Graeme K Ward

Australian National University | ANU · College of Asia & the Pacific

Dampier Archipelago, on the northwestern coast of Australia has perhaps the greatest number and concentration of petroglyphs any where in the world. In this introduction to Lorblanchet’s pioneering investigation of the archaeology of the Dampier petroglyphs, we provide an outline of the region’s history, drawing on records of European exploration a...

The multiple beginnings of this book are spread over nearly one half century, dating from only a few years after the initial archaeological and anthropological reconnaissances of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Much earlier, of course, is the Indigenous Australians’ habitation of the area now known as the Dampier Archipelago, Burrup Penins...

Table of contents of Archaeology and Petroglyphs of Dampier. Comprises fourteen papers published (PDFs) in the Technical Reports of the Australian Museum on-line

Description of Indigenous Australian rock carvings at Skew Valley and Gum Tree Valley, Dampier, Western Australia, their character and environmental, historical and archaeological contexts, including dating. CONTENTS

Ancient DNA analysis of three individuals dated to ~3000 years before present (BP) from Vanuatu and one ~2600 BP individual from Tonga has revealed that the first inhabitants of Remote Oceania (“First Remote Oceanians”) were almost entirely of East Asian ancestry, and thus their ancestors passed New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon...

Ancient DNA from Vanuatu and Tonga dating to about 2,900-2,600 years ago (before present, BP) has revealed that the "First Remote Oceanians" associated with the Lapita archaeological culture were directly descended from the population that, beginning around 5000 BP, spread Austronesian languages from Taiwan to the Philippines, western Melanesia, an...

The dating of Australian petroglyphs and pictograms has been the subject of considerable discussion in recent decades. There have been continued initiatives in the application of techniques derived from the physico-chemical sciences and many useful results generated. Indeed, as with the early days of radiocarbon dating, there may be many results bu...

Key aspects of the Gwion rock art tradition are threefold: The historic origin of Wunan law as evidence of a society started by an artist; methods of the art tradition recorded on film and its enduring role as graphic legal documents within a cultural network under Wunan law; and its future as a meaningful legacy of fine art under Ngarinyin munnumb...

The region of northwest Australia from the Daly River to the Fitzmaurice and Victoria Rivers is relatively poorly understood in rock art terms especially compared to the two well-known rock art provinces of Arnhem Land (Northern Territory) and the Kimberley plateau of northern Western Australia. It has been argued that the Mimi and/or Dynamic figur...

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies was involved in research into Indigenous Australian cultural heritage from its inception in 1963/64. From one underlying theme among many, it was developed and promoted though two major programs between the mid-1970s and the end of the 1990s. This was accomplished primarily t...

A road map of places in Australasia of World Heritage value has been compiled for UNESCO. This presentation addresses the Australian rock art component of that initiative. To date there has been no overall review of the potential for Australian rock art to be listed as World Heritage. Some art is already listed as a component of the Kakadu National...

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra (AIATSIS), was involved in research into Indigenous Australian rock art almost from its inception in 1963/4. A major development in its support of various aspects of protection and research began in 1986. The national Rock Art Protection Program (RAPP) was initiated...

Scholarly congresses are major occasions for the dissemination of knowledge and are usually stimulating and enjoyable exchanges. They generate considerable energy – or perhaps they transform the significant effort that goes into developing and staging them. There is a buzz as delegates meet, mingle and discuss one day’s highlights and the prospects...

Abstract. The Wadeye - Fitzmaurice region is in the northwest of the Top End of Australia’s Northern Territory. It lies between two major geographical and cultural regions of northern Australia, the Kimberley to the southwest and Arnhem Land to the northeast. Its location suggests that it has potential to address questions concerning relationships...

Abstract. Residents of the Wadeye region, south-west of Darwin, have been developing tourism initiatives within their traditional territory with the aims of supporting themselves and sharing their cultural heritage. At the same time, they and others have been encouraging the recording of cultural heritage places in the area. We undertook a project...

Many residents of the Wadeye region, southwest of Darwin, want – for various reasons – to be engaged in cultural tourism. There is a useful model for viable Indigenous cultural heritage tourism initiatives on a local scale; there are also local and wider reasons why such a project might fail.

We describe here the recovery and analysis of exotic pottery from the island of Taumako in the Duff Islands of the Southeast Solomon Islands and from Mota in the Banks Islands, Northern Vanuatu. The pottery was found during archaeological fieldwork carried out in the 1970s. It comprises a single surface-collected sherd from Taumako, and half of an...

