This another of those articles that I missed, the results of a dig at Moyjil Port Ritchie at the entrance to the Hopkins River, Warnambool on Victoria's south western coast. The dig investigated a charcoal and burnt stone feature associated with a scattered midden. Dating indicates a date around 120,000 years ago with the evidence marginally supporting a cultural over natural origin.
The abstract follows:
Claims for a human presence in Australia beyond 60,000 years ago must have a strong evidence base associated with rigorous methodology and intense scrutiny. In this light we present excavation results for Charcoal and Burnt Stone Feature #1 (CBS1) located within coastal dune sediments at Moyjil (Point Ritchie), Warrnambool, that independent geomorphic and OSL dating indicates is of Last Interglacial age (~120,000 years ago). While on plausibility grounds the cultural status of a feature of such great antiquity in Australia is unlikely, a cultural origin for CBS1 is less easily dismissed if assessed with an age-independent methodology. A broad range of macroscale discrimination criteria has been used to assess whether CBS1 is either a cultural hearth or a natural feature such as a burnt tree stump. On balance, evidence marginally supports a cultural origin over a natural origin. However, the absence of associated stone artefacts and faunal remains and the presence of burnt root wood precludes definitive statements on the cultural status of the feature. Our case study is methodologically instructive in terms of the potential complexities and issues of equifinality involved in the archaeological identification of ancient hearths.
McNiven Ian J. , Crouch Joe , Bowler Jim M. , Sherwood John E. , Dolby Nic , Dunn Julian E. Stanisic John (2018) The Moyjil site, south-west Victoria, Australia: excavation of a Last Interglacial charcoal and and burnt stone feature — is it a hearth?. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria 130, 94-116. https://doi.org/10.1071/RS18008
Comment
The results attracted considerable interest at the time because they seemed to push back the date of Aboriginal occupation of the continent to perhaps 120,000 years. The abstract is cautious in its conclusions about cultural as opposed to natural origin.
As we get more dates from Asia, the possibility of earlier hominin occupation of Sahul becomes more plausible. The issue that then arises is whether they are Aboriginal or an earlier hominin species such as the Denisovans, given the tension between earlier dates and some of the dates attached to Aboriginal occupation by genomic modelling.
The Madjedbebe dig: Because of the global importance of the Kakadu site, the team used all the latest archaeological technology to deliver the best results.
New discoveries reshaping our knowledge of the deep human past just keep rolling.
The Madjedbebe rockshelter can be found in Kakadu near Jabiru in the Northern Territory. In 1989, a small excavation at the site suggested human occupation at 60,000-50,000 years ago, but the numbers were disputed.. The site was therefore further excavated in 2012 and 2015.
The team used the latest technology as seen on the increasingly popular TV programs that have done so much to turn archaeology into a glamour profession.
Ground penetrating radar a-la Time Team was used to survey the area before digging. As digging proceeded, laser scanning (Time Scanners) was used to create accurate three dimensional maps recording the placement of artefacts for later study.
A variety of dating techniques were used including OSL, Optically-Stimulated Luminescence. This allows the last time quartz sediment was exposed to light to be dated, a useful technique if you are trying to date artefacts or human remains surrounded by sand.
The results of the team’s work was published in Nature in July, attracting world wide headlines. They showed an earliest occupation date range of 65,000 years plus or minus 5,000 years. Further, that date was associated with artifacts including the earliest known global example of a ground edge axe indicating a sophisticated and well established life style.
Within weeks, on 9 August 2017, updated results were published in Nature from Lida Ajer, a Sumatran Pleistocene cave with a rich rainforest fauna associated with fossil human teeth. These indicated an early modern human presence in Sumatra of 73,000 to 63,000 years ago, effectively the same date range as Madjedbebe.
What do these and other discoveries mean? I think that we can summarise the results this way, recognizing that new evidence is emerging all the time?
The date for the emergence of modern homo sapiens is being pushed back all the time, with modern homo sapiens widespread across Africa before a 100,000 out-of-Africa migration date. That date itself is looking increasingly uncertain to my mind.
The number of identified hominid species continues to increase, with modern humans living alongside them in the same time space, and indeed the same geographical space in some cases, for extended periods.
The DNA evidence shows interbreeding between hominid species, casting doubt on the old idea of straight line evolution in which modern humans simply supplanted other hominid species such as the Neanderthals. Rather, there may have been parallel and overlapping evolutionary paths. We carry our complex past in our DNA!
As the time span of Aboriginal history increases, so does the range of environmental changes to which the Aboriginal peoples were subjected to. We cannot understand Aboriginal history unless we understand those environmental changes.
There is therefore a growing need for a full and understandable environmental history of this continent accessible to all.
Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 16 August 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here 2017.
A letter published in Nature by K E Westaway et al, An early modern human presence in Sumatra 73,000–63,000 years ago, (Nature (2017) doi:10.1038/nature23452 Received 30 March 2017 Accepted 29 June 2017 Published online 09 August 2017) reports that scientists have now accurately dated two human teeth first discovered in the Lida Ajer cave on the island of Sumatra in the late 19th century, showing modern humans were living there between 73,000 and 63,000 years ago.
