

Dreamtime Superhighway (TA27) : Sydney Basin Rock Art and Prehistoric Information Exchange

Underwater archaeology and submerged landscapes in western Australia

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