The Tasmanians
Part 8b: Archaeology and the Oldest
Tasmanians
8.6.2.
Mainland Tasmania
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The major Tasmanian caves are located in Karst areas (red
on the map). Karst is a limestone and dolomite region marked
by sinks, underground streams and often complex cave
systems.
1. Franklin River valley
2. Maxwell River valley
3. Weld River valley
4. Florentine River valley
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Macintosh
site
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The Mackintosh archaeological site.
(maps adapted from Stern N. and Marshall B. 1993.
"Excavations at Mackintosh 90/1 in western Tasmania: a
discussion of stratigraphy, chronology and site formation."
Archaeoleogy in Oceania, vol 28, 1: 8-17)
Macintosh site is a small site: the cave floor covers
12.5 sq.m. The Prospectors' trench was dug around 1900 by
private prospectors. Its existence allowed the
archaeologists to inspect the stratification of the cave
floor without much extra work and to spot the promising
archaeoeleogical levels.
The Macintosh site is unusual because the cave was
occupied by humans only once about 16,000 years ago and that
for the (relatively) short time of 1,500 to 2,000 years.
This gives the finds the character of an archaeological
"snapshot". Other sites in Tasmania were occupied for as
much as 20,000 years without discernible break in the human
presence.
Lake Macintosh is artificial and used for electricity
generation. Its dams and power station were constructed
between 1974 and 1987. Water levels vary and at maximum the
cave is completely flooded up to the level indicated in the
drawing below. The rise and fall of the water level damages
the deposits and erodes the slope in front of the cave.
In prehistoric times, Macintosh site looked out over the
valley with its river 20 m below. The valley could well have
been a transit route for travelling hunting-gathering
groups, with the cave providing a small but conveniently
located shelter for short stops or a base for hunting
expeditions into the surrounding environment.
Macintosh site is 32 km west of the Macintosh site (see
above).
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Top view map of Mackintosh LM90/1 cave with excavation
squares. The site was excavated in the short time of only 3
weeks during January-February 1991.
The yellow lines A
and B refer to the cross-sections below.
The red lines refer
to the stratigraphic cross sections A-A and B-B further
below.
The 50 x 50 cm excavation squares were laid out so as to
sample deposits from the rear, the front and the sides of
the cave.
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Below two views sof archaeoelogical strata in the Macintosh cave
(for the location of the A-A and B-B cut line see top view map
above)
(adapted from Stern N. and Marshall B. 1993. "Excavations at
Mackintosh 90/1 in western Tasmania: a discussion of stratigraphy,
chronology and site formation." Archaeoleogy in Oceania, vol
28, 1: 8-17)
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Large red
figures:
C14 dates in years before the present
1. 16,010 ± 300
years
2. 15,730 ± 170
years
3. 15,720 ± 200
years
4. 15,560 ± 200
years
5.
15,160 ±
210 years
6.
15,570 180 years
7.
14,820 140 years
8.
4,910 160
years
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Small black figures:
Archaeological strata
Horizon I - no human traces
1.yellow and white sterile sands
Horizon II - many trces of a hunab presence (hearths,
charcoal, ochre)
2. very dark reddish-brown sandy silt
2A. mottled very reddish brown silt and yellow
sands
3. brown sandy silt
3A.interfingering brown silty and yellow sands
3B.homogeneous very dark brown sandy silt
3C.brown sandy silt with flecks of white clay
3C.brown sandy silt with flecks of white clay
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3D.hearth lense (outside our drawings)
4. pale ashy silt
4A. brown silt with white clay
Horizon III - no human traces, scat of small
mammals
5. scat accumulation
6. grey clay
6A. Peaty clay
Horizon IV - som jumbled archaeological human
traces
7. overfill from prospectors' trench
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Number and types of artefacts found at Mackintosh cave reflect its
probable "passsing through" character : tools do not nearly approach
in density and numbers those found at major Pleistocene Tasmanian
sites. Notable at Mackintosh is the presence of thumb scrapers and a
preference for quartz as the predominant raw material. Exotic raw
materials such as crystal quartz, chert and Darwin glass occur only
in the oldest strata. Bones of animals eaten by humans (mostly
wallabies) occur in the lower strata where they are mixed in with
bones eaten by animals - which may reflect the occasional passing use
of the shelter by humans.
Parmerpar
Meethaner site
Occupied by humans possibly as early as 40,000 years ago (if a
piece of charcoal dated to that time is of human origin) and still
inhabited less than a few hundred years ago, this site is among the
longest-inhabited sites in Tasmanian and indeed human prehistory. For
a site of such importance, remarkably little has been published
specifically on it. Our data comes from Richard Cosgrove. 1995. "Late
Pleistocene behavioural variation and time trends: the case from
Tasmania", Archaeology in Oceania, vol. 30, 2:83-104, October
1995
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Location of the he Parmerpar Meethaner rockshelter.
The site is 10 km south of Lemonthyme power station and
200 m east of Patons Road. It is also 32 km east of the
Macintosh site (see above).
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Top view of the Parmerpar Meethaner rock shelter.
In 1990 a test pit was excavated by the original
discoverer of the cave, Ms Sue Kee.
The excatation in the squares A-H shown on the map was
carried out by a number of teams (Cosgrove, Murray, Porch)
in the years 1992 to 1994.
The yellow line A
refers to the cross-section below.
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Cross-section of then Parmerpar Meethaner site.
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Excavation work in progress at Parmerpar Meethaner,
1993.
Note the shored-up walls of the excavation pit. Shoring
was necessary to prevent collapse of the walls.
