archaeology | OpenSTEM Pty Ltd

Stone Axes and Aboriginal Stories from Victoria

In the most recent edition of Australian Archaeology, the journal of the Australian Archaeological Association, there is a paper examining the exchange of stone axes in Victoria and correlating these patterns of exchange with Aboriginal stories in the 19th century. This paper is particularly timely with the passing of legislation in the Victorian Parliament on 21 September 2017, concerning management of the Yarra River. This legislation, the first in Victorian state legislation to include phrases in an indigenous language (Woi-wurrung, the language of the Wurundjeri people – custodians of the Yarra River) recognises the connections between the river and local indigenous people. The Act contains a strategic plan for the river’s management and protection, and provides for a council (the Birrarung – a local indigenous name for the Yarra River – Council), which must include at least 2 traditional owners, to advise and advocate for the river.

Port Phillip 10000 yrs ago — Port Phillip during the Ice Age

The Yarra River runs south-west from the Australian Alps and enters Port Phillip Bay in the city of Melbourne. During the Ice Age, when global sea levels were lower, the river drained directly into Bass Strait (see image to right). Port Phillip bay was flooded by rising sea levels at the end of the Ice Age, reaching its present extent about 8,000 years ago. The bay was briefly drained when the entrance was blocked by a sand bar between 800 and 1,000 CE (about 1,000 years ago). Aboriginal stories recall this well: in 1846, the colonial magistrate, William Hull recorded that local Aboriginal people told him that they:

“recollected when Hobson’s Bay [Port Phillip Bay] was a kangaroo ground; they say, “Plenty catch kangaroo, and plenty catch opossum there;” and [an informant] assured me that the passage up the bay, through which the ships came, is the River Yarra, and that river once went out at the heads, but that the sea broke in, and that Hobson’s Bay, which was once hunting ground, became what it is“

This detailed knowledge of the now submerged area shows the depth of Aboriginal oral traditions, passed down in stories and lore, as part of their ongoing management of the Australian landscape. Many of these stories had intricate myths, which nevertheless included information on how to manage the environment. It appears that the exchange of axes, initially of stone, and later of iron, was part of these stories. The best raw material for making stone axes (and thus the best stone axes) came from the stone quarry at Mount William, near Lancefield about 78 km north of Melbourne. The local Wurundjeri people made very fine greenstone axes, which were traded over huge distances, some as far as 1,000 km, in the period before Europeans arrived in Australia.

In 1803, the British tried to start a convict settlement on Port Phillip Bay, near modern Sorrento, but within a few months the convicts were moved to Tasmania when a lack of water and conflict with local Aboriginal groups made the settlement unviable. During the upheavals, some convicts escaped, one of whom was William Buckley, who then lived with local Aboriginal people, the Wadawurrung, for the next 32 years. After Melbourne was settled and Buckley had rejoined European society, he worked as a translator for the missionary George Langhorne, who wrote down some of Buckley’s stories. One of these mentioned axes (or “tomahawks”):

“There are… two imaginary Beings whom [the Wadawurrung] treat with a certain degree of respect. One of these is supposed to reside in a certain marsh and to be the author of all the Songs which he makes known to them through his Sons. The other is supposed to have charge of the Pole or Pillar by which the Sky is propped. Just before the Europeans came to Port Phillip this personage was the subject of general conversation it was reported among them that he had sent a message to the Tribes to send a certain number of Tomahawks to enable him to prepare a new prop for the Sky as the other had become rotten and their destruction was inevitable should the sky fall on them to prevent this and to supply as great a number of iron Tomahawks as possible ”

Very similar stories are repeated in a range of sources, including the records of A.W. Howitt, a 19th century anthropologist, who interviewed William Barak, a senior clan head of the Woiwurrung, who had been about 11 years old (and a witness to events) when John Batman signed his treaty with clan leaders. Barak’s uncle was custodian of the Mount William stone axe quarry, a title which Barak later inherited. Howitt recorded:

“They believed too that the sky was propped up by poles where it rested on the mountains in the north-east. Before the “white men came to Melbourne” a message was passed from tribe to tribe, until it reached the Wurunjerri, that the props were becoming rotten, and that unless tomahawks were at once sent up to cut new ones, the sky would fall and burst, and all the people would be drowned“

Aboriginal stone axe — Aboriginal ground stone axe

A similar story was recorded by Ethel Shaw, the daughter of the station manager at Yelta Station (also a mission) on the Murray River, about 500km north-west of Melbourne, home of the Marawara people, as having been told to her father in the late 19th century. These stories were linked to the flood stories, which are very common in Aboriginal traditions, and relate in great detail which areas were flooded. Various mythological reasons are given for these inundations, including that the sky fell, causing the clouds to burst open when they hit the ground and release all the rainwater in huge floods.

