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How was Mulka's Cave, an Aboriginal Rock Art Site Near Hyden, in South Western Australia, Used by the People Who Decorated it's Walls, When the Present Entrance Was Much Smaller?
... Hammond (1933: 64-65;quoted in Hallam 1979: 88-89) recounts a myth given to him by an old Aboriginal man from Kellerberrin. The myth describes the destruction of a very large tree at Kellerberrin that site since the 1980s had eroded the cave sediments by almost a metre (Webb and Rossi 2008). This would have also removed any ochre discarded from a more recent period of rock art production. ...
This paper presents a formal analysis of the two known rock art sites in the Esperance region of Western Australia - Marbaleerup and Boyatup - and compares and contrasts them with the characteristics of 43 other known rock art sites in the Noongar lands. The Esperance region lies at the eastern edge of the traditional lands of the Noongar people, a language and landholding group who occupy the southwest corner of the Australian continent - Noongar country. The peripheral location of the Esperance Nyungar lands and their proximity to neighbouring non-Noongar groups gives rise to questions about how its rock art compares to other Noongar rock art. The analysis seeks to determine the prominent formal characteristics of the art at Marbaleerup and Boyatup: do they share some or all of the characteristics of Noongar rock art? The results suggest that Esperance Nyungar rock art is consistent with that clustered around the north-eastern periphery of Noongar country. On this basis we propose the existence of an Eastern Noongar rock art tradition.
... Hammond (1933: 64-65;quoted in Hallam 1979: 88-89) recounts a myth given to him by an old Aboriginal man from Kellerberrin. The myth describes the destruction of a very large tree at Kellerberrin that site since the 1980s had eroded the cave sediments by almost a metre (Webb and Rossi 2008). This would have also removed any ochre discarded from a more recent period of rock art production. ...
Landscape management by First Nations Peoples often involves sustainably enhancing environments to increase availability of resources. Granite outcrops, globally, can exhibit such modifications. Propped-up rock slabs constructed by First Nations Peoples for catching reptiles (lizard traps) are a widespread, overlooked, and threatened cultural component of granites of the Southwest Australian Floristic Region. Our team, which includes three Merningar/Menang Elders (co-authors LK, HC, and AE), has undertaken a systematic and culturally informed review of the current scientific literature and Traditional Ecological Knowledge with the subsequent aim of using that data to raise awareness and advocate for lizard trap protection. We collated information and identified knowledge gaps regarding lizard traps: their definition, function, distribution, related Traditional Ecological Knowledge, threats, and conservation. Elders explained that lizard traps do not restrain or contain animals. They provide reptiles with shelter from aerial predators, and opportunities for basking, shade, and foraging. They work as a trap because startled reptiles run beneath a lizard trap, are surrounded by people, and extracted. All 317 published lizard trap records are in southwest Western Australia, across Noongar, Yamaji, and Ngadju lands. Ten papers expressed concern over threats to lizard traps. Overall, lizard traps highlight how sustainable ecosystem enhancement requires deep knowledge of the land and culture that is embedded in the ecological system. Further cross-cultural ecological studies are required to document, understand, and protect these culturally significant structures, and the Traditional Ecological Knowledge and biodiversity that they sustain.
Mulka's Cave is a profusely decorated Aboriginal rock art site located near Wave Rock, a heavily-promoted granite weathering feature outside Hyden, a small town in the south-west of Western Australia. Thousands of tourists visit Wave Rock and Mulka's Cave each year. This level of visitation is severely impacting the ground surface both within and without the cave. Comparison of pictures of the cave mouth taken over the last fifty years shows that about one metre of the deposits within the cave has disappeared during that period. We attribute this erosion to trampling. We describe the measures recently taken to reduce the impact of tourists' feet on Mulka's Cave. It is hoped that the new infrastructure will prevent further environmental degradation. We briefly address the vexed question of whether tourists should be allowed unrestricted access to archaeological sites in fragile environments, given the damage they can inflict on them unintentionally and unwittingly.
Going into a cave or shelter, one walks where one can stand upright or has to crouch less. That affects which zones objects are trampled on, which zones they may be kicked out of, which zones they may be kicked into. And those effects interact with the usual spatial order - with its activity zones and drop zones - that develops through occupation of the enclosed cave or shelter.