The results are interesting for two reasons. Thirst is that they are consistent with the 65,000+/5,000 date for the recent Madjedbebe rock shelter date in Kakadu. Secondly, they are the oldest raif forrest date in the world.
.There are a couple of odd things that I didn't understand about the piece in the Conversation. I just note this now without amplification as a reminder to come back to to issue.
Here we report the Simons Genome Diversity Project data set: high quality genomes from 300 individuals from 142 diverse populations. These genomes include at least 5.8 million base pairs that are not present in the human reference genome. Our analysis reveals key features of the landscape of human genome variation, including that the rate of accumulation of mutations has accelerated by about 5% in non-Africans compared to Africans since divergence. We show that the ancestors of some pairs of present-day human populations were substantially separated by 100,000 years ago, well before the archaeologically attested onset of behavioural modernity. We also demonstrate that indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andamanese do not derive substantial ancestry from an early dispersal of modern humans; instead, their modern human ancestry is consistent with coming from the same source as that of other non-Africans.
Cold, cold, cold. That was the story of long periods of the hominid past. In a comment in Current Anthropology, Robert Hosfield responds to criticisms of his work on the impact of cold on the human species, including especially the possible impact of hypothermia as compared to frostbite. It seems to come back to questions of clothing as compared to other physiological modifications. I had only seen references to this controversy, how did early hominids survive with poor tool kits and limited clothing, in very cold environments? This popular piece provides a 2016 input reporting on Horsfield's work.
Wikipedia piece on this issue points to the disagreements but also suggests that it was rather a long time ago.
One of the issues is the date of the domestication of fire. Many of the presentations such has this Wikipedia diorama are actually very stylized. This example will make you shiver!
I think the reality is threefold: the human body has considerable capacity to adapt if it is given time; if you have fire and shelter, you can get warm or at least warmer when external conditions are very harsh; and you may have access to skins or other coverings to keep you warm.
All these things have then to be adjusted to local conditions. For example, you will not go outside if a blizzard is raging unless you absolutely have to. So you will store food if you can to accommodate. This may be no more than leaving it outside if temperatures are that low.
Your age also determines your response to climatic extremes. If you are younger, it is easier to cope. people may just die earlier.
This total mix determines the group's response It's important from the viewpoint of Australian history because it helps us make judgement about the impact of the Last Glacial Maximum.The Aborigines survived in Tasmania in glacial conditions. Clearly, they had the culture and equipment to respond, although it may have reduced populations and life expectancy. Beyond this, we just don't know what the actual story was.
Separation: Squeezed between larger language groups, the Anaiwan language evolved different because of their need to preserve culture, territory and separate identity.This is the eight and last in a series discussing the deciphering of the mysteries of New England's Anaiwan or Nganjaywana Aboriginal language.
Last week I suggested that as the Last Glacial Maximum eased, the Tablelands were reoccupied by two main groups.
From the south came Dainggatti speakers from the Macleay Valley. We don’t have dates, but from the pattern of the dates that we do have this probably took place about 5,000 years ago.
As the Dainggatti speakers spread north following the watershed , they coincided with settlers from the Northern Rivers and especially the Clarence/Nymboida river system, the Gumbaingirr speakers, who had followed the rivers upstream and effectively occupied significant parts of the Tablelands. Further north, there was Bandjalung expansion, but this appears to have been less pronounced.
But why did the Anaiwan language then diverge so much from its coastal origins? To understand why this might have happened, we need to return to Terry Crowley’s language map. I note that the language boundaries on the map are indicative only and do not indicate exact boundaries.
Crowley suggested that the language north of Armidale described by McPherson as Enneewin was not the same as that further south because it included lexical items borrowed from Gumbaingirr, whereas the language further south did not.
I think that’s incorrect. Although Anaiwan varied greatly from north to south, we can reasonably think of it as a single language, in part because of geography, in part because Crowley himself concluded that the northern and southern languages had a 65 per cent common lexicon. It makes perfect sense that Enneewin or Northern Anaiwan should be a distinct dialect with Gumbaingirr inclusions given the two language groups were side by side.
If we now look at Southern Anaiwan, Crowley’s Nganjaywana with its dialects of Inuwon and Himberrong, you can see a very distinct pattern. In the far south, Himberrong adjoined Gamilaraay in the south and west, Birbay in the south east plus Dainggatti in the east.
Inuwon, by contrast, adjoined Himberrong in the south, Ennewin in the north, both Dainggatti and Gumbaingirr in the east and Gamilaraay in the west. That’s a lot of languages in both cases.
Part of the reason that Crowley put forward for the evolution of Anaiwan as such a distinct language lay in the existence of the secret Anaiwan language identified by Mathews. This, Crowley suggested, reduced the need to borrow from other languages when words fell out of use as a consequence of things such as deaths.
This is possible. However, a simpler explanation lies in the geography described above.
