The recent prehistoric exploitation of edible mussel in Aboriginal shell middens in southern New South Wales

Sullivan, Marjorie

doi:10.1002/j.1834-4453.1987.tb00173.x

Cited by 20 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…McDonald 1992b; Meehan 1982Meehan , 1988 Australian analyses have continued to focus on a range of unengendered topics such as dietary estimates, changing resource structures and the exploitation of these (e.g. Bailey 1975;Beaton 1985;Mackay and White 1987;Przywolnik 2005;Sullivan 1987), or on dietary reconstructions and the question of intensification (e.g. Lampert 1982, Woods 1989).…”

Section: Public Vs Private Engravingsmentioning

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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Section: Public Vs Private Engravingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

McDonald¹

2008

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“…The date of this deposit is 1448 AD. There is also clear evidence that Aborigines switched from collecting large molluscs to fishing about 500 -700 years ago (Sullivan 1987). We attribute this response to the fact that any large tsunami would have wiped out shellfish populations along the rocky coast.…”

Section: Possible Age Of the Recent Cosmogenic Tsunami Eventmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…At Bass Point, which is dominated by mega-tsunami erosion and which is a headland conducive to the legend of the ocean falling from the sky, the change occurred around AD 1380 (Bowdler 1976). Finally, middens at various sites along the South Coast of New South Wales indicate that edible mussels originating from more protected tidal inlets began to replace gastropods originating from rock platforms concomitantly with the switch to shell fishhooks (Sullivan 1987).…”

Section: Possible Age Of the Recent Cosmogenic Tsunami Eventmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cosmogenic mega-tsunami in the Australia region: are they supported by Aboriginal and Maori legends?

Bryant

Walsh²,

Abbott

2007

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Mega-tsunami have affected much of the coastline of Australia over the past millennium. Such catastrophic waves have left an imprint consisting predominently of bedrock sculpturing of the rocky coastline and deposition of marine sediments to elevations reaching 130 mabove sea level. One of the largest of these events occurred in eastern Australia in the fifteenth century. This event may be related to the Mahuika impact crater found at 48.38 S, 166.48 E on the continental shelf 250 km south of New Zealand. A comet at least 500 m in diameter formed the crater. Maori and Aboriginal legends allude to significant cosmogenic events in the region, while Aboriginal legends about tsunami are common along the eastern Australian coast. Evidence for legends that could describe the impact of a cosmogenic tsunami also exists in NW Australia. Here geological evidence of a single megatsunami as recent as in the seventeenth century covers 1500 km of coastline. We term this event Wandjina after the artwork related to the legends. More attention should be given to oral traditions in searching globally for other sites of significant mega-tsunami. Abstract: Mega-tsunami have affected much of the coastline of Australia over the past millennium. Such catastrophic waves have left an imprint consisting predominently of bedrock sculpturing of the rocky coastline and deposition of marine sediments to elevations reaching 130 m above sea level. One of the largest of these events occurred in eastern Australia in the fifteenth century. This event may be related to the Mahuika impact crater found at 48.38 S, 166.48 E on the continental shelf 250 km south of New Zealand. A comet at least 500 m in diameter formed the crater. Maori and Aboriginal legends allude to significant cosmogenic events in the region, while Aboriginal legends about tsunami are common along the eastern Australian coast. Evidence for legends that could describe the impact of a cosmogenic tsunami also exists in NW Australia. Here geological evidence of a single megatsunami as recent as in the seventeenth century covers 1500 km of coastline. We term this event Wandjina after the artwork related to the legends. More attention should be given to oral traditions in searching globally for other sites of significant mega-tsunami.Then the sky moved . . . heaved and billowed and tumbled and tottered. The moon rocked. The stars tumbled and clattered and fell one against the other . . . The great star groups were scattered, and many of them, loosened from their holds, came flashing to the earth. They were heralded by a huge mass, red and glowing, that added to the number of falling stars by bursting with a deafening roar and scattering in a million pieces which were molten . . . Burragorang/Illawarra legend (Peck 1938, p. 202 -203)

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“…Scientific rewards on the same subject of study have been much less substantial in coastal shell midden research, although shore barnacles are receiving some attention as of late and appear to have been a resource of limited and variable importance to Holocene human groups ( Alvarez-Fern andez et al, 2010Cannon et al, 2008;Flores et al, 2010;Guti errez-Zugasti, 2011;Jerardino et al, 1992;M endez, 2002;Moss and Erlandson, 2010;Sullivan, 1987;Ulm, 2006). Evidence for their consumption has been inferred either through their regular presence in coastal sites, burning of body parts and/or reliable ethnohistoric accounts ( Alvarez-Fern andez et al, 2010;Bittmann, 1986;Moss and Erlandson, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Variability in late Holocene shellfish assemblages: the significance of large shore barnacles (Austromegabalanus cylindricus) in South African West Coast sites

Jerardino

2014

Journal of Archaeological Science

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The recent prehistoric exploitation of edible mussel in Aboriginal shell middens in southern New South Wales

Cited by 20 publications

References 16 publications

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

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

Cosmogenic mega-tsunami in the Australia region: are they supported by Aboriginal and Maori legends?

Variability in late Holocene shellfish assemblages: the significance of large shore barnacles (Austromegabalanus cylindricus) in South African West Coast sites

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