Stories also record the efforts of ancestors to manage the water flow down from the mountains, by cutting channels for water to flow – an activity which is described as “using up too many stone axes”. As custodians of the land, each Aboriginal group had responsibilities related to managing the environment and trying to ensure that it remained healthy and stable. It appears that the need for stone axes in the mountains, some distance from the Mount William quarry, was articulated in stories, which ensured that stone axes were supplied to the mountains, thus helping maintain exchange networks over long distances and ensuring equitable access to resources.

We now know that ground stone axes date back 65,000 years to the earliest evidence of Aboriginal settlement in Australia. Over the millennia, especially following the huge climate changes at the end of the Ice Age, Aboriginal people developed ways of managing the environment and exchanging resources. The framework for these activities was a rich tradition of stories and mythology, which helped people to relate to their world and their role within it. We are still learning to interpret all the information within these stories.

What Makes Humans Different From Most Other Mammals?

Well, there are several things that makes us different from other mammals – although perhaps fewer than one might think. We are not unique in using tools, in fact we discover more animals that use tools all the time – even fish! We pride ourselves on being a “moral animal”, however fairness, reciprocity, empathy and cooperation have been demonstrated in apes and monkeys. Genetically we differ by only 1.09% from gorillas, 1.14% from chimpanzees, 2.46% from Old World monkeys and we share 50% of our DNA with bananas!

Recent research has demonstrated one of the ways that we are unique and this research is being used to help us to understand our human lineage, as well as giving us new insights into some diseases, such as cancer. The key to this discussion is a set of complex sugar chains (or carbohydrates), called glycans, which occur on the surface of cells. In particular, a glycan called Neu5Gc. It seems that at some point in the distant past, the malaria parasite used this glycan to anchor itself to the cells of primates and infect them with malaria, and human ancestors responded by losing the glycan, thus becoming immune to malaria. Unfortunately for us, a new type of malaria found a new glycan to attach itself to (this one is called Neu5Ac), which meant that humans could catch the new strain of malaria. This explains why humans are immune to the strains of malaria which affect great apes, such as chimpanzees, but are susceptible to strains of malaria which don’t affect the apes.

Humans became almost unique amongst mammals in not having the glycan Neu5Gc. It is thought that this mutation occurred between 2 and 3 million years ago and might have contributed to humans developing their own distinct lineage. Part of the glycan also becomes integrated as a molecule in bone, which gave researches hope that they might be able to find traces of the molecule from Neu5Gc in fossil bones. Whilst we have been successful in extracting ancient DNA from Neanderthal bones as old as 430,000 years and from horse bones as old as 700,000 years, fossils that are millions of years old have not been able to yield enough viable DNA using current techniques.

So researcher Ajit Varki, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, started with 50,000 year old bones from a cave bear, from which they were able to extract the molecule. Varki then approached Maeve Leakey, Director of Field Research at the Turkana Basin Institute, who gave them a fragment of bone from a 4 million year old buffalo-like animal, found in the same layer as some hominin fossils. Once again the researchers were able to extract the molecule left in the bone by Nue5Gc. It is now hoped that they will be able to test fossil hominid bones in order to see which ones lacked Neu5Gc (and are thus likely to be our direct ancestors) and which ones had it.

Modern humans usually do have trace amounts of Neu5Gc, thought to enter our bodies from eating the meat of animals which have the glycan. Our bodies produce a slight immune response to the glycan, which might aggravate diseases such as cancer, opening new avenues for research and proving how research in one area of science, such as paleoanthropology, can have effects in other areas, such as medicine. It might therefore also be possible to see how much meat our ancestors included in their diets – always a controversial topic.