No traces of a of a human presence were found below 1.92
m depth. Below that depth was only sterile material.
Excavation ceased at 2.3 m but bedrock at that depth had
still not been reached.
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Stratification of excavation squares A, B, C and D.
Red numbers denote the
stratification units as described below.
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In the top layers of Parmerpar Meethaner, signs of aboriginal and
European visits have been found. After the end of the Pleistocene ice
age (ca. 12,000 years ago) the cave seems to have been used only
rarely (as indeed was most of inland western Tasmania) but unlike
other sites in the area, Parmerpa Meethaner was not abandoned
altogether as a few tools and the three youngest dates on the C14
date list below indicate. Holocene visitors must have been hunting
parties passing through and staying only briefly. Parmerpar Meethaner
is the only site of inland western Tasmania where traces of a
post-pleistocene aboriginal presence have been found. This makes it
the site with the longest continuous occupation in Tasmania.
A brief description of the stratufucation units in the map above
(adapted from Richard Cosgrove, 1995):
1. The
unit represents the final phase of the aboriginal and the beginning
of the European exploitation if the area. There are narrow
accumulations of loose organic material and composed of leaf litter,
large lumps of charcoal and pieces of quartz fallen from the roof of
the cave, stone artefacts of quartz and hornfels, bone fragments and
some undefined black resinous material (Bakelite?), wood chips, cut
tree branches as well as scats from Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus
harrisii) .
2. The
unit represent the final stages of undisturbed aboriginal life and
culture before the arrival of Europeans. There are large quantities
of charcoal in this layer which is and mostly of various brown
colours which thought to be the effect of fire from the great number
of hearths and their fires. There is a much roof-fall and some of it
has crumbled because of the effect of fires.
3. The
narrow unit contains a fewhighly oxidized and mottled areas which are
thought to be the remains of hearths. Hornfels flake tools were found
and those lying at the base of the unit were burnt black. At the
bottom of this unit there is a a transition zone of grey soil which
either represents the lowest hearths of a sequence of earlier hearths
which have become mixed together. The unit also contains some
charcoal lenses and ash along t its base.
4. A
dark brown, homogeneous organic unit with an unconsolidated structure
and containing large quantities of ash and the remains of many rock
falls. Animal bonesones, charcoal and stone artefacts were also
found.
5.
Similar in many way to unit 4 but of
a much lighter orange colour. The unit had many rockfalls and had
numerous quartz and quartzite artefacts (including thumbnail
scrapers) were found. This unit had little bone material.
6. This
unit is very similar to unit 4.
Calcite bones and small patches of
charcoal were found.
7.
Sterile, i.e. no trace of a human
presence. The material of this layer seems to be mostly roof-fall The
excavation stopped here without reaching
bedrock.
The excavators note the possibility
of further human traces below this sterile layer if the roof-fall
accumulated quickly. This has snot been followed up by later
excavations.
C14 (radio carbon) dates from charcoal particles at Parmerpar
Meethaneer. Only the three most recent and the three most ancient
dates found are shown here.
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Excavation square
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Depth
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Unit
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C14 age in years before present
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B
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43 cm
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1
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780 ±50 years before present
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B
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52 cm
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1
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3,310 ±50 years before present
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A
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70 cm
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2
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10,370 ±120 years before present
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D
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187 cm
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4
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33,850 ±450 years before present
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D
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190 cm
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4
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33,260 ± years before present
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D
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200 cm
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4
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39,970 ±950 years before present
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An endscraper of milky quartz found at Parmerpar
Meethaner. This type of tool, together with thumbnail
scrapers become common between 18,000 and 10,000 years
before the presentbut they had begun to appear in small
numbers much earlier between 28,000 and 22,000 years before
the present.(adapted from Richard Cosgrove. 1995).
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Maneena
Langatick Tattana Emita site
The limeston karst Nelson River valley
contained many sites (open air, caves, rockshelters,
sinkholes) of potential interest to
archaeologists. From 1991 archaeological emergency excavations
was carried out ahead of a hydroelectric project that was to flood
much of the valley and its sites. Of the three sites mentioned below
only one, Maneena Langatick Tattana Emita, produced definitive
evidence of human occupation (this site was
given an aboriginal name in the late 1990s and was previously known
as Manfern Cave or Nelson River cave 2). The other two sites
(Overhang and Nelson River 1) were too disturbed in their
stratification to produce much meaningful and datable material.
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Left:
Map of Maneena Langatick Tattana Emita cave (with
cross-section line for the drawing below)
Below: side view
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This cave is relatively dry,
sheltered from most weathers and receives good natural
light. It once had an even floor but much of that has
now broken away and the original cave floor is preserved
only at the back and much of the floor is now slumping
steeply.
Test pits (TP) 1 to 3 were dug to establish the nature
and antiquity of human occupation at the site. 203 stone
artefacts were found but most of the stone was debitage
(flake fragments, debris, flakes and broken flakes).Cores
and scrapers made up less than 4% of the assemblage. 80% of
the tools and debitage were of quartz while 20 pieces of
Darwin glass was found. Animal bones were uncovered but only
the larger mammalian remains seem likely to relate to human
activity. TP4 was dug beneath the hole in the cave floor and
turned out sterile.
Small samples of charcoal from TP2 and TP3 were C14 dated
between 10,500 and 11,250 years before the present.
Illustration left: the stratification of the west section
of TP5 down to a depth of 108 cm below the surface which is
not quite down to bedrock. The excavators did not dig
further down because the clay and silt at the bottom of the
pit were sterile.
