Noelene Cole
Biographic Data
| ID | 645914 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Noelene Cole |
| GIVEN NAMES | Noelene |
| FAMILY NAME | Cole |
| SIGNATURE | COLE N |
| AFFILIATIONS | James Cook University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7897-9974 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 80 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 25 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Familiar, not foreign
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…
An exceptional assemblage of archaeological plant fibres from Windmill Way, southeast Cape York Peninsula
Coercion and Pacification on the Frontier
The Native Mounted Police were a paramilitary organization that operated across Queensland, Australia during the nineteenth century. Archaeologically they are represented by numerous camp sites occupied for varying durations, from just a few weeks to several decades. Living in these camps were White officers and the Aboriginal troopers serving under them, accompanied by the female partners of the troopers and sometimes of the officer(s), and thei…
Shell artefacts in Cape York Peninsula
As Australia’s largest peninsula, Cape York Peninsula in Queensland presents abundant opportunities to understand the complex relationship between people and coastal environments. Beyond merely being food refuse, shells demonstrate considerable cultural significance as both practical tools and symbolic objects. Yet studies of shell artefacts across Cape York Peninsula have been limited. The Agayrr Bamangay Milbi (ABM) Project, a Traditional Owner…
Categorising Catfish, Jewfish and Eel Motifs in Laura (Quinkan) Rock Art, Cape York Peninsula, Australia
Fish motifs in Aboriginal rock art of the Laura area (Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia) include a heterogenous group that has been imprecisely classified by rock art researchers. By analysing motif attributes, style and contexts (including natural populations), we characterised three categories: fork-tailed catfish (Neoarius paucus), eel-tailed catfish (Neosilurus spp.) and eel (Anguilla reinhardti). We label the categories with the loc…
A preliminary study of culturally modified sugarbag trees in the Laura Sandstone Basin, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland
Erythrophleum spp. (Cooktown ironwood) is an endemic north Australian tree that is a key cultural resource. In Cape York Peninsula (CYP), Traditional Owners value, use, care for and manage the trees in culturally appropriate ways. Members of the Agayrr Bamangay Milbi (ABM) Project team have recorded hundreds of culturally modified Cooktown ironwood trees (CMTs) across southeast CYP, stretching from Jowalbinna in the south to Cape Melville in the …
The Discipline of Dress
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…
Aboriginal rock art of the Laura valleys
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…
The shape of absence
This paper explores the notion of absence as a key, but elusive, element in the contemporary recognition, perception and reception of Australian frontier conflict. It derives from a four-year-long community archaeology project to document the lives and legacies of a devastating frontier paramilitary policing force – the Queensland Native Mounted Police (NMP). The sources of absence in the heritage of the NMP are complex, deriving from silences in…
Trezise, Percy
The archaeology of the ‘Secret War’
Although the historical record relating to nineteenth century frontier conflict between Aboriginal groups and Europeans in Queensland has been clearly documented, there have been limited associated archaeological studies. As part of the Archaeology of the Queensland Native Mounted Police (NMP) project, this paper canvasses the physical imprint of frontier conflict across Queensland between 1849 and the early 1900s, focusing specifically on the ac…
On the brink of a fever stricken swamp’
The archaeological record of Lower Laura (aka Boralga) Native Mounted Police camp, a longstanding base for Queensland’s frontier war in Cape York Peninsula, includes a diverse assemblage of culturally modified Erythophleum chlorastychys (Cooktown ironwood) trees. Analysis of cultural scar attributes and tool marks – which were found to be variously associated with Aboriginal stone tools, tomahawks of different types, and long handled axes – revea…
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 archaeological signature of ‘ant bed’ mound floors in the northern tropics of Australia
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…
The homestead as fortress
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…
Ancient Art and Modern Australians
Two absolute dating methods have been used in the Laura / Quinkan region to date pre-Historic rock art -dating of excavated rock art materials by association with stratified deposits and AMS 14 C dating of rock surface accretions associated with rock art. The research indicates a long art sequence and the occasional survival of late Pleistocene art. This paper focuses on evidence for continuous art practice from the late Pleistocene to the modern…