New Dates for Human Relative + ‘Explorer Classroom’ Resources

During September, National Geographic is featuring the excavations of Homo naledi at Rising Star Cave in South Africa in their Explorer Classroom, in tune with new discoveries and the publishing of dates for this enigmatic little hominid. A Teacher’s Guide and Resources are available and classes can log in to see live updates from the site. The material is also archived and can be watched via YouTube at a later date.

We’ve probably all heard of the little hominids from neighbouring Indonesia – Homo floresiensis and how they were initially dated to less than 50,000 years ago, which was then revised to between 60,000 and 190,000 years ago. These dates are still relatively recent for a hominid on the same general family tree as ourselves and reminds us all that there were several branches on this tree, of which ours is only one.

An interesting hominid was discovered in South Africa in 2014, named Homo naledi, this species was also relatively small and had a curious mix of features – some seeming very old (curved hands and fingers, well suited for climbing trees) and others looking more modern (legs suited to walking fully upright). Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists wondered where on the family tree these guys belonged – were they millions of years old, or more recent? The dating of the bones was an enormous challenge – partly because the deep cave where the fossils were found could only be accessed through an extremely narrow (20cm wide) gap in the rocks, and partly because the deposit lacked material that could be dated easily.

This year dates were published, obtained from a range of scientific techniques, including optically stimulated luminescence, Uranium-series and electron spin resonance dating (see OpenSTEM’s Absolute Dating Methods resource for explanations of some of these techniques). Both the sediments around the bones, as well as 3 fossil teeth were dated. The dates all clustered between 200,000 and 400,000 years ago. These dates are much more recent than was thought from analyses of the bones themselves. The dates are also contemporary with the very earliest of our own direct ancestors, implying that Homo naledi and our own ancestors shared the savannas of Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. Yet another reminder of the diverse and complex nature of our family tree!

New Dates for Earliest Archaeological Site in Aus!

This morning news was released of a date of 65,000 years for archaeological material at the site of Madjedbebe rock shelter in the Jabiluka mineral lease area, surrounded by Kakadu National Park. The site is on the land of the Mirarr people, who have partnered with archaeologists from the University of Queensland for this investigation. It has also produced evidence of the earliest use of ground-stone tool technology, the oldest seed-grinding tools in Australia and stone points, which may have been used as spears. Most fascinating of all, there is the jawbone of a Tasmanian Tiger or Thylacine (which was found across continental Australia during the Ice Age) coated in a red pigment, thought to be the reddish rock, ochre. There is much evidence of use of ochre at the site, with chucks and ground ochre found throughout the site. Ochre is often used for rock art and the area has much beautiful rock art, so we can deduce that these rock art traditions are as old as the occupation of people in Australia, i.e. at least 65,000 years old! The decoration of the jawbone hints at a complex realm of abstract thought, and possibly belief, amongst our distant ancestors – the direct forebears of modern Aboriginal people.

Placing the finds from Madjebebe rock shelter within the larger context, the dating, undertaken by Professor Zenobia Jacobs from the University of Wollongong, shows that people were living at the site during the Ice Age, a time when many, now-extinct, giant animals roamed Australia; and the tiny Homo floresiensis was living in Indonesia. These finds show that the ancestors of Aboriginal people came to Australia with much of the toolkit of their rich, complex lives already in place. This technology, extremely advanced for the time, allowed them to populate the entire continent of Australia, first managing to survive in the hash Ice Age environment and then also managing to adapt to the enormous changes in sea level, climate and vegetation at the end of the Ice Age.

The team of archaeologists working at Madjebebe rock shelter, in conjunction with Mirarr traditional owners, are finding all sorts of wonderful archaeological material, from which they can deduce much rich, detailed information about the lives of the earliest people in Australia. We look forward to hearing more from them in the future. Students who are interested, especially those in Years 4, 5 and 6, can read more about these sites and the animals and lives of people in Ice Age Australia in our resources People Reach Australia, Early Australian Sites, Ice Age Animals and the Last Ice Age, which are covered in Units 4.1, 5.1 and 6.1.

