The origin of Anadara shell mounds at Weipa, North Queensland, Australia

Abstract

We examine the criteria for distingi shing middens from natural shell accumulations, in the light of the Stone's (1992Stone's ( , 1993 hypothesis that large shell mounds, dominated by the bivalve Anadara, in the Weipa area are scrub fowl nests built from shelly chenier ridge deposits that formed by natural géomorphologie processes. Several previous investigators have considered that the same mounds were humanly made. We present fresh field observations from Anadara mounds, scrubfowl nests and beachand chenier-ridge deposits near Weipa, and show how these differ in terms of stratigraphie, textural and compositional characteristics. This evidence, together with the distribution of Anadara mounds on different substrates ranging from upper intertidal mudflats to lateritic regolith, very strongly indicates that the large shell mounds were not built by scrub fowls from natural coastal deposits, and we conclude that humans were responsible for their accumulation.

Life on the Margins : An Archaeological Investigation of Late Holocene Economic Variability, Blue Mud Bay, Northern Australia

“…While not being the sole focus, many of the issues considered on the north Australian coastline have been dominated by the consideration of large mounded shell deposits. ose areas that have been a particular focus for research into shell mounds (see Figure 1.1) include the coastal Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia (O'Connor and Veth 1993;Veitch 1996Veitch , 1999aVeitch , 1999bO'Connor 1996O'Connor , 1999Clune 2002), Darwin Harbour (Burns 1994(Burns , 1999Hiscock 1997Hiscock , 2005Bourke 2000Bourke , 2002Bourke , 2005Hiscock andHughes 2001) andMilingimbi (McCarthy andSetzler 1960: 232-3, 244;Roberts 1991Roberts , 1994 on the Northern Territory coast, and Bayley Point (Robins et al 1998), Aurukun (Cribb 1986(Cribb , 1996, Weipa (Wright 1971;Bailey 1975aBailey , 1977Bailey , 1994Bailey et al 1994;Morrison 2000Morrison , 2003Morrison , 2010 and Princess Charlotte Bay (Beaton 1985(Beaton , 1986 in north Queensland. is fascination with what Bailey (1999:105) has referred to as the "mound phenomenon" has arisen partly out of their high visibility and clear dominance in many coastal areas across the north.…”

“…Firstly, mounds are viewed as forming one end of a spectrum, one that included smaller sites and surface scatters of shell and artefacts (Cribb 1996:169;Bailey 1999:105). Many of the interpretations of shell mounds provided by researchers have been primarily economic in nature, relying heavily on environmental and ecological data combined with ethnographic information to explain the mounding phenomenon (for example Bailey 1977Bailey , 1983Bailey , 1994Roberts 1991Roberts , 1994Bourke 2000Bourke , 2005Brockwell et al 2005). In this case, mounds are generally not seen as being functionally di erent, and that di erence in the morphology of mound sites relative to middens is a re ection of variations in the intensity of discard at a particular location, but not necessarily with higher levels of intensity in occupation and resource exploitation.…”

“…While a number of hypotheses have been suggested to explain the construction of shell mounds across northern Australia, particularly contrasting arguments over low-level economic (Jones 1975:25;Bailey 1975aBailey , 1983Bailey , 1994Bailey , 1999Cribb 1996;Bourke 2000) or higher-intensity ceremonial causes for this behaviour (Bourke 2000(Bourke , 2002(Bourke , 2005Morrison 2003;Clune and Harrison 2009), these explanations have largely been based on directly interpreting these sites with the use of ethnographies. Much of this work has used data on human behaviour derived from the ethnoarchaeological research of Meehan (1982) in northern-central Arnhem Land.…”

The Red Sea, Coastal Landscapes, and Hominin Dispersals

“…This is especially a problem for sites in beach locations, where shells and other marine materials may be accumulated by natural processes, or picked up as dead specimens for use as artifacts or ornaments, requiring detailed taphonomic analyses to distinguish natural from cultural accumulations (cf. Bailey et al, 1994;Stiner, 1994, p, 177, 182). This is evidently a problem with the Abdur site, where the oyster shells originally claimed as evidence of food remains (Walter et al, 2000) later turned out to be a natural death assemblage (Bruggemann et al, 2004).…”

Archaeological expressions of Holocene cultural and environmental change in coastal Southeast Queensland

“…Discussions of the reasons for mound construction are beyond the scope of this thesis, but the drivers of mounding behaviour remain a source of debate (see e.g. Bourke 2000;Brockwell 2006;Clune 2002;Faulkner 2013;Morrison 2003Morrison , 2013Morrison , 2015O'Connor 1999 Bailey 1977Bailey , 1994Bailey et al 1994;Morrison 2003Morrison , 2010Morrison , 2013aMorrison , 2013bMorrison , 2014Morrison , 2015Shiner and Morrison 2009;Shiner et al 2013;Stone 1995). The phenomenon of mound building during the mid to late Holocene is not restricted to the north, however, and shell mounds occur in all parts of the mainland, as well as Tasmania.…”