Occupying relatively small territories squeezed between other bigger language groups, the Southern Anaiwan in particular became isolated because of the need to preserve their land and culture.
There is at least some fragmentary evidence to support this view in the archeological and ethnographic record as well as Aboriginal memories. However, that will have to wait to a later series.
Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 26 July 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here 2017.
The results from the latest excavations at the Madjedbebe rockshelter in Kakadu near Jabiru in the Northern Territory are truly remarkable. In reporting, I am taking the unusual step of directly repeating much of the piece in The Conversation by Chris Clarkson, Ben Marwick, Lynley Wallis, Richard Fullagar and Zenobia Jacobs reporting the results, adding my own comments as I go along.
To my mind, it is a very good piece of public science reporting. I also like the way the authors have included so many links to previous work. My comments should be read as those of a reasonably well informed amateur interested in the implications for his own area of study,
In addition to the piece in The Conversation, there are a number of news reports that contain supplementary information. These include:
"The question of when people first arrived in Australia has been the subject of lively debate among archaeologists, and one with important consequences for the global story of human evolution. Australia is the end point of early modern human migration out of Africa, and sets the minimum age for the global dispersal of humans.
This event was remarkable on many fronts, as it represented the largest maritime migration yet undertaken, the settlement of the driest continent on Earth, and required adaptation to vastly different flora and fauna.
But our research, published today in Nature, pushes back the timing of this event to at least 65,000 years ago.
Together with the Mirrar Aboriginal people, our team excavated the Madjedbebe rockshelter in Kakadu, near Jabiru in Australia’s Northern Territory.(Map from Science). A small excavation in 1989 at this site had proposed evidence for human activity in Australia at 60,000-50,000 years ago.
But some archaeologists have been reluctant to accept this age. Some pointed to the sandy deposit at the site and argued that the artefacts may have been easily moved down into older layers by trampling or burrowing animals.
Others said the measured ages for the archaeological sediments were not precise enough to support a date of 50,000 years, rather than 45,000 years ago.
Since those excavations in the 1980s, the debate has intensified. Analysis of DNA from the hair of an Aboriginal man who lived 100 years ago suggests that Aboriginal Australians separated from early Asian populations some times between 62,000 and 75,000 years ago.
On the other hand, climate records have implicated humans in megafaunal population collapse at 45,000 to 43,100 years ago, a time frame that had been presumed to correlate with humans’ arrival in Australia." Comment
Dating issues are discussed later in The Conversation piece. The date of 65,000 years is actually plus or minus 5,000 years, so I would be cautious in automatically attaching a higher figure than 65,000 year; 60,000 is the safest number, but may well get older.
Even at 60,000 years, it is still a remarkable number. I have been using 50,000 years as the approximate benchmark for human settlement of Sahul, but will now have to take 65,000 as my working number based on 60,000 plus time to get to the site and colonise the area.
We can think of the implications of this number from two perspectives, what it says about hominid migration and mixing in African and Eurasia, what it says about the settlement of Sahaul.
I was unaware of the Chinese discoveries. At this point, and based only on the Nature report, some care needs to be exercised in interpreting these results. In another earlier date, palaeoanthropologist Michael Westaway of Griffith University is quoted referring to archaeological evidence that humans may have been in the Near East 110,000 years ago.
It seems clear based on the flood of recent results is that the spread of homo sapiens was wider and earlier than previously realised, as was the overlapping between modern humans and other hominid species. .
One thing that concerns me, and I lack the specialist expertise to know whether my concern is valid, is what appears to be a growing discrepancy between dating results based on DNA models and those from other dating methods. If the Aborigines were well established in Sahul by 65,000 years ago, then it seems reasonable to assume that they left Africa earlier than the 72,000 date suggested by some DNA analysis.
Within Australia, the latest dates appear to widen the time period during which Sahul was settled, widening the gap between this date and southern dates. I have argued that quick expansion was possible, but a longer time period does seem reasonable. However, the results do raise questions in my mind about the exact pattern of settlement of Sahul.
If I remember correctly, the earlier DNA studies showed a north west gradient from Cape York to South West Australia. This was interpreted as supporting coastal migration in both west and east from the original group or groups. In the east, my view has been that migration could well have come along the slopes of the Great Dividing Range instead of or as well as the coast. I also read the material as suggesting that that the Papuans and Aborigines came from a single stock that then diverged. This could be accommodated via settlement on Sahul in either what is now PNG or Australia and then spread or separate migrations from a common stock to different points.
The latest results have raised all sorts of questions in my mind:
How widespread in what is now South East Asia were were the Aboriginal precursors? Was it just small groups, that has been an implicit assumption, or did they occupy significant territory?
What happened to the Aborigines who remained behind? Were they supplanted by later arrivals?
Did something trigger migration or was it just search for the new, natural migration?
Were there several migration to different or the same spots separated in time?