Guess the Artefact! – #2

Today’s Guess the Artefact! covers one of a set of artefacts which are often found confusing to recognise. We often get questions about these artefacts, from students and teachers alike, so here’s a chance to test your skills of observation. Remember – all heritage and archaeological material is covered by State or Federal legislation and should never be removed from its context. If possible, photograph the find in its context and then report it to your local museum or State Heritage body (the Dept of Environment and Heritage Protection in Qld; the Office of Environment and Heritage in NSW; the Dept of Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development in ACT; Heritage Victoria; the Dept of Environment, Water and Natural Resources in South Australia; the State Heritage Office in WA and the Heritage Council – Dept of Tourism and Culture in NT).

This artefact is made of stone. It measures about 12 x 8 x 3 cm. It fits easily and comfortably into an adult’s hand. The surface of the stone is mostly smooth and rounded, it looks a little like a river cobble. However, one side – the right-hand side in the photo above – is shaped so that 2 smooth sides meet in a straight, sharpish edge. Such formations do not occur on naturally rounded stones, which tells us that this was shaped by people and not just rounded in a river. The smoothed edges meeting in a sharp edge tell us that this is ground-stone technology. Ground stone technology is a technique used by people to create smooth, sharp edges on stones. People grind the stone against other rocks, occasionally using sand and water to facilitate the process, usually in a single direction. This forms a smooth surface which ends in a sharp edge.

Ground stone technology is usually associated with the Neolithic period in Europe and Asia. In the northern hemisphere, this technology was primarily used by people who were learning to domesticate plants and animals. These early farmers learned to grind grains, such as wheat and barley, between two stones to make flour – thus breaking down the structure of the plant and making it easier to digest. Our modern mortar and pestle is a descendant of this process. Early farmers would have noticed that these actions produced smooth and sharp edges on the stones. These observations would have led them to apply this technique to other tools which they used and thus develop the ground-stone technology. Here (picture on right) we can see an Egyptian ground stone axe from the Neolithic period. The toolmaker has chosen an attractive red and white stone to make this axe-head.

In Japan this technology is much older than elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, and ground-stone axes have been found dating to 30,000 years ago during the Japanese Palaeolithic period. Until recently these were thought to be the oldest examples of ground-stone technology in the world. However, in 2016, Australian archaeologists Peter Hiscock, Sue O’Connor, Jane Balme and Tim Maloney reported in an article in the journal Australian Archaeology, the finding of a tiny flake of stone (just over 1 cm long and 1/2 cm wide) from a ground stone axe in layers dated to 44,000 to 49,000 years ago at the site of Carpenter’s Gap in the Kimberley region of north-west Australia. This tiny flake of stone – easily missed by anyone not paying close attention – is an excellent example of the extreme importance of ‘archaeological context’. Archaeological material that remains in its original context (known as in situ) can be dated accurately and associated with other material from the same layers, thus allowing us to understand more about the material. Anything removed from the context usually can not be dated and only very limited information can be learnt.

The find from the Kimberley makes Australia the oldest place in the world to have ground-stone technology. The tiny chip of stone, broken off a larger ground-stone artefact, probably an axe, was made by the ancestors of Aboriginal people in the millennia after they arrived on this continent. These early Australians did not practise agriculture, but they did eat various grains, which they leaned to grind between stones to make flour. It is possible that whilst processing these grains they learned to grind stone tools as well. Our artefact, shown above, is undated. It was found, totally removed from its original context, stored under an old house in Brisbane. The artefact is useful as a teaching aid, allowing students to touch and hold a ground-stone axe made by Aboriginal people in Australia’s past. However, since it was removed from its original context at some point, we do not know how old it is, or even where it came from exactly.

Our artefact is a stone tool. Specifically, it is a ground stone axe, made using technology that dates back almost 50,000 years in Australia! These axes were usually made by rubbing a hard stone cobble against rocks by the side of a creek. Water from the creek was used as a lubricant, and often sand was added as an extra abrasive. The making of ground-stone axes often left long grooves in these rocks. These are called ‘grinding grooves’ and can still be found near some creeks in the landscape today, such as in Kuringai Chase National Park in Sydney. The ground-stone axes were usually hafted using sticks and lashings of plant fibre, to produce a tool that could be used for cutting vegetation or other uses. Other stone tools look different to the one shown above, especially those made by flaking stone; however, smooth stones should always be carefully examined in case they are also ground-stone artefacts and not just simple stones!

Guess the Artefact!