TP5 is the most interesting of all test pits because it
was excavated in what is thought to be the original cave
floor at the back of the cave. This yielded the oldest dates
for a human presence found at any Nelson river site: between
15,500 and 17,200 years before the present.
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Kutikina
(Fraser) site
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Kutikina cave main entrance.
This cave has produce an oldest date of 19,770 ± 850
years years before the present.
(adapted from Josephine Flood, Archaeology of the
Dreamtime, 1983, University of Hawaii Press).
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The Kutikina
limestone cave (also known as Fraser Cave),was discovered in 1977 by
Dr Kevin Kiernan as an archaeological site. Until then it had been
assumed by most archaeologists that the interior of southwest
Tasmania was so rugged that no prehistoric people could possibly have
settled there at any time. It is now now known that this was quite
mistaken and that Tasmanians had lived there perhaps not quite as
long ago as in other Tasmanian sites but certainly during the later
Pleistocene.
A
vast amount of animal bones (a quarter of a million pieces are
mentioned in literature) was excavated at Kutikina from 1981 but not
analyzed until 2005. These things take time in Tasmania.
Also
impressive was the number of stone tools we also found at the site:
excavating just 1% of the cave's artefact-bearing stratum produced
75,000 tools and fragments of tools, which in respect to tstone tools
makes Kutikina the richest of all Tasmanian sites found so
far.
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The stratigraphy of Kutikina (Fraser) cave
(adapted from Kiernan K., Jones R., and Ranson D, 1983. "New
Evidence from Fraser Cave for glacial age man in south-west
Tasmania"," in: Nature, 301:28-32, 6 Jan 1983)
Black numbers 1-17 are strata numbers
Red numbers are C14 date sampling locations:
1. 14,840 ±930
years before present
2. 17,020 ±310
years before present
3.
15,670
±530 years before present
4.
no date (samples too
mineralized)
5.
19,770
±850 years before
present
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When the British
first arrived in numbers around 1800, they found the western
mountainous parts (apart from a few people living along the western
coast) devoid of human life. In 1981, however, a chance discovery
made by Don Ranson and Rhys Jones at an open river bank site (where
Gordon and Denison rivers meet was dated to aeounds 300 years before
the present, indicating that a few aboriginal Tasmanians did visit
the area a least occasionally.
During the
Pleistocene (the ice age era that finished around 12,000 years before
the present), in fact, there was an astonishing amount of human
activity in the area as the countless major and minor sites in the
site map above indicates.As the cave's
discoverer, Kevin Kiernan, notes:
This region offers probably the least archaeological
visibility of any in Australia, due to the dense vegetation, rapid
peat growth and lack of exposure, but the two rivers run through
extensive outcrops of Ordovician limestone where karst landforms
are well developed. Since 1974 a series of pioneer ing
speleological expeditions has documented numerous caves' including
in 1977 a large one called Fraser Cave (F34), on he east bank of
the Franklin River where original reports noted the existence of
an extensive bone deposit. During a later visit in February 1981,
Kiernan recognized stone tools and charred bones which indicated
this deposit to be of human origin. Accordingly in March 1981 we
went up the river to visit the site and conduct a pilot
investigation.
The three
authors of the groundbreaking article on this cave (Kiernan K., Jones
R., and Ranson D, 1983. "New Evidence from Fraser Cave for glacial
age man in south-west Tasmania"," in: Nature, 301:28-32, 6 Jan
1983) have the following details to report:
Archaeological
remains
Although the
total excavation measured [only] approx. 0.67 cubic meters
in volume, some 75,000 stone flakes and tools were recovered ....
This sample is estimated to be [ uch less than] 1% of, the
total artefact-bearing deposit. Because only ca. 100 stone
artefacts were recovered in situ from the only other directly
dated Pleistocene sites in Tasmania, namely Beginner's Luck Cave
on the Florentine River and Cave Bay
Cave on present-day Hunter Island, it can be appreciated that
the Fraser Cave assemblage has the potential to transform our
present knowledge of Tasmanian late Pleistocene stone technology.
The oldest artefact was a single flake recovered from within the
basal stratigraphical unit 1, which indicated some occupation
probably before 20,000 years before the present. However, several
hundred flakes and worked tools together with much charcoal were
found within the succeeding sands and gravels of unit 3. In almost
all the succeeding units, especially the limestone rubble layers,
there are numerous stone tools, the only sterile layers being the
sand lenses (units 5, 7, 9). In the uppermost complex, there are
superimposed hearths with lenses of red-baked clay and abundant
charcoal flecks. Occupation ceased suddenly after unit 16 which is
dated to around 15,000 years ago. Then the deposit was covered by
a thin flow stone, and there is no indication of subsequent human
occupation or use of the cave.
The raw
materials used for making the stone tools were mostly cobbles of
fine-grained siliceous rocks, which could be obtained easily from
glacial outwash gravels in the Franklin river-bed nearby. An
exception to this lies in a small number of stone tools made from
Darwin Glass, which is an impactite associated with a large
meteorite crater in the tributary Andrew River Valley 25 km to the
north-west. A westward splash pattern away from the Franklin River
has been demon strated for this material, which suggests that
these pieces of glass are manuports [i.e. carried into the
cave by humans]. Darwin Glass artefacts appear in the sequence
from the unit 8 rubble upwards indicating that a considerable
mineralogical knowledge of this geologically com plex region of
south-west Tasmania had been achieved by this time.