Protecting Country. Indigenous governance and management of protected areas [2008] Edited by Dermot Smyth and Graeme K Ward The full publication (PDF x 12) of PROTECTING COUNTRY: INDIGENOUS GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT OF PROTECTED AREAS [2008] edited by Dermot Smyth and Graeme K Ward may be found at http://aiatsis.gov.au/publications/products/pr...

Abstract: The role of the poet and collector of ‘mythologies’, Roland Robinson, in prompting the production of commercial bark-painting at Port Keats (Wadeye), appears to have been accepted uncritically — though not usually acknowledged — by collectors and curators. Here we attempt to trace the history of painting in the Daly–Fitzmaurice region to...

AIATSIS Conference 2007 This publication had its origin in one day workshop on Indigenous Governance and Management of Protected Areas held during the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Conference, held in Canberra in 2007. All but one of the contributions to this publication began as a presentation at t...

CONTENTS Luke Taylor, Graeme K Ward, Graham Henderson and Richard Davis / Introduction Keynote paper Fred Myers / Unsettled business: acrylic painting, tradition, and Indigenous being Symposium A papers Jon Altman / Development options on Aboriginal land: Sustainable Indigenous hybrid economies in the twenty-first century Richard Davis / Identity...

The first major Conference of the AIATSIS for several years was held at the Manning Clark Centre of The Australian National University, Canberra, between 18 and 20 September 2001. Its title, The Power of Knowledge, the Resonance of Tradition – Indigenous Studies: Conference2001 stressed the interrelated significances of knowledge and tradition in...

Electronic publication of papers from the AIATSIS Indigenous Studies conference, September 2001

Cultural heritage tourism involving Indigenous Australian places is increasingly popular; places with rock-markings are the main focus of much tourism. Commensurately, there is a growing field of research into the practice, policies and ethical aspects of Indigenous cultural heritage tourism. My particular interest concerns the potential costs and...

The historical role of AIATSIS,particularly the role it played in the development of archaeological and anthropological research in Australia; the contemporary role of the Institute, particularly its attempts to influence researchers to undertake research in ways that represent ethical ‘best practice’ in the eyes of the Indigenous community

In the context of my work as a research fellow at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, I am occasionally asked by representatives of Indigenous Australian communities to provide advice on aspects of the conservation and protection of cultural heritage places of significance to those communities. The Institute h...

See DATING AUSTRALIAN ROCK-MARKINGS [2000]

See DATING AUSTRALIAN ROCK-MARKINGS [2000]

Recommendations of the Indigenous delegates to the Second AURA Congress, held in Cairns, were presented to the General Meeting of AURA on 4 September 1992. The recommendations generated broad discussion; it was agreed that further consideration of the recommendations would be handled by the Executive Committee. At the Annual General Meeting of AURA...

CONTENTS Preface by Gatjil Djerrkura, chair, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Chapter 1 Heather Burke, Claire Smith and Graeme Ward Globalisation and Indigenous Peoples: threat or empowerment? Chapter 2 Faye Ginsburg Resources of hope: learning from the local in a trans-national era Chapter 3 Robert Layton From clan symbol to ethni...

Globalisation provides the potential for cultural change at an unprecedented rate and scale. With the advent of communication technologies and the mobility of modern peoples, the geographic boundaries which formerly shaped people’s understandings of themselves and the world are collapsing. Emerging from this is a unique opportunity for people to le...

Archaeometry is at the borders of archaeology, epistemologically related to physics, chemistry, geology and other ‘hard’ sciences. This has led to situations where ‘archaeometrists’ are often involved in the development of new tools and methodologies, sometimes independently of the needs of the archaeological sciences. Archaeologists, based in the...

This article served as an overview to the collection of edited presentations published in 2000 as Advances in Dating Australian Rock-Markings, details of which are given below. Four reviews of the book, published between 2000 and 2002, are appended.

The aim of the Management Symposium (Symposium H) of the Second International Congress of the Australian Rock Art Research Association (AURA), held in Cairns in the far north of Queensland during September 1992, was to survey and advance knowledge of policy and practice in the management of rock imagery , The score of the symposium was designed to...

Visitor management at Aboriginal heritage sites is an integral part of the wider issue and practices of heritage site management and cultural tourism. Management of heritage sites is becoming an increasingly complex activity which is placing ever greater professional responsibilities upon the various management agencies. This complexity is further...

