The lost ‘Macassar language’ of northern Australia

Urry, James; Walsh, Michael J. K.

doi:10.22459/ah.05.2011.06

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…[4] See entries in Urry & Walsh (1981) for ba: ra, dimuru, jalatang. Yolngu people in northeastern Arnhem Land also used the term, barra (Davis, 1997).…”

Section: Acknowledgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Australian Aboriginal Ethnometeorology and Seasonal Calendars

Clarke¹

2009

History and Anthropology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…[4] See entries in Urry & Walsh (1981) for ba: ra, dimuru, jalatang. Yolngu people in northeastern Arnhem Land also used the term, barra (Davis, 1997).…”

Section: Acknowledgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Australian Aboriginal Ethnometeorology and Seasonal Calendars

Clarke¹

2009

History and Anthropology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…These foreign words are common in the Iwaidja and Maung languages of northwest Arnhem Land, the Yolŋu language of northeast Arnhem Land and the Marra and Yanyuwa languages of the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria (Bradley & Yanyuwa Families, 2016; Evans, 1997, 2002, 2009; Harris, 1985). Some of these words may be the remnants of pidgin languages used to communicate across cultures while working together to harvest trepang (Urry & Walsh, 1981). At the easternmost extent of the Makassan voyaging range, the Kaiadilt language (Wellesley Islands) contains very few Austronesian influences (Evans, 1992: 52–53), which probably indicates less extensive or intensive Asian visitation.…”

Section: Historical Oral Traditional and Linguistic Evidence For Inte...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Re‐assessing regional chronologies for island southeast Asian voyaging to Aboriginal Australia

Urwin,

Bradley,

McNiven

et al. 2023

Archaeology in Oceania

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

“…Macassans became integrated into Yolngu narratives of creation, which told of the Bayini or Dreaming Macassans as mythological beings. In the sacred songs associated with the Bayini ancestor, Birrinydji, Yolngu "... drew names from words such as 'manunu'" (ship's anchor) (Berndt 1962;Urry and Walsh 1981;De Costa 2012). The anchor is integral to the story of the female warrior, Bayini who sailed to Arnhem Land centuries ago.…”

Section: The Design Of the Garma Cultural Knowledge Centrementioning

confidence: 99%

Conveying Sacred Knowledge through Contemporary Architectural Design: The Garma Cultural Knowledge Centre

Grant¹

2016

E-BPJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Indigenous peoples of north east Arnhem Land in Australia (Yolngu) overlay their culture with the customs and social behaviour of other societies to achieve positive outcomes and autonomy. Passing down cultural knowledge is intrinsic to the cultural identity of Yolngu. The paper discusses the recently completed Garma Cultural Knowledge Centre and examines the cultural knowledge conveyed through the medium of contemporary architecture design. The paper finds that the Garma Cultural Knowledge Centre combined aspects of non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal cultures to form a coherent whole with multi-facetted meanings.

show abstract

The lost ‘Macassar language’ of northern Australia

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Australian Aboriginal Ethnometeorology and Seasonal Calendars

Australian Aboriginal Ethnometeorology and Seasonal Calendars

Re‐assessing regional chronologies for island southeast Asian voyaging to Aboriginal Australia

Conveying Sacred Knowledge through Contemporary Architectural Design: The Garma Cultural Knowledge Centre

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About