Typologically,
the tools consist mostly of steep-edge scrapers and domed
core-scrapers with steep edges that are often at right angles and
show extensive stepped flaking. There are also small round
'thumbnail' scrapers and many retouched flakes. In general this
assemblage bears a close resemblance to the tools from the lowest
levels of the South Cave, Rocky
Cape, on the north coast of Tasmania which have been dated to
between 6,000 and 8,000 years ago". The Fraser Cave sequence thus
fills a large part of a crucial gap between the base of Rocky Cape
and the brief palimpsest of the 20 to 22,000 year old occupation
of Cave Bay Cave. From these sites we now have an almost
continuous sequence extending from the stone tool technology of
the ethnographically recorded Aborigines of the early part of the
last century back to just before the Last Glacial Maximum in
Tasmania. The Fraser Cave assemblage is also typologically similar
to near contemporary industries on the Australian mainland, such
as the Lake Mungo assemblage which is dated to 25,000 years ago.
All these tools belong to what has been termed the 'Australian
core tool. and scraper tradition'. It has long been assumed that
Tasmanian stone industries were derived from this technological
tradition at a time when Tasmania formed part of the single land
mass of Greater Australia [Sahul]. The Fraser Cave
assemblage confirms this. After the post-glacial inundation of
Bass Strait, this tradition continued in Tasmania with only slow
internal evolutionary changes towards a reduction of average size
of tools. On the mainland, however, there were transformational
changes associated with the introduction or invention in
mid-recent times and later of a variety of small gum-halted tools
such as backed microliths, points and adzes.
Ochre
fragments were found in almost all units above the limestone
rubble (unit 6) showing that this pigment was being carried into
the cave at this time. Despite an intensive search, no signs of
rock art were seen on the walls of the cave.
Bone fragments
were found in all of the units which contained stone tools, and
were absent in culturally sterile layers. From a preliminary
analysis based on mandible and maxilla counts, 90% of the bones
are of the large wallaby Macropus rufogriseus and about 8%
are of the wombat Vombatus ursinus. The remaining 2%
consist of Tasmanian Devil Sarcophilus harrisii and various
small mammals. Both Bowdlert and Balme have independently proposed
criteria for distinguishing cave bone accumulations which have
resulted from non-human predation such as that by owls and
Tasmanian Devils, as opposed to the middens of human hunters. For
the latter they suggest an overwhelming preponderance of one or
two large game species; a substantial number of bones showing
calcination or other evidence of fire; and bones, especially long
bones, which have been smashed to obtain the marrow. The
fulfillment of these criteria, together with the easy access into
and out of Fraser Cave, demonstrate that this bone assemblage is a
human midden.
Kutikina
(Fraser) is one of the richest archaeoelogical sites ever found, not
only in Tasmania but in Australia as a whole. A quarter of a million
bone fragments together with 75,000 stone tools were found in the
excavation area and are thought to represent only 1% of the artefact
bearing deposit at this site.
Although the
material was excavated in 1981 no formal analysis of it was done.
Everybody was too busy arguing about the name of the cave (see
immediately below). It was not until 2005 that archaeologist Jillian
Garvey could do an analysis of the more than 250,000 animal
fragments. Working for eight months at the Tasmanian Museum and Art
Gallery, Garvey found the fragments were mostly of Bennett's wallaby
and wombat and that the majority of long-bones had been split along
their length so that the nutritious bone marrow could be extracted.
Only humans could have done that.
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The
Naming and Re-naming of Fraser resp. Kutikina
cave
In 2002 Tim
Bonyhady on ABC National Radio had the following
mind-boggling story to tell about how Franklin (or Kutikina)
cave got its name(s). See also Nunamira
(Bluff) Cave.
The limestone outcrops which rise about
Tasmania's Franklin River are riddled with caves. Most are
small, but a few run deep into the cliffs through lofty
chambers decorated with stalactites. When speleologists
found one such cave in 1977, they named it after Australia's
Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser. This choice, on a river
named by the surveyor James Calder in 1840 after Tasmania's
Governor, Sir John Franklin, might appear unremarkable. But
the process of place-naming in the 1970s was very different
to the 1840s.
When Calder selected Franklin,
place-naming was a prerogative of explorers. When
speleologists selected Fraser, place-naming required
official authorisation. Names proposed by members of the
public had to be approved by State Geographical Names
Boards. One of their functions was to stop naming being a
means of influencing the powerful. And the speleologists
were looking for political advantage. They hoped to spur the
Prime Minister to stop Tasmania's Hydro-Electric Commission
from damming the Franklin. The debate which ensued about
'Fraser Cave' illustrates the enduring political
significance of place-naming.
Tasmania's Nomenclature Board immediately
opposed the new name. It instructed the speleologists that
it had the sole right to name caves and that the use of
names of living persons was 'contrary to Nomenclature
principles'. But Fraser Cave only became the stuff of
intense debate in 1981, when the speleologist, Kevin
Kiernan, returned to the cave and discovered a mass of bones
which, he immediately realised, probably dated to the peak
of the last Ice Age.
Until then, it had been generally assumed
that the interior of south-west Tasmania was so inhospitable
that Aborigines had not occupied it either at the time of
European settlement or during the last Ice Age When the
Hydro-Electric Commission justified its dam, it assumed
there were no archaeological remains at risk. Kiernan's
discovery undermined this assumption. A radiocarbon date of
19,000 years, finalised in December 1981, established not
only that human beings had inhabited the south-west before
the onset of the last Ice Age, but also that the cave's
occupants had been the most southerly known human beings in
the world.
By then, conservationists were playing on
the cave's name as part of making the most of Kiernan's
discovery. Its location in Fraser Cave, while Fraser was
Prime Minister, added an extra dimension to the
conservationists' calls for Federal intervention,
particularly when ABC Radio reported that on being informed
of the find by Kiernan, 'the Prime Minister had expressed
his appreciation at having his name bestowed and wished to
be kept informed on the matter'.