Ownership of rock picture sites in Australia and control of their management including research is multifaceted and variously problematic and contentious. The predominant culture effects control through various legislative provisions and administrative arrangements made for the protection of cultural heritage, either under the rubric of general cul...

Book review: CLAIMS TO KNOWLEDGE, CLAIMS TO COUNTRY. NATIVE TITLE, NATIVE TITLE CLAIMS AND THE ROLE OF THE ANTHROPOLOGIST. Edited by Mary Edmunds. Native Titles Research Unit, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra. 1994

International Conference on Rock Art Study, Recording and Conservation held in Yinchuan, Ningxia Huizu Zizhiqu (Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region) of the People’s Republic of China, during October 1991. It was the first international conference of the Rock Art Research Association of China (RARAC). There were three sessions of academic presentations of...

Paintings and engravings have been made by the Aboriginal people of Australia during the more than 50 000 years that they have inhabited the island continent. Despite 200 years of settlement from Europe and Asia, which has severely disrupted traditional lifeways, rock pictures continue to be of cultural and spiritual significance to indigenous Aust...

This morning I want to talk about ways in which Aboriginal people in Australia are involved in the study of sites with painted and engraved rocks – especially with some aspects of their study and conservation. Such places are usually known as “rock art sites”, although Aborigines did not necessarily consider the painted or engraved images to be ‘Ar...

A cultural continuity project involved Aboriginal youths and elders in repainting ceremonial sites in the western Kimberley region of Australia; non-Aboriginal protests lead to the suspension of the project. News reports of the project and the statements of participants and commentators and, subsequently, presentations to the ‘Retouch’ Symposium at...

SEE: BIOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS OF THE MELE BURIALS [1993]

Aboriginal Australia has a long history of artistic endeavour, pictures on rock, found throughout the continent, date from many millennia ago and continue into the present to be an integral and significant part of Aboriginal culture. In recent years, increasing numbers of tourists have sought to visit the extensive areas of rock imagery made access...

Research by Egloff for the Australian Heritage Commission in 1987 built upon fieldwork by Howard Creamer and Ray Kelly of the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service's sacred sites team. Egloff prepared nominations to the Register of the National Estate for several historic period Aboriginal cemeteries in northern and western NSW. Among...

Abstract. This paper complements the initial presentation in Rock Art Research by Ward and Sullivan (Vol. 6, No.1, 1989), in which were given the background to the development of the conservation program and details of the initial projects funded. It provides an outline of the results of the first year’s funding, lists the successful applications o...

AlAS has been provided by the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs with extra funding to encourage the protection of prehistoric rock paintings and petroglyphs in Australia. This paper reviews some of the history of the development of the Institute’s involvement in rock art conservation and outlines the projects funded in the first year of its operation...

The thesis by Jose Garanger published for the Société des Océanistes in 1972 remains the most seminal work on the prehistory of that group of islands then known as the New Hebrides archipelago, the modem nation of Vanuatu. His report details the results of field research conducted between 1964 and 1967, describing extensive surveys of several islan...

Sandra Bowdler reported in the last issue of A NTIQUITY (62: 517–23) on the controversy surrounding the recent repainting of Wandjina figures on the rocks of the western Kimberley, northwest Australia. Here is an Aboriginal Australian's view of the repainting project and its significance, along with an explication and further discussion of implicat...

A collection of papers presented to Section 25A of the 54th Congress of the Australian & New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, May, 1984

We report observations made of the activities of the Japanese bone-collecting team working on Tinian, one of the Mariana Islands, and the results of a study made in the field of human skeletal materials collected by the team from three or more sites on Tinian. We conclude that a large proportion of a prehistoric Chamorro village site with earlier o...

This note describes an investigation of a lava refuge cave situated near the village of Tufutafo'e on the north coast of the island of Savai'i in Western Samoa. Discussion is made of the occupational evidence and the probable time of use; brief comparison is made with other sites of this type described from elsewhere on Savai'i and from Upolu, the...

1. INTRODUCTION This paper discusses some statistical techniques for the clustering of radiocarbon age determinations. In a previous article (Ward and Wilson 1978) we considered statistical techniques for comparing a series of age determinations and, if they were judged to be not significantly different, for combining these determinations. Here we...

The Banks group comprises both high and low islands, and a significant maritime as well as terrestrial orientation to the traditional economy is evident both ethnographically and from archaeological data. However, the pig appears as a central focus of the Banks Islands no less than in other Melanesian communities. There is the suggestion from early...