Art ancien et australiens contemporains
Deux méthodes de datation absolue ont été employées dans la région de Laura / Quinkan pour dater les manifestations d’art préhistorique – la datation des matériaux d’art rupestre par corrélation avec les dépôts stratifiés et datations 14C par AMS des revêtements des surfaces rocheuses associés à l’art rupestre. Les recherches indiquent une longue séquence d’art et la conservation occasionnelle d’un art pléistocène récent. Ce présent article trait…
Endangered Rock Art
This paper reviews a changing scenario of cultural heritage management in the Quinkan region, Cape York Peninsula, currently experiencing unprecedented pressures from tourism and mining. From 1971 State and Federal governments acted to address concerns over protecting Quinkan rock art from modern impacts such as tourism: Gresley Holding (locally known as Crocodile Station) received statutory recognition as a declared ‘Aboriginal site’, the Quinka…
Battle Camp to Boralga
The history of the Cook district in north-eastern Australia illustrates the Queensland government's difficulties in maintaining colonial settlement in the remote north and the determination of Aboriginal people to resist the gold, transport and pastoral frontiers. Expeditions of Kennedy ( In each case the resolve of the intruders, if not their rifle power, was matched by tenacious Aboriginal resistance. William Hann's journey into southern Cape Y…
Painting the Police
Aboriginal rock paintings of policemen near Laura and their ‘ethnographic interpretation’ were reported by Percy Trezise (1985:74, 1993) but are otherwise unstudied. This research integrates formal analysis of an assemblage of police and associated depictions with cultural, historical and archaeological evidence to shed light on Indigenous society and identity in the frontier period (c.1873-1890s). In drawing on Aboriginal testimony the study con…
AMS dating of rock art in the Laura Region, Cape York Peninsula, Australia - protocols and results of recent research
The authors describe rock art dating research in Australia using the oxalate method. While the array of dates obtained (which range from c. 1200 to c. 25 000 BP) show a satisfactory correlation with other archaeological data, there are mismatches which suggest that some motifs were often imitated by later artists, and/or that the mineral accretions continued to form periodically, perhaps continuously, as a regional phenomenon over a long period o…
Accelerator radiocarbon dating of plant-fibre binders in rock paintings from northeastern Australia
During the late Holocene, Aboriginal rock painters in north Queensland selected and combined various natural inorganic and organic materials in paint recipes - possibly to increase the longevity of their paintings. The organic materials make direct radiocarbon dating possible
Rock art and inter-regional interaction in northeastern Australian prehistory
The Cape York peninsula, in tropical Queensland, shows distinct regional pattern in its recent rock art. And there is regional pattern also in the exchange networks of ethnohistorical times. Do these patterns bear a relationship
Rock art and inter-regional interaction in northeastern Australian prehistory
The Cape York peninsula, in tropical Queensland, shows distinct regional pattern in its recent rock art. And there is regional pattern also in the exchange networks of ethnohistorical times. Do these patterns bear a relationship
AMS dating of rock art in the Laura Region, Cape York Peninsula, Australia - protocols and results of recent research
The authors describe rock art dating research in Australia using the oxalate method. While the array of dates obtained (which range from c. 1200 to c. 25 000 BP) show a satisfactory correlation with other archaeological data, there are mismatches which suggest that some motifs were often imitated by later artists, and/or that the mineral accretions continued to form periodically, perhaps continuously, as a regional phenomenon over a long period o…
Painting the Police
Aboriginal rock paintings of policemen near Laura and their ‘ethnographic interpretation’ were reported by Percy Trezise (1985:74, 1993) but are otherwise unstudied. This research integrates formal analysis of an assemblage of police and associated depictions with cultural, historical and archaeological evidence to shed light on Indigenous society and identity in the frontier period (c.1873-1890s). In drawing on Aboriginal testimony the study con…
Accelerator radiocarbon dating of plant-fibre binders in rock paintings from northeastern Australia
During the late Holocene, Aboriginal rock painters in north Queensland selected and combined various natural inorganic and organic materials in paint recipes - possibly to increase the longevity of their paintings. The organic materials make direct radiocarbon dating possible
Battle Camp to Boralga
