Bryce Barker
Biographic Data
| ID | 3602722 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bryce Barker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bryce |
| FAMILY NAME | Barker |
| SIGNATURE | BARKER B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1784-9054 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 246 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Familiar, not foreign: Depictions of watercraft in the rock art of mainland southeast Cape York Peninsula, Queensland
Archaeologists have a longstanding interest in cross-cultural engagements between Indigenous people and Others, especially in settler colonial nations. In Australia, much archaeological attention has been directed to how such engagements are reflected in rock art, particularly in respect of colonial period seafaring activities and non-Indigenous watercraft technologies. Scholars have written extensively about depictions of foreign watercraft in A…
Come down in the world?’ Assessing social status from a nineteenth century burial in Far North Queensland
This paper outlines the exhumation of the grave of Jane Ann Owen situated on Low Island, a sandy coral cay 15 km northeast of Port Douglas in Far North Queensland. It examines the remote burial in the context of assessing social status from a nineteenth century burial. It is argued from the presence of a prosthetic dental attachment that the individual was at one time in her adult life reasonably affluent which stands in contrast to the simple na…
Assessing the implementation of evidence-based alcohol policies on Atlantic Canadian post-secondary campuses: A comparative analysis
Atlantic Canadian universities are collectively achieving less than half their potential to reduce student alcohol-related harm. However, this study identifies opportunities where policies can be enhanced or modified. The fact that most policies are present at one or more campuses highlights that policy recommendations are an achievable goal for campuses. Campuses are encouraged to look to each other as models for improving their own policies
The Discipline of Dress: Uniform Buttons and Accoutrements of the Native Mounted Police in Queensland, Australia
Clothing is capable of providing a range of insights into aspects of identity, authority, power, and hierarchy. Here we present the results of an analysis of an assemblage of uniform buttons and accoutrements from seven 19th-century Native Mounted Police (NMP) camps in Queensland, Australia. As part of wider colonial structures of discipline and expropriation, the NMP uniform was a powerful symbol of control: over troopers’ bodies, over NMP detac…
Fatal FrontierTemporal and Spatial Considerations of the Native Mounted Police and Colonial Violence Across Queensland
Over the past two decades, archaeologists have explored aspects of Indigenous agency to better encompass experiences of cross-cultural contact in colonial Australia. Yet the area of frontier conflict has largely remained the purview of historians, in part because of challenges in identifying such events archaeologically. One alternative means through which to consider frontier conflict is to investigate the material remains of colonial policing f…
Nervous nation: Fear, conflict and narratives of fortified domestic architecture on the Queensland frontier
The frontier of nineteenth-and twentieth-century Australia was a place in which colonists routinely lived in fear of retaliation by the Aboriginal peoples whose traditional lands they had forcibly dispossessed. It has been suggested this concern manifested itself in domestic architecture, in both active and passive defensive strategies designed to afford protection against various forms of potential attack. Yet there remains a lack of substantive…
Flaked Glass Artifacts from Nineteenth–Century Native Mounted Police Camps in Queensland, Australia
Rock engravings and occupation sites in the Mount Bosavi Region, Papua New Guinea: Implications for our understanding of the human presence in the Southern Highlands
An extensive body of engraved rock art on the Great Papuan Plateau is documented here for the first time, along with the first dates for occupation. Consisting largely of deeply abraded or pecked barred ovals and cupules, the rock art of this region does not fit comfortably into any regional models for rock art previously described. It does, however, exhibit some similarity to art in regions to the east and the west of the plateau. Subject to fur…
Female weir fishers of the southern lowlands of Papua New Guinea: Implications for an archaeology of gendered activities