One thing that does stand out from the results is the apparent sophistication of the early tool kit and the life implied by that. These people were already in control of their environment, living an apparently sophisticated hunter/gatherer life style. I think that's very important. It's a reasonably assumption that their precursors were more advanced as well than has sometimes been assumed. I think that this requires a change in our thinking in terms of both the options open to them and their capacity to meet new challenges.
Text Continues
To make new research possible, a landmark agreement was reached between the University of Queensland (and associated researchers) and the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation representing the Mirarr traditional owners of the site.
The agreement gave ultimate control over the excavation to the Mirarr senior custodians, with oversight of the excavation and curation of the material. The Mirarr were interested to support new research into the age of the site and to know more about the early evidence of technologies thought to be present there.
New digs, new dates
In 2012 and 2015 our team excavated an area of 20 square metres at Madjedbebe. We found artefacts in three distinct layers of occupation.
Among the artefacts in the lowest levels we found many pieces used for seed grinding and ochre “crayons” that were used to make pigments. Our large excavation area allowed us to pick up very rare items, such as the world’s oldest known edge-ground hatchets and world’s oldest known use of reflective pigment.
During the excavations we recorded the three-dimensional coordinates of more than 10,000 stone artefacts using a laser total station. This device sits on a tripod and uses a laser and prism to record the location of artefacts and other features at millimetre accuracy, thus giving a very precise record of artefact position and layering.
We analysed these coordinates to test previous criticisms that artefacts may have moved a lot in the sand. We found some broken artefacts that we could fit back together, and by measuring the distance between these pieces we can understand how far artefacts have moved.
We also conducted an experiment to observe the movement of artefacts on the ground when people walked over them. These results allow us to respond to the earlier critics with data that point to a relatively small amount of movement, not enough to mix artefacts between the three distinct layers of occupation that we found in our excavations.
During the excavation we collected many kinds of samples for specialised analyses, including more than 100 samples for dating. We used both radiocarbon dating and Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) methods to find the ages of the artefacts. Because radiocarbon dating is limited to samples younger than 50,000 years ago, we relied on OSL to help us find the ages of the lower part of the site.
OSL methods estimate the time elapsed since sand grains were last exposed to sunlight. Australian archaeologists have been wary of OSL methods because often in the past OSL involved sand grains measured together in a little group, resulting in ages that were not very accurate.
To get more precise ages, we measured thousands of sand grains individually, rather than in a group. We also had another lab analyse some samples to make sure our results were reliable. The result is that we have a convincing age for the settlement of Madjedbebe, and Australia, of 65,000 years ago. Comment
I think that this section illustrates the remarkable changes that have taken place in the multidisciplinary science that archaeology has become. The use of laser scanning popularised by the TV Programme Time Scanners allows accurate measurement of the placement of objects; the team used ground penetrating radar to survey the area before digging a-la Time Team; while the use of OSL dating requires high technology science.
It is not possible for the non-specialist in these technical areas to make sensible judgments on detail beyond noting that the scientific method applied seems quite rigorous. It is possible for the non-technical observer to make judgments about the extent to which results seem to diverge from other evidence. In this context, the results while interesting and important do not seem to conflict with what we already know. In that sense, they pass the academic pub test!
Text
These new dates throw light on a few puzzles in the overall picture of human evolution.
Our ages suggest that modern humans and Homo floresiensis in eastern Indonesia may have co-existed for 15,000 years. This means that the arrival of modern humans did not necessarily cause other ancient human-like species to become extinct.
If it’s the case that people have lived in Australia since 65,000 years ago, it may also be true that humans and megafauna co-existed for 20,000 years before megafauna went extinct across the continent.
Until now we knew very little about the technology and lifestyles of the first Aboriginal people. The oldest artefacts from Madjedbebe help to tell this story. They indicate that the earliest Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia were innovative people who – like humans everywhere on earth – developed solutions to new problems and engaged in symbolic and artistic expression.
We found evidence for the mixing of ochre with reflective powders made from ground mica to make a vibrant paint. Currently the oldest known rock art in the world is dated to 40,000 years ago in Sulawesi (a possible stepping stone to Australia). But the abundant ground ochre and use of mica indicates that artistic expression took place in the region much earlier.
We also found new forms of stone tools such as edge ground hatchet heads (and even the grinding stones used to sharpen them), useful in cutting bark and wood, shaping wooden tools and extracting difficult to obtain foods from trees.
The grinding stones from the site indicate a range of fruits, seeds, animals and other plants were ground up for food. These are the oldest known examples of seed grinding stones found in Australia, if not the world.
In ancient fireplaces from the site we also recovered pieces of burnt pandanus nuts, fruit seeds and yams, which give us clues as to the earliest plant foods consumed at the site. Some of these foods continue to be eaten today by Mirarr and other Aboriginal people in the Top End.
Our new ages suggest that Australia was settled well before modern humans entered Europe about 45,000 years ago. This means that the earliest art and symbolism in Europe is of limited relevance to understanding modern technology and symbolic expression in South and Southeast Asia and Oceania.
Our results help to show the unique place of the Eastern hemisphere, and Australia in particular, in understanding how and where modern humans appeared.