The history of the Cook district in north-eastern Australia illustrates the Queensland government's difficulties in maintaining colonial settlement in the remote north and the determination of Aboriginal people to resist the gold, transport and pastoral frontiers. Expeditions of Kennedy ( In each case the resolve of the intruders, if not their rifle power, was matched by tenacious Aboriginal resistance. William Hann's journey into southern Cape Y…
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 …
On the brink of a fever stricken swamp’
The archaeological record of Lower Laura (aka Boralga) Native Mounted Police camp, a longstanding base for Queensland’s frontier war in Cape York Peninsula, includes a diverse assemblage of culturally modified Erythophleum chlorastychys (Cooktown ironwood) trees. Analysis of cultural scar attributes and tool marks – which were found to be variously associated with Aboriginal stone tools, tomahawks of different types, and long handled axes – revea…
Endangered Rock Art
This paper reviews a changing scenario of cultural heritage management in the Quinkan region, Cape York Peninsula, currently experiencing unprecedented pressures from tourism and mining. From 1971 State and Federal governments acted to address concerns over protecting Quinkan rock art from modern impacts such as tourism: Gresley Holding (locally known as Crocodile Station) received statutory recognition as a declared ‘Aboriginal site’, the Quinka…
The archaeological signature of ‘ant bed’ mound floors in the northern tropics of Australia
The homestead as fortress
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 shape of absence
This paper explores the notion of absence as a key, but elusive, element in the contemporary recognition, perception and reception of Australian frontier conflict. It derives from a four-year-long community archaeology project to document the lives and legacies of a devastating frontier paramilitary policing force – the Queensland Native Mounted Police (NMP). The sources of absence in the heritage of the NMP are complex, deriving from silences in…
Rock art and inter-regional interaction in northeastern Australian prehistory
The Cape York peninsula, in tropical Queensland, shows distinct regional pattern in its recent rock art. And there is regional pattern also in the exchange networks of ethnohistorical times. Do these patterns bear a relationship
Accelerator radiocarbon dating of plant-fibre binders in rock paintings from northeastern Australia
During the late Holocene, Aboriginal rock painters in north Queensland selected and combined various natural inorganic and organic materials in paint recipes - possibly to increase the longevity of their paintings. The organic materials make direct radiocarbon dating possible
AMS dating of rock art in the Laura Region, Cape York Peninsula, Australia - protocols and results of recent research
The authors describe rock art dating research in Australia using the oxalate method. While the array of dates obtained (which range from c. 1200 to c. 25 000 BP) show a satisfactory correlation with other archaeological data, there are mismatches which suggest that some motifs were often imitated by later artists, and/or that the mineral accretions continued to form periodically, perhaps continuously, as a regional phenomenon over a long period o…
Painting the Police
Aboriginal rock paintings of policemen near Laura and their ‘ethnographic interpretation’ were reported by Percy Trezise (1985:74, 1993) but are otherwise unstudied. This research integrates formal analysis of an assemblage of police and associated depictions with cultural, historical and archaeological evidence to shed light on Indigenous society and identity in the frontier period (c.1873-1890s). In drawing on Aboriginal testimony the study con…
Battle Camp to Boralga
The history of the Cook district in north-eastern Australia illustrates the Queensland government's difficulties in maintaining colonial settlement in the remote north and the determination of Aboriginal people to resist the gold, transport and pastoral frontiers. Expeditions of Kennedy ( In each case the resolve of the intruders, if not their rifle power, was matched by tenacious Aboriginal resistance. William Hann's journey into southern Cape Y…
Endangered Rock Art
This paper reviews a changing scenario of cultural heritage management in the Quinkan region, Cape York Peninsula, currently experiencing unprecedented pressures from tourism and mining. From 1971 State and Federal governments acted to address concerns over protecting Quinkan rock art from modern impacts such as tourism: Gresley Holding (locally known as Crocodile Station) received statutory recognition as a declared ‘Aboriginal site’, the Quinka…
Ancient Art and Modern Australians
Two absolute dating methods have been used in the Laura / Quinkan region to date pre-Historic rock art -dating of excavated rock art materials by association with stratified deposits and AMS 14 C dating of rock surface accretions associated with rock art. The research indicates a long art sequence and the occasional survival of late Pleistocene art. This paper focuses on evidence for continuous art practice from the late Pleistocene to the modern…