In this paper we examine a set of ethnographic practices from the mid-reaches of the Kikori River, specifically pertaining to women’s crustacean fishing, and in doing so re-examine the archaeological record of nearby rock shelter Epe Amoho. These practices, we argue, are poorly represented in many archaeological sites across the landscape. Such patterned biases of the archaeological record (e.g. of some gendered activities) have major implication…
The Queensland Native Police and Strategies of Recruitment on the Queensland Frontier, 1849–1901
Although historians have provided substantial insights into the structure, development and activities of the Queensland Native Mounted Police, they have rarely focused on the complex and sensitive issue of Aboriginal recruitment. A careful reading of historical records, however, identifies several methods, including coercion, intimidation, kidnapping and inducement, as well as “voluntary” enlistment. It is difficult to identify Aboriginal agency …
Robert Alexander Neal, 30 April 1955–20 February 2018
The archaeological signature of ‘ant bed’ mound floors in the northern tropics of Australia: Case study on the Lower Laura (Boralga) Native Mounted Police Camp, Cape York Peninsula
Postcards from the outside: European-contact rock art imagery and occupation on the southern Arnhem Land plateau, Jawoyn lands
The archaeomorphological study of Nawarla Gabarnmang in Australia's Northern Territory challenges us to think in new ways about how Aboriginal people interacted with their surroundings; here a site of everyday engagement was a place of construction that retains material traces of past engagements. At Nawarla Garbarnmang, we show through archaeomorphological research how the changing physical layout of a site can be cross-examined against the impa…
Archaeology of JSARN–124 site 3, central-western Arnhem Land: Determining the age of the so-called ‘Genyornis’ painting
terra australis
Dating painted Panel E1 at Nawarla Gabarnmang, central-western Arnhem Land plateau
Western Arnhem Land, in the Top End of Australia’s Northern Territory, has a rich archaeological landscape, ethnographic record and body of rock art that displays an astonishing array of imagery on shelter walls and ceilings. While the archaeology goes back to the earliest period of Aboriginal occupation of the continent, the rock art represents some of the richest, most diverse and visually most impressive regional assemblages anywhere in the wo…
Aboriginal stone huts along the Georgina River, southwest Queensland
This paper reports on the recording of previously unpublished Aboriginal stone hut structures in southwestern Queensland. Located along the Georgina River, these 15 structures are typical of the region, being generally circular in plan view, with an average diameter of 5m and a 1m-wide opening consistently positioned to afford protection from prevailing winds. Evidence suggests these structures were roofed with vegetation and, while they pre-date…
Geochemical analysis of the painted panels at the “Genyornis” rock art site, Arnhem Land, Australia
The identification of extinct megafauna in rock art using geometric morphometrics: A Genyornis newtoni painting in Arnhem Land, northern Australia
The homestead as fortress: Fact or folklore
Houses are quintessential statements of identity, encoding elements of personal and social attitudes, aspirations and realities. As functional containers for human life, they reflect the exigencies of their construction and occupation, as well as the alterations that ensued as contexts, occupants and uses changed. As older houses endure into subsequent social contexts, they become drawn into later symbolic landscapes, connoting both past and pres…
Baikaboria Ossuary and the Origins of the Kesele Clan, Upper Kikori River, Papua New Guinea
This paper presents archaeological evidence for the initial occupation and use of a large clan ossuary on the upper Kikori River at Baina in Papua New Guinea. Drawing extensively on clan oral accounts of its use and function, it is posited that the timing and use of the site as an ossuary effectively dates the establishment of a sub clan entity known as Kesele and the fragmentation of larger clan based land owning units into smaller sub-clan enti…
The Mine Island Aboriginal stone arrangements: Spiritual responses to late Holocene change on the central Queensland coast
The Mine Island stone arrangement complex is a large ceremonial complex on the central Queensland coast. The arrangements are in excess of 2 km of looping and U-shaped aligned stones. A series of middens, directly adjacent to the stone arrangements, was recently excavated, providing potential chronological insights into the construction and ceremonial use of the stone arrangement. We posit that these stone arrangements represent a shared spiritua…
