This paper outlines the exhumation of the grave of Jane Ann Owen situated on Low Island, a sandy coral cay 15 km northeast of Port Douglas in Far North Queensland. It examines the remote burial in the context of assessing social status from a nineteenth century burial. It is argued from the presence of a prosthetic dental attachment that the individual was at one time in her adult life reasonably affluent which stands in contrast to the simple nature of her grave, lacking as it does any of the accoutrements expected of a burial of someone of either status or wealth. It is concluded that the evidence of both wealth and poverty present from the grave and body of Jane Ann Owen is not necessarily related to evidence of status but most likely a product of geographic isolation, highlighting the complexities in interpreting status and wealth archaeologically from nineteenth century burials in remote Australia.
The remains of a nineteenth century stone building at Watson’s Bay, Lizard Island, Jiigurru (Lizard Island Group), are referred to today as ‘Mary Watson’s Cottage’. As such, the ruin provides a tangible link to the young woman who fled Lizard Island in 1881 with her infant son and Chinese employee, only to die of thirst on nearby Howick No. 5 Island. The association of the extant stone structure and the historic personage of Mary Watson has become a powerful, seemingly unbreakable, association. However, an historical archaeological reassessment of the evidence provides an enriched history of the stone building that counters the current narrative. The stone building was built in 1860 by members of the Paddon and Co. bêche-de-mer station (1860-1861) during their 15 month stay on the island. Nearly two decades later, in a state of disrepair, it was rebuilt by Robert Watson and Percy Fuller of the Watson and Fuller bêche-de-mer station (1879-1881). The likelihood is that it was never the home of the Watsons. Instead, it fulfilled its original purpose as a storeroom and bêche-de-mer curing house. Yet, since the twentieth century, emotive forces have enmeshed the Mary Watson story with the visible ruin on Lizard Island as the ‘home’ she fought to defend against attack. It is time to acknowledge the building’s true past, and time to acknowledge Paddon and Co.’s stone building. By doing so, the ruin’s narrative is extended and its role in the nineteenth century bêche-de-mer industry is elevated, while continuing to honour the building’s symbolic association with Mary Watson.
As Australia’s largest peninsula, Cape York Peninsula in Queensland presents abundant opportunities to understand the complex relationship between people and coastal environments. Beyond merely being food refuse, shells demonstrate considerable cultural significance as both practical tools and symbolic objects. Yet studies of shell artefacts across Cape York Peninsula have been limited. The Agayrr Bamangay Milbi (ABM) Project, a Traditional Owner-led archaeological and heritage project focused on the southeast Cape, offers an opportunity to address this issue. As a first step, a comprehensive examination of the existing literature on shell artefacts in the region illuminates their diverse functions and cultural implications, and review of anthropological and archaeological work undertaken since 1985, including new results from archaeological survey, updates the earlier work of Schall (1985). Shell artefacts fall into several categories: utility tools, spoons, fish hooks, component elements (primarily of larger wooden objects), ornaments, rattles and containers. The rich source material underscores the need for more focused and systematic analysis of manufacturing techniques, actualistic studies, and investigations of residues and use-wear on shell objects, as well as detailed studies of specific object classes. Future investigations should focus on conducting more extensive technological analyses and exploring the socio-cultural significance of shell artefacts in greater detail.
Erythrophleum spp. (Cooktown ironwood) is an endemic north Australian tree that is a key cultural resource. In Cape York Peninsula (CYP), Traditional Owners value, use, care for and manage the trees in culturally appropriate ways. Members of the Agayrr Bamangay Milbi (ABM) Project team have recorded hundreds of culturally modified Cooktown ironwood trees (CMTs) across southeast CYP, stretching from Jowalbinna in the south to Cape Melville in the north. In this paper we specifically discuss CMTs with evidence of sugarbag extraction. These trees provide a chronological sequence of technology (from stone to steel axes) and an important, if vulnerable, material record of natural resource procurement, cultural knowledge and connections to Country. We show how the significance of sugarbag trees is reflected not only in their ubiquity but also in the iconography of rock art, other cultural associations and archaeological values. A dearth of metal-cut sugarbag scars – in stark contrast to elsewhere in CYP and despite an abundance of such axes circulating amongst Aboriginal groups in the region – is posited to be related to the especially violent local contact history associated with mining. We discuss trends in distribution that invite more detailed studies of the environmental distribution of the Cooktown ironwood and of the contemporary distribution of native bees, noting that non-cultural burning and land-clearing practices represent ongoing threats to CMT survival in the region.
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 update police weaponry from 1864 onwards. In this paper we use historical, archaeological and museum collections data to produce, for the first time, a definitive list of nine weapons and the ammunition known to have been issued to, and used by, the Native Mounted Police. In general, these weapons transitioned to ever more sophisticated and lethal breech-loading technology, and arms were quickly superseded, although older models were retained in use, resulting in detachments often being armed with an assortment of weaponry. This heterogeneity may have contributed to the use of different tactics by detachments in varying environmental zones. Although the identification of the weapons and ammunition outlined here has value for other contexts, the chief contribution of this research lies in its potential to provide an archaeological dataset to identify putative events of frontier conflict involving the Queensland Native Mounted Police.