This publicity revived the Nomenclature
Board's opposition to 'Fraser Cave'. It restated that it was
responsible for place-naming in Tasmania, and asked Andrew
Lohrey, the Minister for Lands in the State Labor
government, to affirm that political names such as Fraser
'would not be considered suitable for approval by the
Nomenclature Board'. But Lohrey supported the speleologists'
choice. While making great play of how he thought Fraser a
'horrible' name, he declared it 'the right of the discoverer
to put forward what he considers to be an appropriate
name.'
Tasmania's National Parks and Wildlife
Service also supported the name Fraser Cave. Its Director,
Peter Murrell, reminded the Board that its own guiding
principles provided that the 'first consideration' was names
used in reference books and that 'Fraser' already had this
status through a host of publications. Murrell also
instructed the Board that it could apply the name of a
living person 'in exceptional circumstances' and that 'the
danger of the cave being totally destroyed by inundation'
qualified as 'exceptional'.
While the Nomenclature Board dismissed
these arguments, it struggled to find an alternative to
Fraser. The Tasmanian Archaeological Society suggested a way
out of this impasse n August 1981. It proposed that the
cave's name should reflect its association with the
Tasmanian Aborigines. It encouraged the Board to look for a
word, perhaps meaning 'cavern' or 'dark place' in the main
Word-List of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Languages, compiled by
N.J.B. Plomley and that it should also consult with Plomley
himself.
Only perhaps in Tasmania could anyone n
the late 20th century have suggested the official use of an
Aboriginal word without suggesting that the Aboriginal
community be consulted. But Aboriginal politics in Tasmania
was very different to that in the rest of Australia.
Although the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre had spent much of
the 1970s demonstrating that Tasmania's Aborigines had
survived, it remained a commonplace that Truganini was 'The
Last Tasmanian' when she died in 1876.
Plomley, like many scientists, did not
consider that the descendants of the Aboriginal women and
white sealers who had lived on the islands of Bass Strait
from the early 1800s until the 1960s, were Aborigines. His
suggested names for the cave, all words once used by West
Coast tribes, included 'karlare' for 'cave' and 'noonameena'
for 'native house'.
The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre finally
asserted an interest in the cave and called for its
protection in 1982, almost a year after Kiernan's discovery
of the Ice Age bones. When representatives of the Centre
first met the Board, they explained that the Aboriginal
community had felt insulted by the use of the name 'Fraser'
for obviously political purposes. They accepted that some of
the words from Plomley's list were 'good suggestions', but
stressed their preference for names being used at the
present time by the Aboriginal Community. They proposed one
of these words, 'kutikina' meaning 'spirit'.
The Board responded by looking for a word
for 'spirit' with a longer lineage. Plomley's word-list
included a range of 'good spirits' or 'God', but the Board
ignored them, perhaps because Plomley questioned their
accuracy in his accompanying text. Instead the Board turned
to Plomley's long list of words for 'devils', hardly an
attractive characterisation of the cave. It adopted Kutikina
only after Ros Langford of the Aboriginal Centre warned the
Board that her people were adamant that 'kutikina' be
applied and would have to conclude that the Board was not
sincere about listening to the State's Aborigines if it
ignored their choice.
Still the issue remained open because
Tasmania's nomenclature legislation allowed for public
objections. The National Parks and Wildlife Service
continued to argue that Fraser Cave be retained as it was
the most publicised Australian cave in the world. The
Southern Caving Society asked, 'Is there any political
pressure on the Board to have the name of Fraser Cave
changed in order to take away the conservation significance
of the name?' But the Nomenclature Board remained firm. Its
manifestly political advice to Tasmania's new Liberal
government, led by Robin Gray, was that these objectors were
part of the 'No Dams' lobby. It went on to surmise that
Malcolm Fraser was unlikely to want his name applied to a
cave set to be flooded by a scheme subject to such public
controversy.
When the Gray government accepted this
advice, the Board claimed that 'Kutikina' was official, and
exhorted everyone to use the cave's new name. In fact its
legislation provided that the new name would not take effect
for six months. The Board was, in any event, powerless to
stop Fraser Cave remaining in general usage and being used
as a barb against the Prime Minister. To the Board's
irritation, even the leaders of the Tasmanian Aboriginal
Centre continued to use 'Fraser' Cave. Meanwhile 'kutikina'
remained unfamiliar to most people, black and white. A
notice in the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre's Hobart building,
required its staff to learn the meanings of several new
Tasmanian place names, starting with Kutikina.
The Centre began campaigning actively to
safeguard the cave as a sacred site at the start of 1983
when Aborigines went to the South West to demonstrate, not
as part of the conservation campaign, but with and beside
it. Before long, the Wilderness Society's banners on the
river were joined by a new one, 'You have entered Aboriginal
land'.
Labor's victory in the 1983 Federal
election, followed by the High Court's decision to uphold
the new Hawke government's legislation protecting the
south-west, encouraged the Aboriginal Centre to press its
claim. 'That Cave is ours', the Aboriginal leader, Michael
Mansell declared. When the Hawke Labor government tried to
secure land rights legislation in Tasmania in 1985, Kutikina
Cave was one of four sacred sites nominated by the
Centre.
Still the cave's new name needed
elaboration. One question was whether Kutikina was good or
bad. In late 1983 Mansell explained, 'We refer to Kutikina
as the evil one who will get the children for playing up.
