Contact archaeology and native title.

Harrison, Rodney

Abstract: Contact archaeology in Australia is emerging as an important tool in the independent 'verification' of claimants' testimony regarding the post-sovereignty occupation and use of particular parts of the landscape in a continuous and 'traditional' manner. This paper reviews the literature on post-contact archaeology and material culture in Australia, and provides an assessment of the ways in which this evidence has been used in native title claims to date. The utility of post-contact artefact forms, both in terms of providing evidence of post-sovereignty use and occupation, as well as in demonstrating long-term continuities in claimant land-use patterns, is discussed, with reference both to knapped bottle glass artefacts, the most well known post-contact Aboriginal artefact type in Australia, as well as other post-contact artefact forms such as stone artefacts and modified metal tools. It is argued that an examination of a broader range of post-contact material culture items and archaeological site patterning has potential not only in directly informing native title archae-ology, but also in developing more complex archaeological narratives concerning both continuity and change in Aboriginal societies in the past, which may serve political and social agendas in the present.

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to review published studies of post-contact archaeological sites and material culture to assess the potential for 'contact archaeology' to inform the native title process. I review a range of different kinds of archaeological data from published studies to suggest ways in which the historical archaeology of Aboriginal Australia might be used as material evidence for continuity of land-use practices and material indicators of the presence of Aboriginal people in the landscape.

I begin with a discussion of knapped bottle glass artefacts as an example of a well-documented class of archaeological object that has been the subject of several detailed regional studies and has formed a focus for the determination of post-sovereignty occupation in several recent native title cases. Some particular issues of relevance from the recent literature on glass artefact manufacture in Australia are discussed. I then argue for the need to move beyond the limitations of study of glass artefacts, the so-called type artefacts of post-contact sites in Australia, to examine the potential of a broader range of post-contact material culture and site patterning in the post-contact archaeological record. I conclude with a discussion of the range of post-contact archaeological evidence and suggest ways that it might be applied in native title determinations in Australia. This call for a broader purview in terms of the post-contact archaeological record is not a criticism of the way in which archaeologists have used such evidence within native title archaeology, but relates to the need for the archaeological community at large to be more mindful of recording such artefacts and site types so that the information collected might better address the needs of native title.

Contact archaeology in Australia

While this research began as early as the 1960s with Allen's study of contact between Aboriginal people and the British at the failed Port Essington settlement in northern Australia (1969, 1980), detailed archaeological investigation of the period in which Aboriginal Australians, settler Australians and other 'outsiders' shared lifeworlds, commonly referred to as 'contact' or 'post-contact' archaeology because of the dominant research questions regarding the impacts of new cultures on Aboriginal cultural experience, is an area of research which has seen enormous growth in the last 15 years (see also critical reviews of the sub-field in Murray 2004b; Torrence & Clarke 2000a; Williamson 2004; Williamson & Harrison 2002).

Research in the first wave of contact archaeology focused particularly on the early contact experience. During this period several researchers examined the archaeology of contact between Macassan trepangers and Aboriginal people on the northern Australian coastline. The interactions between Indonesian fishermen and the local people have long been held to have led to significant cultural variation and experimentation in the area. Early studies by Macknight (1976; see also Mulvaney 1975:19, 1989) documented the archaeological evidence for Macassan sites on the northern coast, while more recent theses by Clarke (1994, 2000) and Mitchell (1994, 1996, 2000) focused on changes in Aboriginal people's settlement and subsistence patterns as a result of contact with Macassans. Both Clarke and Mitchell constructed regional case studies for changes in settlement patterns and demonstrated continuities and changes, occurring at different rates, in the archaeological record of the period of Macassan-Aboriginal interactions.

Other studies relating to this first period include the work of Birmingham at Wybalenna on Flinders Island (1992) and Murray at Burghley in north-west Tasmania (1993, 2000b; see also Williamson 2002). This first period also produced a number of descriptions of artefacts modified by Aboriginal people using 'Western' or 'European' objects as their raw materials, such as knapped bottle glass tools (Akerman 1979, 1983; Allen 1969; Allen & Jones 1980). These items were seen as distinctive in identifying archaeological sites about which no other information was known as Aboriginal post-contact settlement sites and, to a certain extent, came to represent the aspirations of the sub-field to work independently of historical source data in this period.

