Tag Archives: Indigenous Archaeology

Sugar is useful in archaeology

Posted on September 29, 2011 by | 1 Comment

By Adrian Fenech, Graduate Diploma in Archaeology Student

The directed study I am working on involves reanalysing material excavated by Mick Morrison from Weipa in northern Queensland and uses sugar to aid the ‘floatation’ lab technique. I’m doing this because previous research projects on shell mound sites in northern Australia suggests that they contain very few faunal materials other than shellfish remains. The aim of this work is to find if the low recovery rate of faunal materials in samples is due to taphonomic or sampling technique biases. I am going to use chemical floatation to assist the sorting and faunal identification processes.

The chemical floatation process involves dry sieving the archaeological material and then immersing it in water that has been treated with some kind of chemical (Ross and Duffy 2000, p 33). This is designed to change the specific gravity of the water to separate materials that have different weights. For reasons of personal safety and economy, sugar will be used, hopefully the lab technicians, John and Chantal will not think that I am cooking in the lab.

A secondary process I am considering is defloccation which involves swirling archaeological materials around in a solution of water and some form of cleaning agent. I will be playing this by ear until I can see if the floatation cleans the material in any way.

Dry sieving

References

Ross, A. and R. Duffy 2000, Fine mesh screening of midden material and the recovery of fish bone: the development of floatation and deflocculation techniques for an efficient and effective procedure. Geoarchaeology 15(1): pp. 21-41.

Vale, D. and R.H. Gargett 2002 Size matters: 3mm sieves do not increase richness in a fishbone assemblage from Arrawarr 1, an Aboriginal Australian shell midden on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, Australia. Journal of Archeological Science. vol. 29: pp. 57-63.

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Community based research at the Marranggung burial ground, Tailem Bend

Posted on September 19, 2011 by | Comments Off

By Michael Diplock, Associate Lecturer in Archaeology

On the 11 & 12 June this year a small group of students & staff from the Archaeology Department at Flinders were treated to a special weekend alongside the majestic (& very healthy looking) Murray River at Maranggung near Tailem Bend. We had been invited to share some of our survey and geophysics skills in a joint project involving members of Karpinyeri  Inc, Assoc. from Tailem Bend SA.

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Making sense of the Winchelsea Stone Artefact Collection (part 1)

Posted on August 22, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Directed Study in Archaeology- Working with the SANTS- Winchelsea Collection

By Sam Hedditch, Graduate Student

This is the first of my four blog posts for the semester.  I will first explain briefly my study and what it entails.

Recently, Flinders University was given temporary custody of a collection of apparently random stone artefacts from the South Australian Native Title Services Corporation. Very little is known of their origins, save for the fact that they were delivered to SANTS from the Wathaurong Aboriginal Community in North Geelong from Winchelsea, Victoria  and that the labels on the stones suggest that they were recovered from areas throughout South Australia. The recording of these artefacts was begun by the ARCH 8517 stone artefacts class in 2010 and is yet to be completed.

There are a range of objectives that I hope to achieve in my study:

  • Analyse and document the artefacts and present the information as  part of a database and report.
  • Take photos and illustrations of a range of artefacts to complement the database and report.
  • Conduct archival research to interpret the original intention of the artefacts’ collection.
  • Arrange all of this data to return to SANTS to provide greater information about them and perhaps inform their repatriation.

As a student quite new to lithics and archaeology in general, I am finding that this study is a great challenge. There are well over a hundred artefacts in the collection and they span from Port Macdonnel to The Coongie Lake near Innamincka in northern South Australia.  There are many resources to consult in order to understand the archaeological background of the areas that the artefacts come from. Hopefully this type of research will develop a greater understanding of where the artefacts fit in to a bigger picture.

There is lots of lithic analysis to be done, those who pop into the archaeology labs may find me there looking relatively bewildered as I measure and interpret these beautiful artefacts.  At this stage my analysis is preliminary and I am consulting with Dr Alice Gorman as to whether I am recording appropriately.  Once I am on the right track I’m sure that the other hundred and thirty three artefacts won’t take quite so long to record, will they?

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Flexibility, Fieldwork and Flinders Graduate Study

Posted on August 17, 2011 by | Comments Off

If you’ve read the current (July) edition of Engage: The Magazine of the Graduate Programs in Archaeology, Cultural Heritage Management and Maritime Archaeology, you’ll have seen the article on ‘Where does a Graduate Degree Take You?’.  In it, some of our graduated students discuss where they’re working now, what they’ve learnt since leaving university (including what topics proved to be most useful to them and why.  This part makes Alice very happy), and how their degree experience prepared them to work in the heritage industry (if you haven’t seen Engage yet, then make sure you read it at our website http://www.flinders.edu.au/ehl/archaeology/archaeology-digital-library/graduate-program-bulletins.cfm.  It contains all this and more).

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The Archaeology of Honey Collection

Posted on June 19, 2011 by | Comments Off

by Emily Shepard, Visiting Scholar

Hello, my name is Emily Shepard, and I am an archaeology master’s student from Portland State University in the United States. I am very excited to be at Flinders working with Dr. Mick Morrison on a really interesting topic – culturally modified trees (CMTs). This project focuses on ‘sugarbag’ trees: or CMTs that were scarred through wild honey (sugarbag) collection by Indigenous peoples living in the Weipa region of the northern Cape York Peninsula in Queensland.

A sugarbag scar on an Ironwood tree near Weipa

Although sugarbag collection was almost certainly a part of Indigenous lifeways for many thousands of years, prior archaeological and anthropological research by Dr. Morrison and Dr. Darlene McNaughton suggests that honey procurement strategies shifted substantially in the past century. These changes, which primarily relate to intensification of honey harvest, seem to have been influenced by access to new technology, such as larger axes. However, some of these changes may also reflect strategies of Indigenous peoples for engaging with new economic, social and political conditions arising from the arrival of missionaries. Hopefully, this project will both aid in developing methods for classifying these CMTs, and will shed light on aspects of life of Indigenous peoples living in the region that were left out of the historical record by missionaries.

I’m hoping this project will highlight the potential of data from CMTs to address a variety of interesting and important questions not only in Australia, but also in the United States and Canada. I’m travelling to Weipa with Mick and other students working on a project investigating the history of the mission early next month, and we hope to collect a lot of new information on sugarbag (and other) scarred trees found around the former mission settlement.

This research is funded by the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute, which is made possible by the United States National Science Foundation and the Australian Academy of Science.

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