Kutikina is really a good spirit but one that frightens the
children into conforming.' When Jim Everett and Karen Brown
published a collection of poems in 1988 which they called
The Spirit of Kutikina, they went further, identifying
Kutikina as 'a message to people who should not be
interfering with Aboriginal heritage.'
Jim Everett published the first extended
account of Kutikina two years later in Oodgeroo
Noonuccal's Australian Legends and Landscapes. Everett
explained that Kutikina came from Babel Island in Bass
Strait where his Aunty Rya used to invoke Kutikina during
the annual mutton-birding. Kutikina not only was specific to
Sharp Hill on Babel Island, protecting its spirits from
disturbance by children, but also had general reach as 'the
protector of special places that belong to us.'
Only N.J.B. Plomley continued to question
Kutikina as the cave's name. His book of Tasmanian
Aboriginal Place Names, published in 1992, excluded it. As
ever, Plomley considered that the only authentic Tasmanian
Aboriginal words were those recorded in the 19th century. He
observed, 'The most recent case of supposed Aboriginal
naming is the use of Kutikina for the cave in the south-west
earlier known as Fraser Cave. The word does not seem to be
Tasmanian.'
Archaeologists were similarly alone in
disputing the Aboriginal Centre's land claim to the cave. In
1987 Jim Allen of La Trobe University identified a range of
other claimants including Australian Aborigines (because
Tasmania had been part of the mainland while the cave was
occupied), the Tasmanian State, the Australian nation and
the world community. Because archaeology demonstrated that
'clear national or ethnic identities' dropped away when
considering a site as old as the cave, Allen argued that it
was best seen as the common property of all Australians, if
not all humanity.
The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre triumphed
in 1995. When the Liberal government of Ray Groom
successfully introduced an Aboriginal Lands Act, Kutikina
Cave was one of just 12 places vested in a new Aboriginal
Land Council in trust for Aboriginal persons in perpetuity.
Had the speleologists started by giving the cave a
conventional apolitical name, or had the Nomenclature Board
allowed it to remain Fraser Cave, it might have had a very
different history.
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Ballawinne
site
The Ballawinne cave with its hand stencils were discovered in the
Maxwell river vally in January 1986 by Steve Brown and Roy
Nichols.
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Much simplified map of the complex Ballawinne cave.
(adapted from S. Harris, D. Ranson and S. Brown, Maxwell
River Archaeological Survey 1968)
Red marks indicate
the location ion the cave where 20 stencils of human hands
were discovered. To judge from the size of the hands, it is
estimated that at least 5 and perhaps more individuals were
involved. One hand shows the amputation of the middle finger
at the first joint - an accident or a ritual mutilation.
Whether the hands were stencilled close together in time or
were made over a period of many years, even centuries or
millennia is not known. It has, however, been estimated on
the basis of charcoal particles adhering to the ochre, that
the stencils were made very roughly around 14,000 years
ago.
There are also small patches of ochre on parts of the
cave ceiling and there are five large patches of red ochre
of similar shape and size on rock protuberances in the
passage leading from outside to the stencils (light pink on
the map). They do look like "guides" or warnings on the way
to an area of special ritual significance.
Notable is the fact that the stencils are in complete
darkness - no light from the cave entrance can ever have
reached them. This is in contrast to Australian stencils
which tend to be in lighted areas. In this respect the
Tasmanian hand stencils are remarkably similar to those of
the European Gravettian period (28,000 to 22,000 years ago)
which were also often executed in ochre. It is likely (but
hard to prove) that the Tasmanians brought the hand stencil
(as the ochre) with them as a cultural template.
Ballawinne cave main engtrance
(B)
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The Ballawiine Stencils marked
"A" in the map
above.
(adapted from S. Harris, D. Ranson and S. Brown, Maxwell
River Archaeologicalurvey 1968)
A hand stencil "found recently" at a place that is kept
secret to prevent vandalism:
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Beginners Luck
site
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The location of Beginners Luck and some neighbouring
sites.
Beginners Luck cave was first archaeologically recognized
in 1975 and published by Goede and Murray in 1977 after
which the two authors contined their excavations and
published further findings in 1980.
Data and drawings below are adapted from Murray P.F.,
Goede A., and Bada J.L., 1980, "Pleistocene Human Occupation
at Beginners Luck Cave, Florentine Valley, Tasmania, in:
Archaeology and Physical Anthropology in Oceania,
vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 142-152, October 1980.
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Beginners Luck cave the excavation area.
Among the artefacts found at Beginners Luck cave were
1.
flake, quartzite (M4180)
2. flake, grey cherty hornfels
(M4183)
3. flake, cherty hornfels
(M4181)
4. retouched flake scraper, cherty
hornfels (M4182)
For illustrations of the four flakes see
immediately below.
Sub-unit
C:
contained one a single artefact
(1) and only a few fossil bones
and charcoal is scarce
Sub-unit
B:
contained 13 stone artefacts (only
2 shown) and was rich in
vertebrate remains, including a bone with cut marks from a stonetool
(see below). Artefacts were distributed throughout the unit but with
greater concentration in the upper part. A thin band of small
charcoal fragments (reworked by water) was also part of the sub-unit
and contained two artefacts (3
and 4 )
Sub-unit A: contained few bone
fragments and charcoal particles plus one each of hornfels flake and
quartzite manuport.
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The left humerus bone of Macropus titan (an
extinct giant form of the Grey Kangaroo) with cut marks from
stone tools. The bone was found at Beginners Luck cave in
subunit B.