Kumukumu 1, a hilltop site in the Aird Hills: Implications for occupational trends and dynamics in the Kikori River delta, south coast of Papua New Guinea
Dating of in situ longhouse ( dubu daima ) posts in the Kikori River delta: Refining chronologies of island village occupation in the lower Kikori River delta, Papua New Guinea
How old are Australia's pictographs? A review of rock art dating
The social construction of caves and rockshelters: Chauvet Cave (France) and Nawarla Gabarnmang (Australia)
Caves and rockshelters are a key component of the archaeological record but are often regarded as natural places conveniently exploited by human communities. Archaeomorphological study shows however that they are not inert spaces but have frequently been modified by human action, sometimes in ways that imply a strong symbolic significance. In this paper the concept of 'aménagement', the re-shaping of a material space or of elements within it, is …
A 28,000 year old excavated painted rock from Nawarla Gabarnmang, northern Australia
Lapita sites in the Central Province of mainland Papua New Guinea
For over forty years, archaeologists working along Papua New Guinea's southern coastline have sought evidence for early ceramics and its relationship with Lapita wares of Island Melanesia. Failing to find any such evidence of pottery more than 2000 bp, and largely based on the excavation of eight early pottery-bearing sites during the late 1960s into the early 1970s, synchronous colonization some 2000 bp along 500km of the south Papuan coastline …
Nawarla Gabarnmang, a 45,180±910 cal BP Site in Jawoyn Country, Southwest Arnhem Land Plateau
Recent excavations at Nawarla Gabarnmang in Jawoyn country, southwest Arnhem Land have produced a long sequence of AMS radiocarbon determinations on individual pieces of charcoal reliably associated with stone artefacts dating back to 45,180±910 cal BP. It represents one of the earliest radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites in Australia. Here we report on initial results
The social construction of caves and rockshelters: Chauvet Cave (France) and Nawarla Gabarnmang (Australia)
Caves and rockshelters are a key component of the archaeological record but are often regarded as natural places conveniently exploited by human communities. Archaeomorphological study shows however that they are not inert spaces but have frequently been modified by human action, sometimes in ways that imply a strong symbolic significance. In this paper the concept of 'aménagement', the re-shaping of a material space or of elements within it, is …
Koey Ngurtai: The emergence of a ritual domain in Western Torres Strait
Koey Ngurtai is a small, uninhabited island located midway between the residential islands of Badu and Mabuyag in western Torres Strait. In 2003 and 2004, 100% surveys of the islet revealed 166 cultural sites. Fifty archaeological excavations were undertaken, revealing a rich history of islet use culminating with the emergence of Koey Ngurtai as a ritual centre after 550–700 cal BP, and a proliferation of ritual structures focused on dugong hunti…
Nara Inlet 1: A Holocene sequence from the Whitsunday Islands, central Queensland coast
This paper reports an archaeological excavation at Nara Inlet, Hook Island, one of the Whitsunday group off the central Queensland coast. The site, Nara Inlet 1, is a large rockshelter which returned a non-basal 14C date of 8150±80 bp. The excavation forms part of a wider study investigating prehistoric island use by Aborigines of the Whitsunday region as well as archaeological change in the Holocene Period
Morphometric analyses of Batissa violacea shells from Emo (OAC), Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea
Archaeological investigations of human predation pressures on shellfish usually rely on measurements of complete shell specimens. However, most archaeological shell assemblages consist predominantly of broken shells, limiting measurable sample sizes, and thus potentially biasing results in cases where shell fragmentation is biased towards particular size classes (due to shell size‐fragility correspondences). This paper presents a recent applicati…
Keveoki 1: Exploring the Hiri Ceramics Trade at a Short-Lived Village Site near the Vailala River, Papua New Guinea
Investigations at the newly discovered, once-coastal but now inland archaeological village site of Keveoki 1 allows us to characterise the nature and antiquity of ancestral hiri trade ceramics around 450-500 cal BP in the recipient Vailala River-Kea Kea villages of the Gulf Province of the southern coast of Papua New Guinea. This paper reports on the decorated ceramics from Keveoki 1, where a drainage channel cut in 2004 revealed a short-lived vi…
Massacre, Frontier Conflict and Australian Archaeology