In what could be considered a transitional phase in the history of contact archaeology, a series of theoretical positions were advanced by Murray (e.g. 1993, 1996a, 1996b) and others (Byrne 1996; Colley & Bickford 1996; Egloff 1994) regarding the role of contact archaeology in Australia. Coining the phrase 'the historical archaeology of Aboriginal Australia', Murray sought to shift emphasis away from the dominant paradigm of acculturation (1993; see also Lightfoot 1995 for a similar intellectual position regarding contact archaeology in the United States which has been very influential in Australia). He followed this with a series of papers advancing the idea of 'shared histories' (Murray 1996a, 2000a) to emphasise the entangled nature of both the early contact experience and its aftermath, suggesting that the role of contact archaeology was to read archaeological evidence against the grain to develop 'conjectural histories' of Aboriginal Australia (Murray 2002, 2004a).

A number of detailed studies emerged during the 1990s which built on this foundational work, taking up the challenges laid by Murray and others and advancing the work of earlier authors. Significantly, many of these studies were more interested in the longer-term influence of European settlement on Aboriginal people in preference to the earliest contact period, and the ongoing, 'entangled' historical archaeologies of both Aboriginal and settler Australians. Many of these studies were brought together in several edited volumes (Clarke & Paterson 2003; Harrison & Williamson 2002; Murray 2004c; Torrence & Clarke 2000a; see also Russell 2001), from which have emerged a series of ongoing themes in this field.

Significant work has been undertaken on the nature of the pastoral industry in Australia and the ways in which Aboriginal pastoral labourers maintained their sense of cultural identity while working within the industry (e.g. Harrison 2002c, 2002d, 2004a, 2004b; Head & Fullagar 1997; Paterson 1999, 2000, 2003; Paterson et al. 2003; Murray 2004a; Smith 2001). For example, Head and Fullagar (1997) suggest that Aboriginal people were able to negotiate and maintain social obligations and attachments to particular places, and that this was particularly successful in north-western Australia because of the limitations that the wet season placed on pastoral work activities. They discuss patterning in four classes of archaeological data that support their discussion. Clear continuities in the use of pre-contact sites into the post-contact period are evident. At these sites, intensified use in the post-contact period is demonstrated by an increase in the use of yellow ochre for rock-art, obtained from local river banks, consistent with the more restricted movements of people during the wet season. They demonstrate increases in the numbers of flaked stone artefacts associated with the production of pressure-flaked Kimberley points at excavations at Marralam pastoral outstation, and point to the persistence of stone tools used for extracting and processing plant foods as evidence for continuities in the post-contact period. Given the dominance of pastoralism as a land-use strategy in Australia, and the importance of Aboriginal labour to that industry, these studies have been valuable in pointing out the potential for other studies of continuity and change in contact archaeology in Australia and, indeed, have played an important role in native title archaeology.

A recent volume edited by Torrence and Clarke (2000a) contains a number of case studies in the archaeology of culture contact in Oceania. Abandoning the term 'contact', they prefer 'engagement' (after Thomas 1991) to describe the active role of Indigenous participants in cross-cultural meetings. This paradigm was also largely adopted by papers in the later Archaeology in Oceania journal volume guest edited by Clarke and Paterson (2003). Stressing the agency of Indigenous peoples in culture contact, they advocate a long-term approach and seek to document the archaeology of negotiations as continuity and change in material culture and in settlement patterns written on the landscape, rather than viewing 'contact' as a discrete event. They make the important point that cross-cultural negotiations and engagements are ongoing, and thus the study of cross-cultural interactions in the past has powerful implications for contemporary settler societies in Australia and elsewhere.

The implications for cultural heritage management have also been drawn out by several authors (e.g. Byrne 1996, 2002, 2003; Byrne & Nugent 2004; Godwin & L'Oste Brown 2002; Greer et al. 2002). Murray (1996a: 211) has been vocal in pointing out the lack of attention that had been paid to 'the historical archaeology of Aboriginal Australia' and suggests that a reason for undertaking such a study might be 'to document a process which many of our predecessors thought was not going to happen'. Byrne (1996) has gone further, to suggest that the systematic underrepresentation of post-contact Aboriginal places on state government heritage registers and within academic research programs constitutes a 'structure for forgetting' the events and consequences of the non-Indigenous settlement/ invasion of the continent. He points out the role of archaeologists in perpetuating some of the structures of colonial Australia by emphasising the connections between deep antiquity and 'authentic Aboriginality' (see also Harrison 2000a).

An emerging theme in Aboriginal historiography and the archaeology of culture contact in Australia is the idea of 'shared' or 'entangled' histories (e.g. Baker 1999; Harrison 2002c, 2004b; Murray 1996a, 2002, 2004b). These studies emphasise the way in which coexistence of cultures in time and space creates a cross-cultural dialogue, and although people may experience and understand historical experiences differently, the object of such research is to write a historical archaeology of Australia that includes both Aboriginal people and settlers. These themes emerge strongly in the papers in both After Captain Cook (Harrison & Williamson 2002) and The archaeology of contact in settler societies (Murray 2004c), where the role of Indigenous identities in the development of national and regional settler identities is emphasised by several authors.