(adapted from Murray P.F.et al, 1980)
Sub-unit B is the only sub-unit that contained sufficient
material for C14 dating. The sample taken yielded a date of
20,650 ±1790 years before the present.
It is thought likely that the cave was a bivouac for
small hunting groups travelling through the broad Florentine
valley at a timer when the late glacial pleistocene was
reaching its coldest and driest climax. Vegetation at that
time was open grassland with alpine-like shrubbery.
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Nunamira
site
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The location of Nunamira and some neighbouring sites.
The Nunamira cave was initially discovered by members of
the Tasmanian Caving Club in 1974 and gazetted as
"Junee-Florentine 53 (JF53). It was re-discovered and
recognized as an archaeological site in January 1988.
Originally named Bluff Cave it was later re-named
Nunamira by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.
On the controversial re-naming of Tasmanian
archaeological discoveries, see Kutikina
(Fraser) Cave.
The cave was excavated by Richard Cosgrove.
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The entrance to Nunamira cave (maps and other material in this
section adapted from R. Cosgrove, "Nunamira Site", ca. 1991).
The environment of Nunamira and neighbouring minor caves.
Nunamir is about 8.5 m above the level of the Florentine River and
400 m above sea level.
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Nunamira cave in side-view (yellow A-A in map below)
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Nunamira cave.
The yellow line A-A represents the side-cut of the cave
shown above.
The grey lines represent stalagmite and flowstones.
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Nunamira stratification
in excavation square A1.
The red numbers are C14 date sampling locations (see list
immediately below).
The black numbers refer to the strata (see description
further below).
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C14 date sampling locations at Nunamira excavation
square A1:
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C14 number in stratification chart above
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Depth
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Stratum number
(black or white no.)
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C14 age in years before present
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1
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5 cm
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2
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11,630 ±200 years before present
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2
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10 cm
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3
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13,100 ±110 years before present
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3
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15 cm
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4
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13,830 ±220 years before present
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4
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20 cm
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4
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16,120 ±180 years before present
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5
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30 cm
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4
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21.410 ±240 years before present
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6
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35 cm
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4a
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24,190 ±410 years before present
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7
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42 cm
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4
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27,770 ±770 years before present
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8
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50 cm
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4
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28,720 ±720 years before present
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9
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53 cm
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4
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23,640 ±310 years before present
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10
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55 cm
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5
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30,750 ±1340 years before present
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11
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60 cm
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5
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30,429 ±690 years before present
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The strata (black or white bold bold numbers in
the stratification chart above):
Stratum 1:
Much of this stratum consists of "moonmilk" (a grey, calcium
carbonate flowstone) which seals the cave floor to a thickness of 2
cm in excavation square A1 and up to 10 cm in B1. The formation of of
this material is not fully understood. When dry it forms a hard crust
not easily penetrated by water but when wet it crumbles.
Embedded in the moonmilk crust are tens of thousands of bones of
small animals (rats and mice), some still articulated when engulfed
and remarkably well-preserved. Litte charcoal was found and none of
the bones are burned. Evidence of a human presence is limited: a few
small stone flakes occur scattered in this stratum while a large
quartzite core and several hornfels artefacts encrusted with moonmilk
lay on the surface of excavation square of B1. This suggests
occasional and infrequent visits by Tasmanians during the
Holocene.
Stratum 2:
Despite the much darker colour of this stratum when compared to
Stratum 1, moonmilk remains a prominent feature although it is not as
dominant as in Stratum 1. It partially cements this layer and has
engulfed stone tools and lumps of charcoal. The moonmilk may have
been activated at the beginning of the Holocene with the onset of
much heavier rainfall.
Stratum 3:
This stratum is dominated by hearths and a very charcoal-rich soil.
No stone hearths were foundso it looks as if the fires were simply
lighted on the bare floor of the cave. In one particularly
articulated hearth, surrounded by a ring of heavily burnt reddish
earth, the burnt rat jaws, macropod bones and emu eggshgells were
found, along with stone tools and lumps sof charcoal. The
well-defined burnt soils suggest that the fire areas were left intact
(probably over very many generations) and used again and again, never
being raked over extensively by later visitors.
Stratum 4:
This stratum consists of a silty clay with a high concentration of
charcoal, bone and stone artefacts. Bone concentrations are lower in
this stratum than in the one above it and the concentration
diminishes further down, although the number of stone artefacts
remains high throughout.
Stratum 5:
A transitional layer separating the layers showing the effects of
extensive and frequent human activity above to the layers below that
show only limited human activity. There are some burnt bone ans small
stone flakes, however.
Stratum 6:
No artefacts, charcoal or other indication of a human presence
have been found in this layer.
Stratum 7:
This stratum is a cobble bed with an infill of yellow silty clays and
is highly consolidated and compacted. The material of this layer has
been highly consolidated, compact structure. The cobbles are of
quartzite, highly spherical and of regular site, on average 15 x 8 x
5 cm. At the interface with the yellow clay several cobbles were
burnt, as was the surrounding clay soil, suggesting that fires were
lit directly on top of the original sterile deposit.
Oddly, this stratum only occurs in excavation square A1 and does
not occur in B1. What sorted the materials in this way across
the original cave floor is unknown (flood waters being the most
likely agent).
Stratum 8:
This stratum consists of loose granular sand with
no trace of a human presence.
Stratum 9 is bedrock.
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Excavation work in progress at Nunavira. excavation
square A1.
At the top the light coloured moonmilk layer (Stratum 1),
at the bottom of the pit the cobble layer (Stratum 7). ,
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A small artefact made of Darwin glass found at Nunamira
cave, thought to be more han 20,000 years old.
