A burning question: What experimental heating of Australian fauna can tell us about cooking practices in Boodie Cave, Barrow Island, northwest Australia

Use of micro-analysis to augment the macro-archaeological investigation of an elevated Holocene shell midden, Dampier Archipelago, NW Australia

“…These bones range in colour from pale yellow (Figure 8A), through to the more occasional, dark reddish brown (Figure 8B). The latter darker colours are indicative of heating temperatures of around 400 °C, but most bone fragments show medium yellow colour consistent with heating temperatures < 300 °C (Stiner et al, 1995; see also Moody et al, 2022). Some of the bone fragments can be identified as fish bone from the bone structure (e.g., Figure 8C) and serrated edges (e.g., Figure 8D).…”

“…Whilst it is possible that at least some of the microbone fragments were burnt after they were deposited in the soil, the predominance of macropod species (mainly Petrogale sp. or rock wallaby) in the macro-bone assemblage (McDonald et al, Frontiers in Earth Science frontiersin.org 2022) supports a cultural origin of the bone, with bone colours reflecting burning of still-fleshed bone (Moody et al, 2022). The shell similarly shows little evidence of being burnt but marine shell only requires low heating temperatures to open.…”

“…The minor inosilicates (e.g., actinolite/ ferro-actinolite), mica (biotite, muscovite) and heavy mineral (e.g., rutile, zircon) phases reflects the source mineralogy and indicate that weathering has not significantly affected the mineral assemblage that may be taken into the transport system. In contrast, on nearby Barrow Island, the abundance of (minor) heavy mineral phases is a significant indicator of weathering and sediment maturity (Ward et al, 2022).…”

“…The macro-bone analysis recorded that 88% of the upper analytical unit was unburned (McDonald et al, 2021: Table 15.11), with micromorphological observation similarly indicating <10% of bone is burnt. The micro-analysis indicates heating at low temperature (<400 °C), with the macro-bone record providing only a few specimens of calcined mammal bone that might indicate higher temperatures in each of the two analytical units (see Stiner et al, 1995;Moody et al, 2022). Natural fires move rather rapidly, and do not bake sediments very deeply (Clements, 2018).…”