Re‐evaluating the timing of the Indonesian trepang industry in north‐west Arnhem Land: chronological investigations at Malara (Anuru Bay A)

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The contemporary importance and future of Sulawesi’s ancient rock art

“…The beeswax snake has been Carbon-14 dated to AD 1624-1674 (94% accuracy; using OxCal4.1) or 1517-1664 with a median age of 1577 (99% accuracy using IntCal09) . 3 This sits comfortably with results from recent excavations at a Macassan trepang processing site on the nearby coast that indicates people from Macassar were visiting as early as AD 1637 (Wesley et al 2016). Future research could look for earlier rock art and other connections between Sulawesi, Borneo and northern Australia as canine DNA and other evidence suggests some group of people from the Borneo-Sulawesi region probably brought the dog (dingo) to Australia about 4000 years ago (see review in Fillios and Taçon 2016).…”

“…Sulawesi rock art sites can be viewed similarly in that they provide a rich visual record of some periods of the past. The Namunindjbuk Estate was visited by people from Macassar 1 for hundreds of years (Macknight 1976;Wesley et al 2016) and records of this can be found at rock art sites.…”

Seascapes of ‘Submarine Squatters’: Commercial Dugong Fisheries of North Queensland

“…This gap in the literature is remarkable given the archaeological examinations that have been undertaken on other marine fisheries operating across the Australian coast in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Previous archaeological investigations of whaling (Anderson 2016;Gibbs 2003Gibbs , 2010Gojak 1998;Lawrence 2001Lawrence , 2006Prickett 2008;Staniforth et al 2001), sealing (Anderson 2016;James 2002;Kostoglou et al 1991;Lawrence and Davies 2010;Prickett 2008;Walshe 2014), pearling (Burningham 1994;McPhee 2001;Paterson 2006) and beche-de-mer (also known as trepang) collection (Grave and McNiven 2013;Macknight 1986;McKinnon et al 2013;Mitchell 1996;Morwood and Hobbs 1997;Wesley et al 2014Wesley et al , 2016) situate the commercial dugong industry within the wider corpus of literature focusing on marine industries.…”

Postcards from the outside: European-contact rock art imagery and occupation on the southern Arnhem Land plateau, Jawoyn lands

“…For several centuries prior to the European colonisation of Australia, Macassan sailors came annually to the northern coast of Arnhem Land to collect and process trepang (MacKnight 1972(MacKnight , 1986Mitchell 1994;Mulvaney 1975;Taçon et al 2010;Wesley et al 2016). The extent of direct contact that inland groups such as the Jawoyn would have had with coastal mariners some 150 km to the northwest, if any, is unknown.…”