Ends Comment
Some of this material is very Australian-centric. The comparison with Europe and indeed the age of art is really neither here nor there. I would have thought it self evident that the earliest art and symbolism in Europe is of limited relevance to understanding modern technology and symbolic expression in South and Southeast Asia and Oceania, although comparisons from elsewhere can always provide clues and questions.
The Eastern hemisphere, and Australia in particular, may or may not have a unique place in understanding how and where modern humans appeared. I would have thought that that place was still occupied by Africa. What is important is the extent to which the discovery does two things:
provide further evidence on the dispersal of modern humans and their overlap with other hominids
further illuminate the history of Aboriginal Australia.
I think that it does both, it is a discovery of major importance. However, and I can't afford to read the original paper at the moment, my particular interest is what it tells us about Aboriginal history following arrival in Sahul. How does it add to, challenge our understanding?
This is where I have a degree of frustration with the reporting. So much is focused on the early date and the sophistication shown in the material remains. These are important, but what have we learned after arrival, how does this fit in with Aboriginal history after arrival?
We learn that there were thee intense occupation phases, with some differences between. We learn that the climate was cooler and wetter when the Aborigines came. We learn that there was little apparent difference in the vegetation over the millennia since first settlement; that surprised me. But it still doesn't really help us in writing a history of Aboriginal Australia where the real focus has to be the period after first arrival. Mind you, the material may be there, not just reported! Meantime, back to my more local focus.
The death of Professor John Mulvaney on 21
September 2016 placed a full stop on a remarkable career and, in a way, the end of
an era. John Mulvaney was as the first university-trained prehistorian to make Australia his subject
and has been justly described as the ‘Father of Australian Archaeology’.
I met Professor John Mulvaney just once, at
an ANZAAS conference in Canberra.
I remember his infectious smile, the way he cocked his head.
I had come to the conference almost by
accident because we were staying in Canberra,
allowing me to go. This was an exciting time to be involved in Australian
prehistory. Everything was new, the first drawing back of the veil over the
deep history of Australia’s
Aboriginal peoples.
This was the conference at which Alexander
Gallus presented his results on KoonaldaCave. I remember the
scepticism about those results, the discussion over coffee at the breaks. In
the end, KoonaldaCave would prove to be as
important as Gallus suggested, but that was certainly not clear at the time.
Derek John Mulvaney was born at Yarram, South Gippsland in 1925. One of five children, his Irish
born father was a teacher with the family moving around country Victoria to various
schools and eventually to Frankston.
After completing year 11 at FrankstonHigh School, John became a trainee
teacher but quickly realised that this path was not for him. In 1943, the
eighteen year old joined the RAAF as a navigator. He was sent to Canada for training and then posted to England
in September 1944. 1944. During his days off he toured the English countryside,
creating an interest in history. Apparently, it was his visit to the megalithic
standing stones called ‘the Consuls’ that sparked his particular interest in
prehistory. I was curious, but was not able to identify those particular
standing stones in a short web search.
The War ended before John entered active
service. Late in 1945, he returned to Australia,
enrolling at MelbourneUniversity as an honours
student in history. The course was funded by the Commonwealth Reconstruction
Training Scheme, a scheme that would have a considerable impact on Australian
intellectual life.
At Melbourne,
John studied Roman History under John O’Brian. There were just six in the
class.
In 1949 he was appointed tutor in ancient
history at Melbourne,
enrolling in an MA. Twelve months later he submitted his thesis on ‘State and
Society in Britain
at the time of Roman conquest’.
Reflecting on this early history, I was
struck by the timing of it all. By the time John was 25, he had started as a
trainee teacher, served in the war, completed his first degree, worked as a
tutor and then completed an MA. That’s not bad going! John was always an
organised man!
John’s experiences as well has his study of
ancient Britain
had aroused an interest not just in archaeology, but in the possibilities of
Australian archaeology. He applied for an AustralianNationalUniversity post-graduate
scholarship. His application contained an unusual request: he asked to use the
graduate scholarship to enroll in undergraduate study, in Paleolithic
archaeology, at CambridgeUniversity. Reflecting
the influence of Grahame Clark and his colleagues, Cambridge was one of few university centers
interested in archaeology beyond the Old WorId. It was, John argued, essential
for him to train as an archaeologist and this required undergraduate studies in
prehistory at CambridgeUniversity.
His application was accepted, and in September
1951, full of enthusiasm, John became an undergraduate student at ClareCollege.
Given that he already had two degrees at honours level, he did not have to
complete the first part of the undergraduate course but was allowed to complete
the remaining course over two years.
While John would later be critical of what
he saw as Clarke’s imperial tendencies and indeed of the Cambridge
school as a whole, that period in England was (to use his own words)
a “Golden Age.” Upon arrival, John went to see Grahame Clark who was to be his
first Supervisor. Clarke told him that, in addition to himself, John must go to
a young man named Charles McBurney, who was the real Stone Age authority. John
hadn’t heard of McBurney, but would learn much from him.
