Bryce Barker

University of Southern Queensland  ·  School of Humanities and Communication

Firearms were critical to the activities of the Queensland Native Mounted Police, a frontier force tasked with suppressing Aboriginal resistance in the colony of Queensland, Australia, between 1848 and 1929. Wider colonial processes meant that arming the Native Mounted Police was never straightforward, despite a dedicated program to standardise and...

Clothing is capable of providing a range of insights into aspects of identity, authority, power, and hierarchy. Here we present the results of an analysis of an assemblage of uniform buttons and accoutrements from seven 19th-century Native Mounted Police (NMP) camps in Queensland, Australia. As part of wider colonial structures of discipline and ex...

This paper presents preliminary results from the 2019 excavations at Walufeni Cave, at the eastern end of the Great Papuan Plateau (GPP) in western Papua New Guinea. Preliminary dating and analysis of the unfinished excavations at Walufeni Cave span the Holocene and probably continue into the Late Pleistocene, confirming the presence of people on t...

This paper presents excavation results from a midden site on the central Queensland coast at Wunjunga, dating to 1,500 BP, and examines the implications for Late Holocene coastal occupation and open site preservation. We propose that although there is clear evidence for environmental factors such as cyclonic events having heavily impacted open midd...

Lithic assemblages associated with Indigenous Australian built structures are under-explored. The Hilary Creek Site 1 (HCS1) complex, western Queensland, comprising at least 16 stone-based hut structures and multiple stone arrangements, also contains a surface assemblage of thousands of flaked stone artefacts. Analysis of a sample of this assemblag...

The Archaeology of Tanamu 1 presents the results from Tanamu 1, the first site to be published in detail in the Caution Bay Studies in Archaeology series. In 2008–2010, the Caution Bay Archaeological Project excavated 122 stratified sites 20km northwest of Port Moresby, south coast of Papua New Guinea. This remains the largest archaeological salvag...

A magnetometer survey was conducted on the abandoned village site of Keveoki 1, near the Vailala River, Gulf Province, PNG. The survey, using a single sensor proton precession magnetometer, was successful in locating and defining the boundaries of areas confirmed by excavation to contain dense assemblages of pottery. The combination of geophysical...

IntroductionThe southern Arnhem Land plateau contains a rich mosaic of thousands of rock art sites located in outcrops of Proterozoic Marlgowa Sandstone of the Kombolgie formation (Carson et al. 1999) (Figure 11.1). Within this region in Jawoyn Country can be found Nawarla Gabarnmang, an impressive rockshelter exhibiting a gridded network of pillar...

Investigations at the newly discovered, once-coastal but now inland archaeological village site of Keveoki 1 allows us to characterise the nature and antiquity of ancestral hiri trade ceramics around 450-500 cal BP in the recipient Vailala River- Kea Kea villages of the Gulf Province of the southern coast of Papua New Guinea. This paper reports on...

This paper explores the notion of absence as a key, but elusive, element in the contemporary recognition, perception and reception of Australian frontier conflict. It derives from a four-year-long community archaeology project to document the lives and legacies of a devastating frontier paramilitary policing force – the Queensland Native Mounted Po...

The invasion of the Australian continent by Europeans caused massive disruptions to Indigenous cultures and ways of life. The adoption of new raw materials, often for the production of “traditional” artifact forms, is one archaeological indicator of the changes wrought by “colonization.” Two camp sites associated with the Queensland Native Mounted...

An extensive body of engraved rock art on the Great Papuan Plateau is documented here for the first time, along with the first dates for occupation. Consisting largely of deeply abraded or pecked barred ovals and cupules, the rock art of this region does not fit comfortably into any regional models for rock art previously described. It does, howeve...

The frontier of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Australia was a place in which colonists routinely lived in fear of retaliation by the Aboriginal peoples whose traditional lands they had forcibly dispossessed. It has been suggested this concern manifested itself in domestic architecture, in both active and passive defensive strategies designed to...

This paper reports on an Aboriginal site complex, incorporating hut structures, ceremonial stone arrangements, an extensive surface artefact assemblage of lithics and mussel shell, and a silcrete quarry, located along Hilary Creek, a tributary of the Georgina River in western Queensland, Australia. At least two phases of occupation are indicated. T...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Caution Bay, on the South Coast of Papua New Guinea, offers a unique opportunity to assess the possible impacts of predation by pre-Lapita, Lapita, and post-Lapita peoples on local mollusc resources from at least 5000 years ago. Using biometric analysis of the bivalve Anadara antiquata and gastropod Conomurex luhuanus from the site of Tanamu 1, we...

Although the historical record relating to nineteenth century frontier conflict between Aboriginal groups and Europeans in Queensland has been clearly documented, there have been limited associated archaeological studies. As part of the Archaeology of the Queensland Native Mounted Police (NMP) project, this paper canvasses the physical imprint of f...