This paper examines the nature of archaeological evidence relating to frontier conflict/violence in the Australian context. Because of the unique nature of Aboriginal/European frontier encounters, it is argued that a focus on locating archaeological evidence for massacres is problematic. It is suggested that rather than focus on frontier conflict in terms of massacre sites, archaeologists employ a broader social landscape archaeological approach,…
The Queensland Native Police and Strategies of Recruitment on the Queensland Frontier, 1849–1901
Although historians have provided substantial insights into the structure, development and activities of the Queensland Native Mounted Police, they have rarely focused on the complex and sensitive issue of Aboriginal recruitment. A careful reading of historical records, however, identifies several methods, including coercion, intimidation, kidnapping and inducement, as well as “voluntary” enlistment. It is difficult to identify Aboriginal agency …
The Emo Site (OAC), Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea: Resolving Long-Standing Questions of Antiquity and Implications for the History of the Ancestral Hiri Maritime Trade
Since the 1970s the site of Emo (aka ‘Samoa’, ‘OAC’) in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea has been cited as one of the earliest-known ceramic sites from the southern Papuan lowlands. This site has long been seen as holding c.2000 year old evidence of post-Lapita long-distance maritime trade from (Austronesian-speaking) Motu homelands in the Central Province, where pottery was manufactured, to the (non-Austronesian) Gulf Province some 400km to…
Pre-European coastal settlement and use of the sea: A view from Queensland
We draw attention to important omissions in the chronology of Australian coastal occupation presented by Nicholson and Cane (1994) in their recent review of the subject. In the Queensland section of their review, Nicholson and Cane (1994:110-11) state that coastal settlement is confined to the last 2000 years in the Moreton Bay area, and to the last 1500 years for the remainder of the Queensland coast, with the exception of Princess Charlotte Bay…
Flaked Glass Artifacts from Nineteenth–Century Native Mounted Police Camps in Queensland, Australia
Rock engravings and occupation sites in the Mount Bosavi Region, Papua New Guinea: Implications for our understanding of the human presence in the Southern Highlands
An extensive body of engraved rock art on the Great Papuan Plateau is documented here for the first time, along with the first dates for occupation. Consisting largely of deeply abraded or pecked barred ovals and cupules, the rock art of this region does not fit comfortably into any regional models for rock art previously described. It does, however, exhibit some similarity to art in regions to the east and the west of the plateau. Subject to fur…
The archaeological signature of ‘ant bed’ mound floors in the northern tropics of Australia: Case study on the Lower Laura (Boralga) Native Mounted Police Camp, Cape York Peninsula
The identification of extinct megafauna in rock art using geometric morphometrics: A Genyornis newtoni painting in Arnhem Land, northern Australia
Evidence For Early Holocene Change In The Whitsunday Islands: A New Radiocarbon Determination From Nara Inlet 1
Evidence For Early Holocene Change In The Whitsunday Islands: A New Radiocarbon Determination From Nara Inlet 1." Australian Archaeology, 53(1), pp. 42–43
Nervous nation: Fear, conflict and narratives of fortified domestic architecture on the Queensland frontier
The frontier of nineteenth-and twentieth-century Australia was a place in which colonists routinely lived in fear of retaliation by the Aboriginal peoples whose traditional lands they had forcibly dispossessed. It has been suggested this concern manifested itself in domestic architecture, in both active and passive defensive strategies designed to afford protection against various forms of potential attack. Yet there remains a lack of substantive…
The Mine Island Aboriginal stone arrangements: Spiritual responses to late Holocene change on the central Queensland coast
The Mine Island stone arrangement complex is a large ceremonial complex on the central Queensland coast. The arrangements are in excess of 2 km of looping and U-shaped aligned stones. A series of middens, directly adjacent to the stone arrangements, was recently excavated, providing potential chronological insights into the construction and ceremonial use of the stone arrangement. We posit that these stone arrangements represent a shared spiritua…
Archaeological Evidence for South Sea Islander Traditional Ritual Practice at Wunjunga, Ayr, Central Queensland Coast