The then level of staff student interaction
is hard to imagine today. For his two years at Cambridge, John was supervised every week by
McBurney and also by Clarke until Clarke was appointed professor. Then Clarke’s
place was taken by Glyn Daniel, so throughout his two years, John had contact
every week with two academic supervisors.
Over the two years, John studied stone
tools and took part in his first archaeological digs – in England and Ireland,
Denmark, and in Cyrenaica, Libya.
The Libyan dig was especially important, for it introduced John to the
application of rigorous excavation techniques that he would later use in Australia
and teach to his students, including Isabel McBryde.
Early in 1952, McBurney invited John to
join his party to go to Libya
to dig at the Haua Fteah, the enormous cave where McBurney had dug a trial
trench the previous season. This was clearly an adventure for John. In June
1952, they drove across France
to Marseilles, went by sea to Tunis
and then drove across North Africa to
Apollonia near where the site was located. There was a British army base at
Apollonia. That proved fortunate, for John collected two serious infections,
both requiring hospitalisation at the base hospital.
Archaeology is about precision and
preservation. Charles McBurney had developed techniques to excavate deep sites;
the year John was there they got down to 27 feet. McBurney used sieves
suspended on stands that he developed and he sorted material separately
according to stone, bone, shell, keeping them separate. These were techniques
that we used under Isabel’s guidance sixteen years later, using tweezers to
pick up pieces of bone or charcoal so that they would not be contaminated and could
be properly bagged for later examination by a subject specialist.
John was also exposed to the very early
days of carbon dating, something that would be absolutely critical for him a
little while later in establishing the antiquity of Aboriginal occupation of Australia.
In September following his graduation, John
met and became engaged to Jean Campbell. At this point, John might have stayed
on at Cambridge for a period or, alternatively,
gone to Auckland
as Professor of Archaeology, a move suggested by Clarke. However, while
visiting friends in the north of England there was a car crash that
badly injured Jean and also placed John in hospital. Coming out of hospital, he
found a message from his parents that his father was dying. So the couple abandoned
all other plans and returned to Australia,
marrying after their return.
John was offered a position at MelbourneUniversity teaching Ancient History. He was
now teaching with his former teacher and mentor John O’Brian. Inevitably, his
teaching soon extended to prehistory and archaeology. In 1957, John was allowed
to introduce a fourth-year Honours history option to undergraduates, a course
called Pacific Prehistory. This was the first course taught anywhere in Australia
on the prehistory of our region. So little was known about Australia that Polynesia
was taken as the main field, with Australian material added as the years passed.
In 1956, John began his journey into Australian
prehistory by excavating a limestone rockshelter at Fromm’s Landing on the Murray River, a dig that continued into the early 1960s. Radio
carbon dates from the site, John’s first, suggested that the site had been
occupied for almost 5,000 years. At Fromm’s Landing, John discovered the
skeleton of a dingo, the tooth of a Tasmanian tiger and the highest flood in
the history of the Murray River, all about
3,000 years ago.
John’s Cambridge experience had already convinced him
of the importance of interdisciplinary studies. So at Fromm’s Landing he worked
with geomorphologists. He also took a palynologist, Sadly, no pollen was
discovered in the deposit.
John’s second excavation was also a
limestone rockshelter, this time at Glen Aire on CapeOtway.
This was Isabel McBryde’s first fieldwork experience.
John’s third excavation, at KenniffCave
in Queensland,
began in 1960. In 1962 he received a telegram from his wife, giving him the
first carbon dates from the site. The oldest was 16,000 years. John thought
there must have been a mistake and telegrammed back. The date was indeed 16,000
years. With that one date, the antiquity of Aboriginal occupation of Australia
had been pushed back many thousands of years into the Pleistocene era.
Here we need to reflect on the state of
prehistory globally and especially in Australia at the time.
Globally, the study of prehistory was in
many ways still in its infancy. To a continuing degree, archaeology was
dominated by the romance of the Classical World. In Australia, those few interested in
Australian prehistory had come primarily from museum backgrounds.
In 1960 the University of New England
was the first to appoint a tenured staff member, Isabel McBryde, carrying
prehistory in her job title and was, I think, the first Australian university
to require the study of prehistory as an element in in the introductory history
course. In 1966, UNE was also the first to introduce an Australian prehistory
course at honours level.
I enrolled in History I at UNE in 1963.
Even then, there were very few textbooks. Further, those we had had a
distinctly European flavour. By 1996 when I enrolled in honours, the frontiers
were already being pushed back. Here there were two distinctive features in
Isabel’s archaeological work, both reflecting John Mulvaney’s influence. The
first was a focus on developing a regional cultural sequence, on exploring
Australian prehistory, Aboriginal history, within the confines of a reasonably
broadly defined but still geographically contained region. The second was the
importance placed upon the ethnographic record as a way of examining patterns
of Aboriginal life that might then inform the archaeological record. It was an
exciting time.
