May Speaker’s Report: Peter Jesser on Traces in the Landscape: What Aboriginal artefacts can tell us about culture and technology

 This month we were delighted to have one of our members speak to us about Aboriginal tools and to show us examples of various types of stone tools found on his property, Ballancar, near Inglewood. Peter began by setting the scene: why and how technologies change. One was through environmental pressures leading to changes (change or perish, so to speak), and the other was through serendipity; for example, someone notices something that seems useful, tries it out and finds it is, and its adoption leads to a technological and cultural change in that society. Spread of new ideas and technologies were sometimes determined by physical barriers, such as the sea or a mountain.

Then Peter took us on a brief history of stone tools. The earliest stone tools are to be found in Africa and a more easily recognised tool, such as a stone axe would be from around 500,000 years ago. He had a copy of one such stone axe that he showed us on a slide. Then he showed us various chopping implements made of stone that were found on his property. These stones had been chipped to make a sharp edge for the purpose of cutting. The symmetry displayed by these stones suggested human agency rather than simply chance. One example had polished edges on both sides, achieved by rubbing on something like sandstone and using water as a lubricant. Peter mentioned that there were grinding grooves in the creek bed at Whetstone, just to the west of Inglewood. The earliest of these ground-edge axes, as they are known, have been found in Australia.

Cutters and scrapers as tools began to be used about 100,000 years ago. Lump of stones (known as cores) were used, knocking off large flakes from them for use as scrapers and cutters. These are the tools that the early people of Australia brought with them, around 60,000 years ago. The next stage in tool development in the world was blade technology, defined here as the blade being “twice as long as it is wide”. This technology did not reach Australia until about 6000 years ago.

It seems that around 6,000 years ago several significant events occurred in Australia. Peter suggested that these changes occurred with the arrival of a new wave of people. For example, the ancestral Pama-Nyungan language arrived then (somewhere on the southeast coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria), and had spread to over 90% of the continent by the time of European settlement. Nets began to be used as a tool of hunting. Thumb-nail scrapers also appeared at this time and they could be hafted onto wooden handles. The dingo also made its appearance at about this time.

Grindstones were useful for seed grinding. The origin of this technology is hotly debated. A recent discovery in Northern Arnhem Land of one such stone was dated to be around 60,000 years old. This could be one of the earliest evidences of a grindstone and hence seed preparation and some form of early bread. On Ballancar Peter found a few examples of smaller grindstones, one of which he displayed.

Peter ended his talk by briefly describing some of the fighting and killings that occurred in the area where their property is located. He also invited the listeners to visit the property to see the archaeology in its place and get a feeling for how the first Australians lived there until a couple of hundred years ago.

(Report by Francis Mangubhai)