Backed artefact use in Eastern Australia : a residue and use-wear analysis

Robertson, Gail

doi:10.14264/uql.2017.486

Cited by 18 publications

(30 citation statements)

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“…Conversely, the massive samples that the current open site salvages have generated may well be describing the full range of variation possible with this tool type. Microscopic usewear and residue studies indicate that these were probably multi-purpose tools , Robertson 2005. As well as being hafted in spears , they appear to have been hand-held and used to process plant materials and small game (e.g.…”

Section: A Behavioural Model For the Sydney Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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: A Behavioural Model For the Sydney Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…breakage often happens during manufacture and/or use, depending on the nature of the break (Baker 1992); and usewear on the chord indicates that the blade has been used, i.e. for cutting, prior to discard Robertson 2005). Broken and/or used points may also have been replaced from a haft in a composite weapon, e.g.…”

Section: Backed Artefactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

McDonald¹

2008

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“…For example, many archaeologists believe that Australian backed artefacts, called microliths elsewhere in the world, required hafting and evidence derived from resins suggests this was often the case (e.g. Boot 1993;Robertson 2005;Therin 2000). Several methods have been employed to assist in identifying archaeological resins, including visual appearance of the raw material (Boot 1993), gas-liquid chromatography and thin-layer chromatography (Bowden and Reynolds 1982;Parr 1999), ascending paper chromatography (Boot 1993), high performance liquid chromatography (Welch 1997), and starch analysis (Parr 2002).…”

Section: Microfossilsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeobotany in Australia and New Guinea: Practice, Potential and Prospects

Denham

Atchison

Austin

et al. 2009

Australian Archaeology

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Archaeobotany is the study of plant remains from archaeological contexts. Despite Australasian research being at the forefront of several methodological innovations over the last three decades, archaeobotany is now a relatively peripheral concern to most archaeological projects in Australia and New Guinea. In this paper, many practicing archaeobotanists working in these regions argue for a more central role for archaeobotany in standard archaeologicalpractice. An overview of archaeobotanical techniques and applications is presented, the potential for archaeobotany to address key historical research questions is indicated, and initiatives designed to promote archaeobotany and improve current practices are outlined.

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“…Researchers often include a history of the development of both usewear and residue research as a methodological background. For instance, a comprehensive overview of previous research can be found in Robertson's (2005) analysis of eastern Australian backed stone artefacts. Similarly, Kononenko (2011:5) discusses past studies of stone tools in an extensive analysis of 1395 obsidian artefacts from Papua New Guinea, pointing out the limited number of published studies relating specifically to obsidian, while in her study of Lapita potsherds, Crowther (2009a) provides a review of previous residue analyses specific to ceramics.…”

Section: A Methodological Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Relevant literature with descriptions and illustrations was also sought for comparison, a comprehensive example of which is included in Robertson's (2005) study of backed artefacts. Before presenting the distinguishing characteristics of residues, two optical properties of light, birefringence and pleochroism, are defined.…”

Section: The Histological Characteristics Of Residuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sticks and stones: a functional analysis of Aboriginal spears from Northern Australia

Nugent¹

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Ethnographic information indicates that, prior to British colonisation in 1788, Aboriginal Australians used spears for hunting, fishing, fighting, retribution, punishment, in ceremony and as commodities for trade. Aboriginal peoples understood the seasons and the availability of food resources within their countries. The British colonists, in rapidly developing much of the continent, dispossessed many Indigenous peoples of their land disrupting their way of life, especially access to food resources. Spears were an integral component of the toolkit Aboriginal people used to procure such resources but by the turn of the twentieth century, they increasingly made spears for trade and barter rather than for hunting and fishing. By the mid-twentieth century, spears, often incorporating the use of European technology and materials, were being made for sale in a cash economy. No residues were detected on the archaeological wooden spear tips indicating that organic residue survival on wood requires anaerobic burial conditions such as extremely desiccated or waterlogged terrestrial environments that are rarely found in Australia. The results of a burial experiment support this conclusion. Hypothesised indications of use-wear observed on the wooden spearheads did not always co-occur with use-related residues. Arguably, wear traces indicative of wooden projectile use may be very difficult to ascertain. Apart from fish scales and adipose tissue, however, a considerable variety of use-related residues were detected on many spears. Considered to be the key indicator of a spear's past use for hunting, fighting, fishing and in ceremony is the presence of blood. The biochemical test to screen for the presence of blood on wood was assessed as reasonably reliable but only for approximately two years, therefore explanations for the absence of blood residues on this raw material remain problematic. Blood residues, bone, hair and muscle tissue were detected on only one stone-headed spear that was collected in the early twentieth century from the iii southern Gulf of Carpentaria mainland. This result indicates the spear was likely used to hunt small game rather than made specifically for trade or barter. The remainder of the sample collected at around the turn of the twentieth century displayed many residues, including starch granules, hair, feather, and muscle tissue but no blood. These spears were likely manufactured in campsite environments, possibly as trade items. Most spears collected in the mid-twentieth century displayed few residues, suggesting they were made for sale in workshop environments. Residues indicative of specific manufacturing processes were also observed on some spears. In addition, the macroscopic examination of spears in tandem with relevant ethnographic information suggests that not all of the spears were made at the places recorded as their collection location in museum documentation.Although more research involving residue analysis of archaeological wooden material is required, especially to initially...

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Backed artefact use in Eastern Australia : a residue and use-wear analysis

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

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

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

Archaeobotany in Australia and New Guinea: Practice, Potential and Prospects

Sticks and stones: a functional analysis of Aboriginal spears from Northern Australia

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