In 1965 John was appointed to a position at
the AustralianNationalUniversity
in the Research School of Pacific Studies, allowing him to work full-time for
the first time as a research worker in the Australian region.
At ANU, John became increasingly involved
with Jim Bowler (a geomorphologist from MelbourneUniversity)
and Rhys Jones (an ANU prehistorian newly appointed by Jack Golson.
In 1969, Jim Bowler persuaded John and Rhys
Jones to take part in a field trip to LakeMungo, in western NSW, one of the
dry-lake beds in the WillandraLakes complex, surveyed
and named previously by Bowler. This visit set in train the most important
archaeological discoveries in Australia,
or perhaps anywhere in the world, to that time. The first samples of charcoal
and burnt bones included material dated to 26,000 years before the present, the
earliest evidence for human cremation. Another burial site located by Jim
Bowler was an inhumation, ritually covered with red ochre, was older still. These
were the most remote Paleolithic remains of Homo sapiens discovered to that
point, placing Australian Aborigines at the very end, in time and place, of the
human diaspora out of Africa. In 1981, John
had the honour of introducing the nomination of the WillandraLakes
as a world heritage site, at a World Heritage Committee meeting.
In the midst of his other work, John found
time to complete and publish The
Prehistory of Australia in 1969. This book has now seen three editions (the
most recent with Jo Kamminga as co-author in 1999 involved a total revision)
and remains a classic.
In 1971 John was appointed to the
Foundation Chair in Prehistory in the Arts Faculty at the ANU and in the
following year introduced Prehistory 1 as an undergraduate subject. In addition
to a busy archaeological life life, he became involved almost inevitably in
related public activities.
In the 1960s, John along with Jack Golson
and Isabel MvBryde campaigned for legislation to protect Aboriginal sites,
including organising a major conference on the requirements for site
legislation. Between 1965 and 1975, every state in Australia introduced some kind of
legislation to protect Aboriginal sites. He was involved in the formation of
the Australian (now Australian and Torres Strait Islander) Institute of Aboriginal
Studies, being an executive member between 1964-80
and then its chair in 1982-84. He was also involved in organising the first
meeting of the Australian Archaeological Association.
John became a leading light in bridging the
gap between the public and academia, actively campaigning on pubic issues,
including the struggle to save the FranklinRiver and its Aboriginal
heritage. He became a foundation member of the Australian Heritage Commission
in 1976, remaining a member until 1982, and member of the Committee of Inquiry
on Museums and National Collections 1974-75, the body which recommended
establishment of the NationalMuseum of Australia. It would be 20 years
before this recommendation would be acted on and even then its details were
largely ignored. John was also involved in the formulation of the Burra Charter
(1979) and was the chief Australian delegate to the inaugural UNESCO meeting in
Paris, held to
determine the criteria for World Heritage listing. He was instrumental in
nominating the WillandraLakes and KakaduNational Park to the
World Heritage list. latter
John’s role as a public intellectual during
his long career has been detailed in the book Prehistory to Politics. John Mulvaney, the Humanities and the Public
Intellectual edited by Tim Bonahady and Tom Griffiths (Melbourne University
Press 1996).
In the late 1970s, the ANU decided to
include anthropology alongside prehistory in John’s Department. High student
interest led to the appointment of another professor. Differences in approach created
difficulties for John. Partly for that
reason, partly to open his post to a younger prehistorian, he decided to ease
into an early ‘retirement’ in 1985 aged 60, being inscribed as Professor
Emeritus at ANU the following year.
‘Retirement’ is in inverted commas since
John remained as active as ever. He became Honorary Secretary of the AustralianAcademy of the Humanities, and Chair of
the ACT Heritage Committee, while the following two decades became a golden age
of writing and publishing. During this period John wrote, coauthored or edited
16 books, including his autobiography.
Over his long career, John received many
awards including .a CMG (Companion in The Most Distinguished Order of St.
Michael and St. George) in 1982, an Order of Australia (Australia’s highest Order) in 1991, the Graham
Clark Medal by the BritishAcademy in 1999 and the Rhys
Jones Medal from the Australian Archaeological Association in 2004.
Reflecting on the changes that had taken
place over his long professional and public career, John suspected in 2000 that
that there might not be another general prehistory of Australia. So
much had been discovered that it was very difficult now to cover it in one book
within the space limits set by publishers. Instead, it would now be possible
and indeed more sensible to write specific regional histories. In a sense, that
was almost a reversion to the position he had held in the 1960s on the need to
develop regional cultural sequences instead of trying to create generic
sequences that may or may not hold in individual areas.
He also mused on the changes that had taken
place in the disciplines of archaeology and prehistory, at the way
multi-disciplinary science had pushed out the boundaries of what could be
learned. They have indeed been truly remarkable. This links to another element
in John’s various reflections.