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Nanwoon
(Bluff) site
This cave has not been excavated. For location see
Pleistocene sites map.
The following observations have been made by
Richard Cosgrove while discussing primarily the Nunamira site (seee
immediately above).
The only other known archaeological site in the
Florentine River valley is the unexcavated cave of Nanwoon (IF
333), at the southern end of the valley. Inan eroded section at
the back of a narrow chute, large numbers of bone remains and
stone artefacts can be seen. A date of ca.16,000 years before the
present was obtained on bone from near the surface of the deposit
using electron spin
resonance (Albert Goede pers. comm.). An
undated human parietal bone was also found lying on the slope at
the rear of the cave. It has been described as very gracile and is
similar to individuals recorded at Lake Mungo dated to 26,000
years before the present (Jones et al. 1988). No other postcranial
material was recovered and th specimen is now in the custodianship
of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.
In addition to the skeletal material, a small
silcrete flake was found in situ, 10 cm below the moonmilk
[see above chapter on Nunamira] capping the deposit.This
material is exotic to the region and hasa very similar petrology
to material analysedfrom the Oyster Cove Aboriginal quarry
atNorthwest Bay, southern Tasmania ... It is conceivable that
links between the Florentine Valley and southeastern Tasmania
existed in much the same way as the Darwin glass connection
demonstrates with western Tasmania.
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The following small graphic showing the stratigraphy and
C14 dates of Nanwoon Cave has,been adapted from Richard
Cosgrove (1989, "Thirty Thousand Years of Human Colonisation
in Tasmania: New Pleistocene Dates", Science, vol.
243:1706-1708, 31 March 1989):
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Bone Cave
site
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The vegetation around Bone Cave entrance gives a good
idea of the density of the Tasmanian forest - and how
difficult it is to find new caves.
On this picture the entrance is behind the small human
figure a little to the left of the centre.
In the foreground is the Weld River.
Bone cave was first reported by D. Weston 1969 but its
significance was not recognized at the time and 10 years
later the cave could only be relocated with difficulty.
Looking at the picture on the left, once can understand
why.
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The rate of artefact deposition at Bone caves between
35,000 and 10,000 years before the present shows three quite
distinct active periods separated by long gaps.
(adapted from Balme J. and Paterson A. eds. 2006.
Archaeology in Practice - a student guide to
archaeological analysis. Blackwell Publishing)
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The stratification at Bone Cave with special regard to human
activitiess of 24,000 and 15,000 years before the present
(adapted from Allen J. 1996. "Bone Cave", in: Report of the Southern
Forests Archaeological Project, vol. 1:91-121. Melbourne School of
Archaeology, La Trobe University)
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Sorting bones, flakes, debris and toolsfrom Bone cave.
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Among the oldest tools found at Bone cave was this
denticulate specimen of a thumbnail scraper. It was found in
a layer dated to more than 23,000 years before the
present.
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Thumbnail scapers like these start to appear at Bone Cave
around 22,000 years before the present and around 18,000
years before the present they bacame so common that they
made up a large percentage of all tools found
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Various flake types from Bone Cave.
(adapted from I.Ian McNiven, B. Marshall, J. Allen, N. Stern, and R.
Cosgrove, 1993, "The Southern Forests Archaeological Project: an
overview", in: J. Allen, J. Golson and R. Jones, eds., Sunda and
Sahul: Prehistoric Studies in SEAsia . London, Academic
Press).
Below: Impact flaking on the crest of a walllaby tibia in the
course of a bone marrow extraction by humans at Bone Cave. Datable
probably to the holocene, i.e. less than 12,000 years before the
present.
(adapted from I.Ian McNiven, B. Marshall, J. Allen, N. Stern, and R.
Cosgrove, 1993, "The Southern Forests Archaeological Project: an
overview", in: J. Allen, J. Golson and R. Jones, eds., Sunda and
Sahul: Prehistoric Studies in SEAsia . London, Academic
Press).
8.7.
Darwin Crater and Darwin Glass
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Around 820,000 years ago a meteorite crashed into western
Tasmania and making a huge impact crater, now known as the
Darwin Crater. The intense shock waves of this event created
a silicate glass: Darwin Glass. The original distribution is
patchy and poorly defined but is estimated to have been
ejected over an area of around 400 square kilometers.
The impact crater today is filled with 230 m of breccia
which is capped by pleistocene lake sediments.
Darwin glass is most abundant ca. 2 km from the crater.
It has been estimated that there are more than 20 thousand
tons of the material in the 50 square kilometer circle
around the crater.
The small sample nodule shown at the left is of type 2
and weighs just over 11 grams.
The Tasmanians have used the Darwin glass nodules for
making tools and for personal decoration since very early
times. They have also distributed the prized material widely
all over Tasmania.
The original source of Darwin Glass had been a mystery
until 1972 when geologist R.J. Ford discovered the impact
site now known as Darwin Crater in western Tasmania.
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Darwin glass can be light to dark green,
white, or black. The glass has taken many forms, forms ranging from
twisted masses, fragments or formless chunks, up to 10 cm in length.
Internally the pieces have a flowing texture defined by lines of
elliptical gas bubbles.
There are two kinds of Darwin glass:
- Type 1 is white or green and and is
thought to be composed almost entirely of terrestrial material that
was melted by the meteoritic impact.
- Type 2 is black to dark green and in
comparison to type 1 it contains less silica but more magnesium,
iron, chromium, nickel and cobalt. It is probable that, apart from
melted terrestrial material, type 2 glass also contains some
extraterrestrial material from the meteorite itself.
Last change 7 April 2008
