Aboriginal people made pottery and sailed to distant offshore islands thousands of years before Europeans arrived

[Judi Lynn]

Published: April 9, 2024 4:16pm EDT



Blue Lagoon at Jiigurru (Lizard Island Group) where the first pieces of pottery were found. Sean Ulm


Pottery was largely unknown in Australia before the recent past, despite well-known pottery traditions in nearby Papua New Guinea and the islands of the western Pacific. The absence of ancient Indigenous pottery in Australia has long puzzled researchers.

Over the past 400 years, pottery from southeast Asia appeared across northern Australia, associated with the activities of Makassan people from Sulawesi (this activity was mainly trepanging, or collecting sea cucumbers). Older pottery in Australia is only known from the Torres Strait adjacent to the Papua New Guinea coast, where a few dozen pottery fragments have been reported, mostly dating to around 1700 years ago.

Why has no evidence been found of early pottery use by Aboriginal people? Various explanations have been proposed, including suggesting that archaeologists simply weren’t looking hard enough. Well now, we’ve found some.

In new research, we report the oldest securely dated ceramics found in Australia from archaeological excavations on Jiigurru (in the Lizard Island group) on the northern Great Barrier Reef located 600km south of Torres Strait. Our analysis shows the pottery was made locally more than 1800 years ago.

More:
https://theconversation.com/aboriginal-people-made-pottery-and-sailed-to-distant-offshore-islands-thousands-of-years-before-europeans-arrived-226391

[Judi Lynn]

1. 3,000-Year-Old Pottery Reveals Trade Networks in Australia Long Before Colonization

10 April 2024
ByCLARE WATSON



(Ulm et al., Quaternary Science Reviews, 2024)

Dozens of broken pieces of pottery dating between 2,000 and 3,000 years old have been unearthed on a windswept island on the Great Barrier Reef – the oldest pottery ever discovered in Australia.

The remnants, found less than a meter below the surface by Traditional Owners and archeologists, mark a millennia-long practice of First Nations people making ceramics on Jiigurru (Lizard Island).

Made from locally sourced clay and sand, the pottery was fired thousands of years before British colonists invaded Australia in 1788, at a time when other island communities in the region were also making ceramics.

"These findings not only open a new chapter in Australian, Melanesian, and Pacific archaeology but also challenge colonialist stereotypes by highlighting the complexity and innovation of Aboriginal communities," says senior author Ian McNiven, an archeologist from Monash University in Australia.

Working over two years in the baking sun, covered in salt, sea spray, and crusted sweat, the team of researchers and Dingaal and Ngurrumungu Aboriginal community members steadily excavated a shell midden some 2.4 meters (nearly 8 feet) deep to find pieces of pottery among the remains of shellfish, fish and turtle bones, and charred plant materials.

More:
https://www.sciencealert.com/2000-year-old-pottery-reveals-trade-networks-in-australia-long-before-colonization

[eppur_se_muova]

2. I was curious as to why this was big news -- then I realized it's specific to Australia.

In most parts of the world, pottery preceded European contact by thousands of years, so the headline read odd. But it sounds like Oz was exceptional in that they hadn't found the evidence before now. Now I'm curious as to why it's so absent elsewhere/when.

[Judi Lynn]

4. It's possible the land features have been far more impermanent than elsewhere, through extreme erosions

from wind and water, or maybe the invaders ("settlers" ) were especially determined to vaporize any trace of the previous human occupants after general genocide, and removal of survivors to as great a distance as possible happened. It's possible they were that hostile toward indigenous Australian people, perhaps.

Can't imagine anything else as I know less than nothing about the country and its history.

I do know European conquerors have gone to irredeemable extremes to destroy all possible appearance of civilization already in place in countries they intended to raze to the foundation and take for themselves, and even now view the Western Hemisphere as the "New World."

Their views don't seem to impress the citizens whose ancestry in the "conquered" country is ancient.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Discovery of pottery rewrites Aboriginal history

APRIL 10, 2024
Editors' notes
by James Cook University

The discovery of the oldest pottery ever found in Australia on Jiigurru/Lizard Island off the Queensland coast is challenging the idea that Aboriginal Australian communities were unaware of pottery manufacture before European settlement.

James Cook University's Distinguished Professor Sean Ulm is Chief Investigator for the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH). He said the ceramics were discovered in an archaeological excavation on Jiigurru conducted by CABAH in partnership with the Dingaal and Ngurrumungu Aboriginal communities, for which Jiigurru holds significant cultural importance.

"Archaeologists excavated a 2.4-meter-deep midden on Jiigurru over a two-year period to discover evidence of occupation, such as the remains of shellfish and fish collected and eaten by people on the island, which are more than 6,000 years old.
"Less than a meter below the surface, the team found dozens of pottery shrads dating between 2,000 and 3,000 years old—the oldest pottery ever discovered in Australia," said Professor Ulm.

In a paper published April 9 in Quaternary Science Reviews, traditional owners and researchers report on the pottery find.

Professor Ulm said the discovery challenges previous notions that Aboriginal Australian communities were unaware of pottery manufacture before European settlement, instead suggesting a rich history of long-distance cultural exchanges and technological innovation long before British arrival.

More:
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-discovery-pottery-rewrites-aboriginal-history.html