Today we are announcing a new challenge for our readers – Guess the Artefact! We post pictures of an artefact and you can guess what it is. The text will slowly reveal the answer, through a process of examination and deduction – see if you can guess what it is, before the end. We are starting this challenge with an item from our year 6 Archaeological Dig workshop. Year 6 (unit 6.3) students concentrate on Federation in their Australian History segment – so that’s your first clue! Study the image and then start reading the text below.

Our first question is what is it? Study the image and see if you can work out what it might be – it’s an dirty, damaged piece of paper. It seems to be old. Does it have a date? Ah yes, there are 3 dates – 23, 24 and 25 October, 1889, so we deduce that it must be old, dating to the end of the 19th century. We will file the exact date for later consideration. We also note references to railways. The layout of the information suggests a train ticket. So we have a late 19th century train ticket!

Now why do we have this train ticket and whose train ticket might it have been? The ticket is First Class, so this is someone who could afford to travel in style. Where were they going? The railways mentioned are Queensland Railways, Great Northern Railway, New South Wales Railways and the stops are Brisbane, Wallangara, Tenterfield and Sydney. Now we need to do some research. Queensland Railways and New South Wales Railways seem self-evident, but what is Great Northern Railway? A brief hunt reveals several possible candidates: 1) a contemporary rail operator in Victoria; 2) a line in Queensland connecting Mt Isa and Townsville and 3) an old, now unused railway in New South Wales. We can reject option 1) immediately. Option 2) is the right state, but the towns seem unrelated. That leaves option 3), which seems most likely. Looking into the NSW option in more detail we note that it ran between Sydney and Brisbane, with a stop at Wallangara to change gauge – Bingo!

More research reveals that the line reached Wallangara in 1888, the year before this ticket was issued. Only after 1888 was it possible to travel from Brisbane to Sydney by rail, albeit with a compulsory stop at Wallangara. We note also that the ticket contains a meal voucher for dinner at the Railway Refreshment Rooms in Wallangara. Presumably passengers overnighted in Wallangara before continuing on to Sydney on a different train and rail gauge. Checking the dates on the ticket, we can see evidence of an overnight stop, as the next leg continues from Wallangara on the next day (24 Oct 1889). However, next we come to some important information. From Wallangara, the next leg of the journey represented by this ticket was only as far as Tenterfield. Looking on a map, we note that Tenterfield is only about 25 km away – hardly a day’s train ride, more like an hour or two at the most (steam trains averaged about 24 km/hr at the time). From this we deduce that the ticket holder wanted to stop at Tenterfield and continue their journey on the next day.

We know that we’re studying Australian Federation history, so the name Tenterfield should start to a ring a bell – what happened in Tenterfield in 1889 that was relevant to Australian Federation history? The answer, of course, is that Henry Parkes delivered his Tenterfield Oration there, and the date? 24 October, 1889! If we look into the background, we quickly discover that Henry Parkes was on his way from Brisbane back to Sydney, when he stopped in Tenterfield. He had been seeking support for Federation from the government of the colony of Queensland. He broke his journey in Tenterfield, a town representative of those towns closer to the capital of another colony than their own, which would benefit from the free trade arrangements flowing from Federation. Parkes even discussed the issue of different rail gauges as something that would be solved by Federation! We can therefore surmise that this ticket may well be the ticket of Henry Parkes, documenting his journey from Brisbane to Sydney in October, 1889, during which he stopped and delivered the Tenterfield Oration!

This artefact is therefore relevant as a source for anyone studying Federation history – as well as giving us a more personal insight into the travels of Henry Parkes in 1889, it allows us to consider aspects of life at the time:

the building of railway connections across Australia, in a time before motor cars were in regular use;
the issue of different size railway gauges in the different colonies and what practical challenges that posed for a long distance rail network;
the ways in which people travelled and the speed with which they could cross large distances;
what rail connections would have meant for small, rural towns, to mention just a few.
Why might the railway companies have provided meal vouchers?

These are all sidelines of inquiry, which students may be interested to pursue, and which might help them to engage with the subject matter in more detail.

In our Archaeological Dig Workshops, we not only engage students in the processes and physical activities of the dig, but we provide opportunities for them to use the artefacts to practise deduction, reasoning and research – true inquiry-based learning, imitating real-world processes and far more engaging and empowering than more traditional bookwork.