Searching for the Islas de Salomon and their fabulous wealth, the Great Southern Continent beloved of European cartographers and the multitudes of souls surely awaiting salvation there, Quiros the third of the Spanish voyages into the southerly latitudes of the Pacific, stumbled upon the groups of tiny oceanic islands at the intersection of the Sol...

(This unpublished report to the Ministry of Social Affairs, New Hebrides, was prepared by two ANU scholars who had recently completed doctoral research in the archipelago, to aid preparation of radio programmes for broadcast locally) Archaeologists study the past by looking at the traces of where people lived in the past, their villages, the tools...

Archaeologists, along with other Quaternary researchers, seldom rely upon a single radiocarbon determination to provide an estimate of the age of the phenomenon which is the object of their study. There is an evident need for an explicitly formulated procedure for comparing sets of radiocarbon determinations from the same and from adjacent strata o...

The interpretation of the data of artefact 'sourcing' studies requires attention to the logical bases of the arguments used to select the source of the raw material. A stronger argument for one locality is obtained by rejecting other possible sources.

Wanem long samting ya, arkeolosi? Samfala man ol i bin go olbaot long Niu Hebridis digdigim graon blong faenem olgeta kaen samting we i save soemaot kastom blong olgeta bifo longtaem. Nem blong wok ya, arkeolosi. Be from wanem olgeta man olsem i mekem olsem? Mi talem nao.

Ref: WARD 1978a WOK BLONG FAENEMAOT FASIN BLONG MAN BLONG TAEM BIFO / WARD 1978b WOK BLONG TIKIM KRAON I SAVE SOEM FASIN MO KASTOM

Ol smol aelan we ol i kolem Bankis ol i stap long not blong Niu Hebridis, hemya long saot blong Solomon. Tete long Bankis, i kat pipol i stap long naen aelan nomo. Sam aelan olsem Vatgani mo Rowa, man i ko long ol samtaem nomo, be i no stap long ol. Ol narvala aelan ol i bikwan we ol folkenu i mekem ol i kamaot bifo. Ol i stip, sam ol i hae i kasem...

Peralkaline rhyolites are associated with andesitic volcanic arcs in three areas of the southwest Pacific, namely in the D'Entrecasteaux Islands, southeastern Papua New Guinea, and on Mayor Island and in the Kaeo area of Northland, New Zealand. Peralkaline rhyolites are characteristically related to tensional crustal environments. Although their oc...

A REVIEW is made of known and potential sources of volcanic glasses throughout Oceania. Data obtained by spectrometric analyses of material available from deposits are given and these chemical characterisations are used to delimit potential sources of raw material in prehistory. It is shown that each known deposit for which analyses are available c...

Reports results of archaeological investigations made on Ulawa in the eastern Solomon Islands during 1972. Focus is upon exploitation of marine food resources and of sources of lithic raw materials. Ethnographic and geological sources are used in interpreting the excavated material.

Rhyolitic and dacitic volcanism is widespread in the North Island of New Zealand, It is not surprising that the Polynesian settlers discovered obsidian in several localities and made use of it for a variety of purposes. It has become apparent that obsidian was highly prized by the Maori: in some form, it has been found at nearly every archaeologica...

This paper argues the importance of the contribution that multivariate statistical techniques can make to the analysis of data from trace element characterization of sources of raw material and of artefacts. A three phase analysis is outlined: for the delimitation of sources of the raw material; the representation of the interrelationships of these...

A major difficulty arises in sourcing studies when more than two or three elements are used in the comparison of artifacts with a number of potential sources. Multivariate statistical analysis can be used to define source groups and to allocate artifacts to their most likely sources. In this study of North Island, New Zealand, obsidian sources used...

Inter-island communication has long been a focus of research into Pacific island communities. Archaeology, previously reliant upon stylistic features of artefacts and similarities among implements, has recently sought support from the physical sciences in its attempts to define prehistoric inter-group contacts. For example the chemical 'fingerprint...

The methods and results of a recent characterisation study of New Zealand obsidians are reported. The investigation was designed with the intention that it should enable students of New Zealand archaeology to source artefacts from other archaeological assemblages. A reference configuration is defined using material from eighteen major sources in th...

Previous research has shown the potential of analyses of artefact obsidian, especially source identification, to contribute to knowledge of New Zealand prehistory. As part of an investigation which sought to characterize obsidians by trace element analysis, deposits of raw material in northern and central regions of the North Island were located an...