The archaeological record of Lower Laura (aka Boralga) Native Mounted Police camp, a longstanding base for Queensland’s frontier war in Cape York Peninsula, includes a diverse assemblage of culturally modified Erythophleum chlorastychys (Cooktown ironwood) trees. Analysis of cultural scar attributes and tool marks – which were found to be variously...

Much has been written about the history of the Queensland Native Mounted Police, mostly focussing on its development, its white officers, how much the Colonial Government genuinely knew about the actions of the Force, and how many people were killed during the frontier wars. Far less attention has been given to the Aboriginal men of the force, the...

The “Frontier Wars” in Australia were a series of conflicts carried out at different times and places by various military and civilian actors between 1788 and c1938. One of the principal agents in this violence in the colony of Queensland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the paramilitary Native Mounted Police (NMP), who were tasked wit...

In this paper we examine a set of ethnographic practices from the mid-reaches of the Kikori River, specifically pertaining to women’s crustacean fishing, and in doing so re-examine the archaeological record of nearby rock shelter Epe Amoho. These practices, we argue, are poorly represented in many archaeological sites across the landscape. Such pat...

We present Bayesian modelling on a long sequence of radiocarbon ages from the archaeological site of Nawarla Gabarnmang, central Arnhem Land plateau, northern Australia. A horizon of wind-borne sediments containing flaked stone artefacts and charcoal commencing >45,610 cal BP (the young end of the modelled boundary age range, which extends beyond t...

Teaching History June 2019:6–10

Ant bed (also known as termite mound) floors were a common feature of historical buildings in colonial Australia, yet they are rarely identified in archaeological contexts. In this paper we present a case study of these features in buildings associated with a late nineteenth century Native Mounted Police camp in Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. Abo...

Although historians have provided substantial insights into the structure, development and activities of the Queensland Native Mounted Police, they have rarely focused on the complex and sensitive issue of Aboriginal recruitment. A careful reading of historical records, however, identifies several methods, including coercion, intimidation, kidnappi...

Signals 124:14–19

The construction of the Cambridge Downs homestead, built between 1876 and 1877 on the Stawell River in central north Queensland, has long been thought unusual for the region. Local folklore suggests that it was intentionally fortified as protection against Aboriginal attack and a 2009 replica of the homestead in the main street of Richmond presents...

Identifying extinct fauna in rock art is a common but difficult exercise. Here we use geometric morphometric analysis of shape to examine the oft-cited painting from Arnhem Land attributed by Gunn et al. to the long-extinct species Genyornis newtoni. We compare the shape of key anatomical features in this painting to anatomical depictions of Genyor...

This paper reports on the recording of previously unpublished Aboriginal stone hut structures in southwestern Queensland. Located along a tributary of the Georgina River, these 17 structures are typical of the region, being generally circular in plan view, with an average diameter of 5m and a 1m-wide opening consistently positioned to afford protec...

The so-called “Genyornis” rockshelter site on the Arnhem Land plateau, northern Australia, features a painting of a large bird that some archaeologists and paleontologists have suggested could be an image of the megafaunal species Genyornis newtoni, until recently widely thought to have become extinct some 45,000 years ago. However, a recent archae...

Wallis, L.A., N. Cole, H. Burke, B. Barker, K. Lowe, I. Davidson and E. Hatte 2017 Rewriting the history of the Native Mounted Police in Queensland. Nulungu Insights 1. Broome: Nulungu Research Institute.

The Mine Island stone arrangement complex is a large ceremonial complex on the central Queensland coast. The arrangements are in excess of 2 km of looping and U-shaped aligned stones. A series of middens, directly adjacent to the stone arrangements, was recently excavated, providing potential chronological insights into the construction and ceremon...

This chapter reports on the personnel, research structure and analytical methods employed in the Caution Bay project, constituting the sum of the various phases of field and laboratory research at Caution Bay. We stress that from the onset our approach has been to investigate through excavation the character of the archaeological record at a landsc...

This paper examines the chronologies of three abandoned village sites in an attempt to refine the timing of occupation of low-lying mud islands of the lower Kikori River delta, Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Despite evidence for varying degrees of post-depositional disturbance at all three sites, meaningful chronological data can be obtaine...

Caves and rockshelters are a key component of the archaeological record but are often regarded as natural places conveniently exploited by human communities. Archaeomorphological study shows however that they are not inert spaces but have frequently been modified by human action, sometimes in ways that imply a strong symbolic significance. In this...

The Royal Bull's Head Inn was originally built in 1847 and functioned as a hotel in Drayton, Queensland. Through its life the hotel served the local population on the Darling Downs as well as those travelling through as a hotel, bar, livery and general meeting place. In 1973 the National Trust of Queensland purchased the property and subsequently r...

Different models explaining spatial and temporal changes in relation to the movement and colonisation of the Lapita culture complex have been proposed for different regions throughout Melanesia and the Pacific. At Caution Bay, on the southern coast of PNG excavations of Lapita sites accompanied by rich faunal assemblages ( Mcniven et al. 2011) prov...