Art ancien et australiens contemporains
Deux méthodes de datation absolue ont été employées dans la région de Laura / Quinkan pour dater les manifestations d’art préhistorique – la datation des matériaux d’art rupestre par corrélation avec les dépôts stratifiés et datations 14C par AMS des revêtements des surfaces rocheuses associés à l’art rupestre. Les recherches indiquent une longue séquence d’art et la conservation occasionnelle d’un art pléistocène récent. Ce présent article trait…
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…
The homestead as fortress
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 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 archaeological signature of ‘ant bed’ mound floors in the northern tropics of Australia
Trezise, Percy
The archaeology of the ‘Secret War’
Although the historical record relating to nineteenth century frontier conflict between Aboriginal groups and Europeans in Queensland has been clearly documented, there have been limited associated archaeological studies. As part of the Archaeology of the Queensland Native Mounted Police (NMP) project, this paper canvasses the physical imprint of frontier conflict across Queensland between 1849 and the early 1900s, focusing specifically on the ac…
On the brink of a fever stricken swamp’
The archaeological record of Lower Laura (aka Boralga) Native Mounted Police camp, a longstanding base for Queensland’s frontier war in Cape York Peninsula, includes a diverse assemblage of culturally modified Erythophleum chlorastychys (Cooktown ironwood) trees. Analysis of cultural scar attributes and tool marks – which were found to be variously associated with Aboriginal stone tools, tomahawks of different types, and long handled axes – revea…
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…
The shape of absence
This paper explores the notion of absence as a key, but elusive, element in the contemporary recognition, perception and reception of Australian frontier conflict. It derives from a four-year-long community archaeology project to document the lives and legacies of a devastating frontier paramilitary policing force – the Queensland Native Mounted Police (NMP). The sources of absence in the heritage of the NMP are complex, deriving from silences in…
Aboriginal rock art of the Laura valleys
The Discipline of Dress
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…
Coercion and Pacification on the Frontier
The Native Mounted Police were a paramilitary organization that operated across Queensland, Australia during the nineteenth century. Archaeologically they are represented by numerous camp sites occupied for varying durations, from just a few weeks to several decades. Living in these camps were White officers and the Aboriginal troopers serving under them, accompanied by the female partners of the troopers and sometimes of the officer(s), and thei…
Shell artefacts in Cape York Peninsula
As Australia’s largest peninsula, Cape York Peninsula in Queensland presents abundant opportunities to understand the complex relationship between people and coastal environments. Beyond merely being food refuse, shells demonstrate considerable cultural significance as both practical tools and symbolic objects. Yet studies of shell artefacts across Cape York Peninsula have been limited. The Agayrr Bamangay Milbi (ABM) Project, a Traditional Owner…
Categorising Catfish, Jewfish and Eel Motifs in Laura (Quinkan) Rock Art, Cape York Peninsula, Australia
Fish motifs in Aboriginal rock art of the Laura area (Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia) include a heterogenous group that has been imprecisely classified by rock art researchers. By analysing motif attributes, style and contexts (including natural populations), we characterised three categories: fork-tailed catfish (Neoarius paucus), eel-tailed catfish (Neosilurus spp.) and eel (Anguilla reinhardti). We label the categories with the loc…
A preliminary study of culturally modified sugarbag trees in the Laura Sandstone Basin, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland
Erythrophleum spp. (Cooktown ironwood) is an endemic north Australian tree that is a key cultural resource. In Cape York Peninsula (CYP), Traditional Owners value, use, care for and manage the trees in culturally appropriate ways. Members of the Agayrr Bamangay Milbi (ABM) Project team have recorded hundreds of culturally modified Cooktown ironwood trees (CMTs) across southeast CYP, stretching from Jowalbinna in the south to Cape Melville in the …
An exceptional assemblage of archaeological plant fibres from Windmill Way, southeast Cape York Peninsula
Familiar, not foreign
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…
Archaeology (20 works) · History (15 works) · Geography (14 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (11 works) · Cape (11 works) · Peninsula (11 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (11 works) · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies (10 works) · Art (10 works) · Sociology (10 works)