Contact archaeology and native title

The need for well-established theory and methodology in the archaeology of the recent Aboriginal past has become increasingly obvious within the context of the gathering of evidence for continuity with precolonial land uses in native title. Outside of Australia, the archaeology of the recent past has also had to develop in response to the new requirements of evidence for the demonstration of native title rights and interests of Indigenous claimant groups (e.g. Klimko & Wright 2000; Nicholas 2000, 2001; Rainbird 2000; Sand 2000). Lilley (2000a; see also Fullagar & Head 2000; Gould 2004; Harrison 2000a; McDonald 2000; Murray 1996a, 2000a, 2002; Riches 2002; Veth 2000, 2003) notes that archaeology is being challenged and changed as it seeks to find relevance in, and to, post-Mabo Australian Indigenous history. Veth and McDonald (2002; McDonald 2000) have suggested that rock-art and particular artefact forms which appear to be sensitive indicators of group identity and territoriality in the past might be used as evidence in considerations of exclusive position in native title, while a number of authors have called for changes in archaeological research agendas which may inform native title issues in Australia (Harrison 2000a; Murray 2000a; Riches 2002).

The use of archaeological evidence has been a feature of a number of recent native title litigated determinations, including Ben Ward & Ors v State of Western Australia & Ors [1998] FCA 1478 (24 November 1998), The Members of the Yorta Yorta Aboriginal Community v The State of Victoria & Ors [1998] FCA 1606 (18 December 1998), Yorta Yorta & Ors v State of South Australia [2001] FCA 1456 (2 March 2001), De Rose v State of South Australia [2002] FCA 1342 (1 November 2002), Neowarra v State of Western Australia [2003] FCA 1402 (8 December 2003), Neowarra v State of Western Australia [2004] FCA 1092 (27 August 2004) and Daniel v State of Western Australia [2003] FCA 666 (3 July 2003) (see discussion in McCarron-Benson 2004 and this volume). Archaeological evidence has been seen as being most relevant to the question of demonstrating continuities in traditional customs and practices through time, from before sovereignty, at the time of sovereignty, and after.

All five cases listed above included the presentation of arguments by archaeologists relating to the presence of post-contact Aboriginal artefacts, including knapped glass and ceramics at particular sites within the claim area, as evidence for post-sovereignty continuity in traditional customs and practices. Indeed, Justice Lee highlighted the particular importance of post-contact artefact forms in conjunction with ethnographic information in demonstrating continuous use of particular ceremonial places in the Ben Ward case (1998). Knapped glass artefacts have formed a particular focus in these analyses, as such modifications can be clearly demonstrated (a) to have been made by Aboriginal people, and (b) to have occurred in the period during or following sovereignty. I will thus commence with an examination of recent work on the identification and analyses of knapped bottle glass artefacts in Australia, before making some observations about some aspects of unrealised potential for contact archaeology in native title.

Glass artefacts

Transformed material culture, particularly knapped bottle glass artefacts, has formed an important focus for contact archaeological research in Australia. Items of transformed material culture such as glass artefacts are generally thought to be 'type artefacts' of postcontact sites, allowing the identification of places used by Aboriginal people after the arrival of non-Indigenous settlers in the absence of other kinds of evidence. Many early ethnographers noted the supplementation of bottle glass for stone as a raw material for flaking to produce implements throughout Aboriginal Australia following European settlement. As a raw material, glass generally flakes more predictably during the manufacture of flaked implements than stone, and forms a sharp flaked edge. Other qualities of glass that made it attractive to Aboriginal people in different areas for tool manufacture included its ease of availability, and the natural curved edges formed by broken glass shards that were favoured in some areas for use in scraping tasks (Allen 1969; Freeman 1993). Some Aboriginal people valued other qualities of stone raw materials that made glass an attractive alternative. For example, in Arnhem Land and the Kimberley, Aboriginal people stress the importance of colour and lustre in the production of points and long blades (Harrison 2002a, 2004a; Tacon 1991; see Figure 1).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

One of the problems that have been raised by archaeologists regarding glass artefacts is the possibility for glass bottles to break unintentionally and form edges that might look like intentionally knapped ones (Allen & Jones 1980; Cooper & Bowdler 1998; Knudson 1979). Although this factor may not affect the use of bottle glass as an indicator of the relative age of the site in which it is found, it would certainly influence the interpretation of the nature of the artefact and the context in which it was found. Williamson (2002) suggests that unintentionally fractured bottle glass can be characterised by flaking on an edge of a tool that is irregular, present on more than one margin, intermittent across the edge of the piece, initiated either from the inside or outside of the bottle, steep (forming edges close to 90[degrees]) and often in the form of large, isolated flake scars on the margin of the piece. Obviously there is the potential for some of these features to also be present on intentionally flaked pieces, producing a gradation from clearly unintentionally modified to clearly modified examples. This has suggested the need for regional studies that look for consistent patterns of breakage, tool form and use of glass artefacts which would allow an individual 'potential' glass artefact to be tested against the 'norm' (Harrison 2000b), in addition to residue and use-wear studies which might allow the positive identification of Aboriginal glass tools. The existence of regional variations in glass artefact forms can be demonstrated with reference to several key regional analyses.

