Lara Lamb

University of Southern Queensland  ·  School of Humanities and Communication

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...

The maritime hiri exchange system spanned up to 350 km of Papua New Guinea's south coast, connecting ceramicist Motu with Papuan Gulf villagers who produced large quantities of sago palm (Metroxylon sagu) starch and rainforest logs. Archaeological and ethnographic evidence for the development of the hiri derives mostly from the Motu end of the exch...

In this chapter we present a concise account of the contact between Europeans and Papua New Guinean peoples, and the subsequent colonial administration of those peoples, with a specific focus on the Gulf region where Hurley collected his material objects and took his photographsPhotographerphotographs and cinefilm. It assembles some of the importan...

In this chapter, and the next, we seek to collect the responses of our collaborators to the different exchanges that constituted our field work, as described in the previous chapter. We illustrate the different ways in which photo elicitation and a reacquaintance with material culture stimulates those reconsiderations of heritage that are not solel...

The colonial history presented in the previous chapters offers context for Hurley's collection of images and artefactsArts, artefacts, and for the ways in which he selectively used the various discourses of colonialismColonialism, colonies to process his own understanding and account for his own collectingCollecting, collections. In this chapter, w...

In our concluding chapter we reflect upon some of the issues raised by the study with respect to supporting contemporary source communities to access both their heritage and the archive, as an enabling resource for an ongoing negotiation of their place in an environment, a society, a culture, a polity, and an economy.

The themes that emerged from our return of Hurley’s photographsPhotographerphotographs and film are organised and cued by a wider sense of the impact of colonisation on Gulf peoples. A pressing issue is the failure of colonial and postcolonial agencies to deliver on the promises of initially colonial, and then subsequently postcolonial, modernityMo...

Our detailed exposition of Hurley’s mediatised expedition in the Gulf in Chapter 3 establishes the specific circumstances in which images and artefacts were collected, and details the contemporaneous responses to his expeditions in Papua and Australia. We also identify Hurley’s ambivalent attitudes to his expedition and the Papuan peoples he encoun...

The use of the term visual repatriation to refer to the return of images requires some qualification, given the specific requirements for repatriation established by origin communities, museum professionals, anthropologists, and other parties interested in the restitution of human remains and physical artefacts. This chapter illuminates some conten...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

Archaeological excavations at an ancestral village site within rainforest in Papua New Guinea has revealed buried cultural evidence that can be explained in a number of ways. While interpretations based on Western archaeological methods suggest regional landscape dynamics informed by geomorphological processes, Indigenous Rumu oral traditions sugge...

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...

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...

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...

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...

There is evidence to suggest that the South Molle Island stone quarry, in the Whitsunday Islands, central Queensland coast, has been used by the indigenous inhabitants of the region from at least 9,000 BP to the present. Distribution of stone from the quarry extends for at least 170km along the coast, from Abbott Point in the north to the Repulse I...

There is evidence to suggest that the South Molle Island stone quarry, in the Whitsunday Islands, central Queensland coast, has been used by the indigenous inhabitants of the region from at least 9,000 BP to the present. Distribution of stone from the quarry extends for at least 170km along the coast, from Abbott Point in the north to the Repulse I...

This report describes a recently obtained radiocarbon determination from the Nara Inlet 1 rockshelter site on Hook Island, off the Central Queensland coast. The new date was obtained in order to more clearly refine changes in stone artefact discard densities within the site as part of a wider technological study, centring on the South Molle Island...

This paper presents the results of a technological analysis of the lithic assemblage of Test Pit 4 at Fern Cave, southeast Cape York Peninsula. My specific aims are to investigate David's (1991) claim that deposition rates of stone artefacts at Fern Cave increased during the peak of the last glacial maximum (ca. 20,890-1 7,200 BP). Deposition rates...

Includes bibliographical references. Thesis (B.A. (Hons))--University of Queensland.

The purpose of this monograph is to take a new look at various aspects of stone artefact analysis that reveal important and exciting new information about the past. This invovles reorienting our methodological approach to stone artefacts as well as the questions asked of them. The papers making up this volume tackle a number of issues that have lon...