This paper presents the results of an excavation of a stone mound at Wunjunga at the mouth of the Burdekin River near Ayr on the central Queensland coast. It is proposed that this construction conforms broadly to the South Sea Islander (SSI) ritual shrines described for Solomon Islands, recorded in oral tradition as related to fishing, purification, curing and warfare. This construction provides material evidence of the continuity of traditional …
The homestead as fortress: Fact or folklore
Houses are quintessential statements of identity, encoding elements of personal and social attitudes, aspirations and realities. As functional containers for human life, they reflect the exigencies of their construction and occupation, as well as the alterations that ensued as contexts, occupants and uses changed. As older houses endure into subsequent social contexts, they become drawn into later symbolic landscapes, connoting both past and pres…
The ritual dugong bone mounds of Koey Ngurtai, Torres Strait, Australia: Investigating their construction
The islands of Western Torres Strait, between Papua New Guinea and Australia, saw the emergence of ritual dugong bone mounds approximately 400 years ago. These mounds were used as a means to commune with, and as an aid for the hunting of, dugongs. This paper explores the bone contents of three dugong bone mounds on the small, uninhabited island of Koey Ngurtai as a means to determine their construction and in doing so to explore the historical em…
The Temporality of Cultural Material on a Deflated Dune System at Abbot Point, Central Queensland Coast
Abbott Point on the central Queensland coast has long been recognised as an area of cultural heritage significance but has essentially been ignored in terms of research archaeology because of the lack of stratified integrity of the cultural material nearly all of which sits on deflated dune surfaces. Because of the problems associated with preservation of open sites in coastal tropical environments (see Bird 1992) most of the archaeological recon…
Archaeological research in Wardaman country, Northern Territory: The Lightning Brothers Project 1990–91 field seasons
The Lightning Brothers Project began in 1988 as a long-term investigation into the archaeology of Wardaman country, near the Victoria River (Northern Territory). This paper reports briefly on research undertaken during the 1990 and 1991 field seasons. Results obtained during the previous two field seasons have been reported elsewhere and will not be repeated here (cf. David et al. 1990a, 1990b, 1990c, 1991, 1992, 1994; David and Hood 1991; Flood …
Short Reports
Nara Inlet 1: A Holocene sequence from the Whitsunday Islands, central Queensland coast
This paper reports an archaeological excavation at Nara Inlet, Hook Island, one of the Whitsunday group off the central Queensland coast. The site, Nara Inlet 1, is a large rockshelter which returned a non-basal 14C date of 8150±80 bp. The excavation forms part of a wider study investigating prehistoric island use by Aborigines of the Whitsunday region as well as archaeological change in the Holocene Period
Pre-European coastal settlement and use of the sea: A view from Queensland
We draw attention to important omissions in the chronology of Australian coastal occupation presented by Nicholson and Cane (1994) in their recent review of the subject. In the Queensland section of their review, Nicholson and Cane (1994:110-11) state that coastal settlement is confined to the last 2000 years in the Moreton Bay area, and to the last 1500 years for the remainder of the Queensland coast, with the exception of Princess Charlotte Bay…
Archaeological research in Wardaman country, Northern Territory: The Lightning Brothers Project 1990–91 field seasons
The Lightning Brothers Project began in 1988 as a long-term investigation into the archaeology of Wardaman country, near the Victoria River (Northern Territory). This paper reports briefly on research undertaken during the 1990 and 1991 field seasons. Results obtained during the previous two field seasons have been reported elsewhere and will not be repeated here (cf. David et al. 1990a, 1990b, 1990c, 1991, 1992, 1994; David and Hood 1991; Flood …
Evidence For Early Holocene Change In The Whitsunday Islands: A New Radiocarbon Determination From Nara Inlet 1
Evidence For Early Holocene Change In The Whitsunday Islands: A New Radiocarbon Determination From Nara Inlet 1." Australian Archaeology, 53(1), pp. 42–43
Short Reports
The Social Archaeology of Austrailian Indigenous Societies
Reveals the ancient past of Aboriginal Australians to be one of long term changes in social relationships and traditions, as well as the active management and manipulation of the environment.