In the early years of the twentieth century, anthropologists recorded evidence for the movement of the circumcision rite into the non-circumcising southwest region of Western Australia. Archaeological and linguistic evidence from central Australia suggests that this may have been a continuation of an expansion of the boundaries of the Western Desert 'cultural group' which began almost 1,500 years ago. This paper considers how the sorts of social mechanisms recorded during the historic period for the push of circumcision into the southwest, what we will characterise here as 'ritual engines', may well inform on much wider processes responsible for the remarkable geographic spread and speed of the transmission of the Western Desert culture group. Introduction Australian archaeologists have frequently alluded to long-term cultural change as an explanation for shifts in artefact types, raw material distributions and graphic vocabularies. It is presumed that these transitions in the archaeological record are in many instances indicative of wider transformations in social, economic and ritual relationships across various kinds of cultural boundaries. However, the reality is that once we stray away from environmental determinism we have almost no genuine examples or models of why or how such changes have occurred in Australia. One of the major and most widely recognised 'boundaries' in Aboriginal Australia is the so-called 'circumcision/subincision line', demarcating the division between major ritual and cultural traditions, namely the inland Western Desert culture bloc versus a number of other culture areas ranged along the coastal fringe (Figure 1). The presence of this border on Tindale's (1974) and other maps has lent it an air of immutability. However, in this paper we will argue that this line represents not a boundary, but a rapidly moving frontier of cultural change. Specifically, we attempt to connect archaeological evidence for the emergence and spread of 'Western Desert' cultural practices over the last 1,500 years to the historically-documented processes of the introduction of the circumcision rite into central and southwest Western Australia within the last 160 years. In particular, we will argue that the remarkable geographic spread and speed of transmission was driven by a set of social imperatives that we will characterise here as 'ritual engines'. The Emergence and Spread of 'Western Desert' Culture From an archaeological perspective, earlier characterisations of the Western Desert culture bloc have
Traditional knowledge, oral instruction and stylised mapping were all important to Australian Aborigines in defining the type of water supplies available in a particular region, and assisting in their location. Observations of birds, especially the more sedentary species such as the zebra finch (Poephila guttata), could be significant. Specific sources of water utilized by indigenous people included; flooded gnammas (rock-holes), soakage-wells in permeable sediments, clay dams, flooded claypans, riverine waterholes, mound springs, rain-water accumulated in tree hollows (especially in Allocasuarina decaisneana), water from excavated tree roots (especially from mallee eucalypts), dew, and water from the body of the water-holding frog (Cyclorana platycephala).
Following a decade of debate about the timing and nature of occupation of desert dunefields (e.g. Smith 1993, 1996; Smith et al. 1998; Veth 1993, 1995, 2000b) and the increasing evidence for Pleistocene occupation of sites which lie at the margins of the Western Desert (O'Connor and Veth 1996; O'Connor et al. 1998; Smith 1989; Smith et al. 1997; Thorley 1998a, 1998b) a systematic program of excavation of sites within core areas of these dunefields is clearly warranted. This paper reports on one such excavation at the site of Kaalpi located within the Calvert Ranges of the Little Sandy Desert, south of Lake Disappointment, WA. These ranges contain numerous rockshelters with evidence for occupation and very abundant suites of rock paintings and engravings. The Calvert Ranges are a small isolated outlier of uplands, containing apparently permanent water, in a vast field of red siliceous dunes. Â
Granite domes provided Aboriginal people living on the surrounding plains with a variety of economic products. Granite domes also acted as focal points for the activities of ancestral heroes who journeyed throughout the landscape. Aboriginal religious practice includes ritual dramas which replicate the activities of these ancestral heroes at such sites. Surface geology therefore determines both the economic practices and religious activities undertaken by Aboriginal people within their territories.
The domical inselberg or bornhardt known as The Humps is in many respects typical of the many granitic residuals of the Wheatbelt. Of great antiquity, it is a two-stage form which was initiated beneath a regolithic cover, and has been exposed in stages. Its minor forms (pitting, gnammas of various types, polygonal cracking, sheet structure) are also commonplace, though in some instances, such as the armchair-shaped hollows, they are especially well developed. But the evidence for its great age, for episodic exposure, and for the subsurface initiation of tafoni is noteworthy.
Mulka's Cave is a profusely decorated Aboriginal rock art site located near Wave Rock, a heavily-promoted granite weathering feature outside Hyden, a small town in the south-west of Western Australia. Thousands of tourists visit Wave Rock and Mulka's Cave each year. This level of visitation is severely impacting the ground surface both within and without the cave. Comparison of pictures of the cave mouth taken over the last fifty years shows that about one metre of the deposits within the cave has disappeared during that period. We attribute this erosion to trampling. We describe the measures recently taken to reduce the impact of tourists' feet on Mulka's Cave. It is hoped that the new infrastructure will prevent further environmental degradation. We briefly address the vexed question of whether tourists should be allowed unrestricted access to archaeological sites in fragile environments, given the damage they can inflict on them unintentionally and unwittingly.
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Aboriginal Silcs, Western Australian Museum, Perth.
~, J.S. (I
Report of an expedition under the
to the south-eastward of Perth
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S. Roe, to the south-eastward
of Perth, in Western Australia, between the months of
September, 1848, and February, 1849, to the! Ion. the
Colonial Secretary. Journal of the Roval C;eographical
Socidl' 22: I-57.
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