When he first became interested in
Australian prehistory and indeed for many years after, he had not met any
Aboriginal people. He was 35 before he saw his first Aboriginal people on his
first trip to KenniffCave in 1960 and then met many after he started field
work in the Northern Territory
from 1963 on. He was not aware of the extent of continuing knowledge among
Aboriginal people. He was alerted to this partly by the anthropological
studies, partly through increasing contact. In 2000, he said: “I suppose in my
own career I went from this ‘I was a Stone Age archaeologist, I wasn’t dealing
with the living’ till I started meeting living people and giving greater and
greater credit to work of Donald Thomson (Australian anthropologist), work like
that.”
I could identify with that. While I was
doing my honours thesis on the economic structure of Aboriginal life in Northern New South Wales at the time of European
intrusion,I read Malcolm
Calley's PhD thesis on Bandjalang Social Organisation with fascination. My thesis was a study in ethnohistory,
using historical records to try to understand the economic structure of
aboriginal life. At the time I was writing there was great suspicion among
historians about the role of oral history and tradition as an evidence source.
There was also a view that the Aborigines of Eastern Australia were too far
removed from their tribal past for current memories to be a valid guide to
traditional life. To me, the striking thing about Malcolm's thesis was the way
it demonstrated that oral tradition was still in fact worthy of study as a way
of understanding present and past Aboriginal life.
John became involved not just in the study
of the Aboriginal past but in giving Aboriginal access to that past, in involving
them, recognising their continuing history and contribution. Among other
things, he played an important role in the transformation of the Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Studies into an Indigenous controlled institution, as well as campaigning for
protection of indigenous sites.
By 1999, John was worried about balance,
concerned that the pendulum had swung to the point that policies and processes
were actively impeding the study of Aboriginal history. The consent
requirements for digs, for example, imposed financial and time costs on honours
or higher degree students that many students could not afford, reducing the
numbers of those interested in Aboriginal history. As another example, the
reburial of remains has the effect of destroying their archaeological value,
including the possibility of using new scientific techniques to extend our
knowledge.
Perhaps ironically, the work that John and
others did to protect Aboriginal sites has led to an explosion in certain
aspects of Australian archaeology and especially the need to carry out
investigations in advance of development activities. This has created jobs for
John’s students. I say ironically because so much Australian archaeology is now
carried out on a fee for service basis without peer review or indeed the
results being easily available. Meantime, and I find this sad, Australian
prehistory seems to have dropped behind studies elsewhere. I still remember my
astonishment at visiting the DanishNationalMuseum
last year at just how much was now known about Danish prehistory as compared to
Australian. .
In 2004, Jean Mulvaney died after heart
surgery. She was 81, a little older than John. They had brought up six children
in the home in Yarralumla which John and Jean established when they moved to
ANU from Melbourne.
Because my focus was on John, I haven’t said much about Jean. She was clearly a
remarkable person in her own right, you will find details given under sources
below, and the couple formed a very real partnership.
In 2006 John married again, historian Liz
Morrison. John and Liz continued to live in the Yarralumla home John and Jean
had established. John continued his work until his death plus the gardening that had been his primary
leisure activity..
In 2000,John was interviewed by Pamela-Jane
Smith as part of the Personal Histories Project. A full transcript of that
interview can be found at http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/JohnTranscript
Stone tools found there appear to predate the arrival of modern humans to the area by more than 60,000 years
The perplexing artifacts, announced on Wednesday in Nature, are most likely between 118,000 and 194,000 years old, though some may be even older. The keen-edged flakes of stone were excavated from an ancient river floodplain in southwest Sulawesi, near the present-day village of Talepu. Some even bear telltale signs of being hammered into shape.But today’s best evidence indicates that modern Homo sapiens didn’t arrive on neighboring islands until about 50,000 years ago, well after the mysterious toolmakers left their wares behind. The find further indicates that some earlier form of human was more successful at traversing the south Pacific’s island networks than previously believed.
................
Gerrit van den Bergh of the University of Wollongong in Australia, the study’s lead author, says that the tools likely were made by Homo erectus, an ancient hominin that lived on nearby islands beginning at least 1.5 million years ago. It’s also possible that the toolmakers are yet-undiscovered relatives of Homo floresiensis, a “hobbit” hominin found on the island of Flores, just south of Sulawesi, between 18,000 and 95,000 years ago, if not earlier.
This discovery is the latest of many that has been dramatically transforming our understanding of the more distant human past. In time, these discoveries are likely to affect our interpretation of Aboriginal prehistory.
Recent discoveries on Barrow Island now off the West Australian coast appear to have pushed the confirmed date for Aboriginal occupation of Australia to between 50,000 and 53,000 years ago. The issue then becomes how the Aborigines fitted into a pattern of human dispersal that was far more complex than that realised even a decade ago.
Research and writing takes time and money. Contributions welcome to help me maintain an independent voice.
Followers
Blog Objectives - and a warning to readers
This blog aims to consolidate and extend New England historical material originally carried on the main New England Australia site. With time, I hope that it will develop into a living history of the broader new state New England, the Tablelands and all the surrounding river valleys.
Readers should be warned, however, that the original posts are work in progress. This means that earlier posts may have been overtaken by later research or thought. I have to go through and do some updates and cross-links, but this is a slow process.