We report on archaeological excavations undertaken at Kumukumu 1 atop the dense rainforest-clad Aird Hills of the Kikori river delta islands, south coast of Papua New Guinea. Results indicate exploitation of the nearby environment, including the gathering of some 200 million shellfish from riverine habitats at the base of the hill some 600 years ag...

This paper presents new results of on-wall and excavated pigments from two major rock art sites in northern Australia: the ‘Genyornis’ site, and Nawarla Gabarnmang. The former site has been argued in the archaeological literature to feature a painting of Genyornis newtoni, thought to have become extinct across Australia 40-45,000 years ago. The sec...

Dans le cadre du projet du "Jawoyn RockArt and Heritage Program", des membres de la Jawoyn Association et les partenaires français (EDYTEM et CNP) se sont intéressés à l'étude du panneau de Genyornis, en Terre d'Arnhem (Australie) qui représente d'un oiseau disparu il y a environ 45 000 ans, Genyornis newtoni. Afin de déterminer, i) la nature des c...

Australia contains some of the world’s richest and apparently longest traditions of rock pictographs. Dating this art, however, has been problematic, with few ‘direct’ and reliable dates of Pleistocene or early Holocene age having been obtained from visible, representational imagery. This paper critically reviews the evidence for the antiquity of p...

We thank all the commentators for their thoughtful comments, and especially Jim Specht for initiating this stimulating Forum on the discovery of Lapita ceramics at Caution Bay on the south coast of mainland Papua New Guinea. All flag numerous important implications of these discoveries for Pacific archaeology. To make the most economical use of our...

This paper reports on the ceramics from Squares A and B of Bogi 1, a newly excavated site at Caution Bay, south coast of mainland Papua New Guinea. A dense cultural horizon dated from c. 2150 to c. 2100 calBP and preceded by earlier cultural deposits contains previously undescribed ceramics of limited decorative variability almost exclusively focus...

For over forty years, archaeologists working along Papua New Guinea's southern coastline have sought evidence for early ceramics and its relationship with Lapita wares of Island Melanesia. Failing to find any such evidence of pottery more than 2000 bp, and largely based on the excavation of eight early pottery-bearing sites during the late 1960s in...

This paper presents the results of an excavation of a stone mound at Wunjunga at the mouth of the Burdekin River near Ayr on the central Queensland coast. It is proposed that this construction conforms broadly to the South Sea Islander (SSI) ritual shrines described for Solomon Islands, recorded in oral tradition as related to fishing, purification...

Recent excavations at Nawarla Gabarnmang in Jawoyn country, southwest Arnhem Land have produced a long sequence of AMS radiocarbon determinations on individual pieces of charcoal reliably associated with stone artifacts dating back to 45,180±910 cal BP. It represents one of the earliest radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites in Australia. Here we r...

Archaeological investigations of human predation pressures on shellfish usually rely on measurements of complete shell specimens. However, most archaeological shell assemblages consist predominantly of broken shells, limiting measurable sample sizes, and thus potentially biasing results in cases where shell fragmentation is biased towards particula...

A magnetometer survey was conducted on the abandoned village site of Keveoki 1, near the Vailala River, Gulf Province, PNG. The survey, using a single sensor proton precession magnetometer, was successful in locating and defining the boundaries of areas confirmed by excavation to contain dense assemblages of pottery. The combination of geophysical...

The islands of Western Torres Strait, between Papua New Guinea and Australia, saw the emergence of ritual dugong bone mounds approximately 400 years ago. These mounds were used as a means to commune with, and as an aid for the hunting of, dugongs. This paper explores the bone contents of three dugong bone mounds on the small, uninhabited island of...

Recent excavations at Nawarla Gabarnmang in Jawoyn country, southwest Arnhem Land have produced a long sequence of AMS radiocarbon determinations on individual pieces of charcoal reliably associated with stone artefacts dating back to 45,180±910 cal BP. It represents one of the earliest radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites in Australia. Here we r...

A magnetometer survey was conducted on the abandoned village site of Keveoki 1, near the Vailala River, Gulf Province, PNG. The survey, using a single sensor proton precession magnetometer, was successful in locating and defining the boundaries of areas confirmed by excavation to contain dense assemblages of pottery. The combination of geophysical...

Since the 1970s the site of Emo (aka 'Samoa', 'OAC') in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea has been cited as one of the earliest-known ceramic sites from the southern Papuan lowlands. This site has long been seen as holding c.2000 year old evidence of post-Lapita long-distance maritime trade from (Austronesian-speaking) Motu homelands in the Cen...

Local responses to shifting coastlines feature prominently in the oral histories of the Gulf Province (Papua New Guinea). Stories told in the Kouri district, east of the Vailala River, tell of a past when villages that are today located 6 km from the sea were then coastal settlements with communities actively engaged in regular exchange relations w...

This paper outlines the ethnohistory and archaeology of a Great Depression camp for unemployed men, established at Toowoomba, Queensland, in 1932. The camp was self sufficient and highly ordered. We interpret the material signature of the camp as a symbol of main-stream middle-class Australian values. Thus the camp is also a material symbol of the...