The Temporality of Cultural Material on a Deflated Dune System at Abbot Point, Central Queensland Coast
Abbott Point on the central Queensland coast has long been recognised as an area of cultural heritage significance but has essentially been ignored in terms of research archaeology because of the lack of stratified integrity of the cultural material nearly all of which sits on deflated dune surfaces. Because of the problems associated with preservation of open sites in coastal tropical environments (see Bird 1992) most of the archaeological recon…
Massacre, Frontier Conflict and Australian Archaeology
This paper examines the nature of archaeological evidence relating to frontier conflict/violence in the Australian context. Because of the unique nature of Aboriginal/European frontier encounters, it is argued that a focus on locating archaeological evidence for massacres is problematic. It is suggested that rather than focus on frontier conflict in terms of massacre sites, archaeologists employ a broader social landscape archaeological approach,…
Keveoki 1: Exploring the Hiri Ceramics Trade at a Short-Lived Village Site near the Vailala River, Papua New Guinea
Investigations at the newly discovered, once-coastal but now inland archaeological village site of Keveoki 1 allows us to characterise the nature and antiquity of ancestral hiri trade ceramics around 450-500 cal BP in the recipient Vailala River-Kea Kea villages of the Gulf Province of the southern coast of Papua New Guinea. This paper reports on the decorated ceramics from Keveoki 1, where a drainage channel cut in 2004 revealed a short-lived vi…
Koey Ngurtai: The emergence of a ritual domain in Western Torres Strait
Koey Ngurtai is a small, uninhabited island located midway between the residential islands of Badu and Mabuyag in western Torres Strait. In 2003 and 2004, 100% surveys of the islet revealed 166 cultural sites. Fifty archaeological excavations were undertaken, revealing a rich history of islet use culminating with the emergence of Koey Ngurtai as a ritual centre after 550–700 cal BP, and a proliferation of ritual structures focused on dugong hunti…
The Emo Site (OAC), Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea: Resolving Long-Standing Questions of Antiquity and Implications for the History of the Ancestral Hiri Maritime Trade
Since the 1970s the site of Emo (aka ‘Samoa’, ‘OAC’) in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea has been cited as one of the earliest-known ceramic sites from the southern Papuan lowlands. This site has long been seen as holding c.2000 year old evidence of post-Lapita long-distance maritime trade from (Austronesian-speaking) Motu homelands in the Central Province, where pottery was manufactured, to the (non-Austronesian) Gulf Province some 400km to…
A New Ceramic Assemblage from Caution Bay, South Coast of Mainland PNG: The Linear Shell Edge-Impressed Tradition from Bogi 1
This paper reports on the ceramics from Squares A and B of Bogi 1, a newly excavated site at Caution Bay, south coast of mainland Papua New Guinea. A dense cultural horizon dated from c. 2150 to c. 2100 calBP and preceded by earlier cultural deposits contains previously undescribed ceramics of limited decorative variability almost exclusively focused on Anadara shell edge impressions below finger-grooved lips, which we term the Linear Shell Edge-…
Archaeological Evidence for South Sea Islander Traditional Ritual Practice at Wunjunga, Ayr, Central Queensland Coast
This paper presents the results of an excavation of a stone mound at Wunjunga at the mouth of the Burdekin River near Ayr on the central Queensland coast. It is proposed that this construction conforms broadly to the South Sea Islander (SSI) ritual shrines described for Solomon Islands, recorded in oral tradition as related to fishing, purification, curing and warfare. This construction provides material evidence of the continuity of traditional …
Nawarla Gabarnmang, a 45,180±910 cal BP Site in Jawoyn Country, Southwest Arnhem Land Plateau
Recent excavations at Nawarla Gabarnmang in Jawoyn country, southwest Arnhem Land have produced a long sequence of AMS radiocarbon determinations on individual pieces of charcoal reliably associated with stone artefacts dating back to 45,180±910 cal BP. It represents one of the earliest radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites in Australia. Here we report on initial results
Magnetometer surveys in archaeological research in Papua New Guinea: Keveoki 1, Gulf Province
A magnetometer survey was conducted on the abandoned village site of Keveoki 1, near the Vailala River, Gulf Province, PNG. The survey, using a single sensor proton precession magnetometer, was successful in locating and defining the boundaries of areas confirmed by excavation to contain dense assemblages of pottery. The combination of geophysical and excavation results allowed a broader understanding of the spatial distribution of human occupati…
Morphometric analyses of Batissa violacea shells from Emo (OAC), Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea
Archaeological investigations of human predation pressures on shellfish usually rely on measurements of complete shell specimens. However, most archaeological shell assemblages consist predominantly of broken shells, limiting measurable sample sizes, and thus potentially biasing results in cases where shell fragmentation is biased towards particular size classes (due to shell size‐fragility correspondences). This paper presents a recent applicati…
Lapita sites in the Central Province of mainland Papua New Guinea
For over forty years, archaeologists working along Papua New Guinea's southern coastline have sought evidence for early ceramics and its relationship with Lapita wares of Island Melanesia. Failing to find any such evidence of pottery more than 2000 bp, and largely based on the excavation of eight early pottery-bearing sites during the late 1960s into the early 1970s, synchronous colonization some 2000 bp along 500km of the south Papuan coastline …
The ritual dugong bone mounds of Koey Ngurtai, Torres Strait, Australia: Investigating their construction
The islands of Western Torres Strait, between Papua New Guinea and Australia, saw the emergence of ritual dugong bone mounds approximately 400 years ago. These mounds were used as a means to commune with, and as an aid for the hunting of, dugongs. This paper explores the bone contents of three dugong bone mounds on the small, uninhabited island of Koey Ngurtai as a means to determine their construction and in doing so to explore the historical em…
A 28,000 year old excavated painted rock from Nawarla Gabarnmang, northern Australia
How old are Australia's pictographs? A review of rock art dating
The social construction of caves and rockshelters: Chauvet Cave (France) and Nawarla Gabarnmang (Australia)
Caves and rockshelters are a key component of the archaeological record but are often regarded as natural places conveniently exploited by human communities. Archaeomorphological study shows however that they are not inert spaces but have frequently been modified by human action, sometimes in ways that imply a strong symbolic significance. In this paper the concept of 'aménagement', the re-shaping of a material space or of elements within it, is …
Kumukumu 1, a hilltop site in the Aird Hills: Implications for occupational trends and dynamics in the Kikori River delta, south coast of Papua New Guinea
Dating of in situ longhouse ( dubu daima ) posts in the Kikori River delta: Refining chronologies of island village occupation in the lower Kikori River delta, Papua New Guinea
Baikaboria Ossuary and the Origins of the Kesele Clan, Upper Kikori River, Papua New Guinea
This paper presents archaeological evidence for the initial occupation and use of a large clan ossuary on the upper Kikori River at Baina in Papua New Guinea. Drawing extensively on clan oral accounts of its use and function, it is posited that the timing and use of the site as an ossuary effectively dates the establishment of a sub clan entity known as Kesele and the fragmentation of larger clan based land owning units into smaller sub-clan enti…
The Mine Island Aboriginal stone arrangements: Spiritual responses to late Holocene change on the central Queensland coast
The Mine Island stone arrangement complex is a large ceremonial complex on the central Queensland coast. The arrangements are in excess of 2 km of looping and U-shaped aligned stones. A series of middens, directly adjacent to the stone arrangements, was recently excavated, providing potential chronological insights into the construction and ceremonial use of the stone arrangement. We posit that these stone arrangements represent a shared spiritua…
Archaeology (36 works) · Geography (31 works) · History (23 works) · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies (22 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (22 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (21 works) · History (19 works) · Geology (14 works) · Ethnology (13 works) · Art (11 works)