I have previously discussed (Harrison 2000b) an analysis of regional variation in glass artefact forms in the comparison of knapped bottle glass artefacts from archaeological sites in the mid-west and metropolitan Perth regions of Western Australia. This analysis suggested stark differences in the archaeological sites from each region that were studied in the overall form of the artefacts. On the basis of the analysis I proposed a model that required further archaeological testing with other post-contact archaeological sites from each area. In the Perth metropolitan area, the selection of fragments of the sides of a bottle for use in scraping tasks was widespread, while in the mid-west examples, percussive knapping of the thickened bases of bottles dominated. I contrasted the ways in which the bottle base was oriented during flaking in the mid-west examples, and those discussed by Allen (1969) from Port Essington in the Northern Territory. Other bottle base flaking dominated assemblages have been described in detail from the Onkaparinga River in South Australia (Freeman 1993) and from Central Australia (Birmingham 2000: 399; Bolton 1999; Paterson 1999). All of these assemblages show some ad hoc use of the edges of broken bottles in addition to the knapping of flakes from prepared bottle base cores.

I have recently described (Harrison 2004b) an assemblage of knapped glass artefacts from the former Dennawan mission site in western New South Wales, which was occupied continuously by Aboriginal people through until the 1940s. My analysis was complemented by the detailed observations of several middle-aged Muruwari women, who remembered making and using flaked bottle glass tools as recently as the 1970s. The Dennewan glass artefacts show a combination of both the reduction of bottle bases to produce flakes, and the use of sections of the side of bottles to produce edges for scraping tasks. These scraping tools were made using the side part of a bottle, which was scraped along the length of a wooden object, such as a bundi (a wooden throwing club used for hunting small land game). Knapping flakes from the thickened glass at the base of a glass bottle produced a cutting tool or general purpose knife. Josie Byno remembers carrying bits of broken glass bottles as a teenager when they went fishing at the river, and knapping flakes from the glass to gut fish (Harrison 2004b:176). Similar cutting tools were also used for cutting emu, echidna and kangaroo meat.

Most of these flake tools show evidence of having been used, in the form of striations and micro-chipping on the edge of the tool. A tool similar to that used for scraping wooden artefacts made from the side of a bottle was used to scale fish. The two reduction strategies that I identified through the regional comparisons of mid-west Western Australia and metropolitan Perth might better be seen as different reduction sequences for the production of cutting or scraping tools, rather than interpreted as mutually exclusive regional reduction strategies.

The interpretation of what the presence of Aboriginal knapped bottle glass artefacts might represent archaeologically is clearly a critical issue in native title archaeology. This can be broken into several areas of consideration.

Chronology and "proof' of post-sovereignty occupation of a site

A knapped glass artefact having been identified as such, its presence on an archaeological site can generally be considered to be a positive indicator of the use of the site by Aboriginal people in the period following European settlement of Australia. For example, Walshe and Loy (2004) and Ulm et al. (1999) use modified glass and insulator evidence to suggest dates for the occupation of a particular region by Aboriginal people long after the last historical recorded occupation.

More detailed information on the chronology of the use of a site might be able to be obtained by dating the bottle glass on which an Aboriginal artefact is made, the date of the manufacture of the bottle providing a terminus ante quem, or date after which the Aboriginal artefact was made and disposed of. The relatively rapid 'revolution' in the mechanisation of the glass container manufacturing industry that occurred over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Miller & Sullivan 1984) makes glass bottles sensitive chronological markers on Australian historical archaeological sites (Boow 1991). However, 'dating' individual pieces of broken bottle glass can be a difficult exercise, as identification of manufacturing marks on the bottle and the shape of the container form the two main indicators for dating bottle glass. Bottle glass colour shows a close association with container function (Jones & Sullivan 1985), and has also been used to establish a rough chronology of bottle types present on 'contact' archaeological sites in Australia (e.g. Birmingham 2000; Harrison 2004b:173).

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Although it is possible to say that Aboriginal people used a site after European settlement if it has knapped glass artefacts present on it, the reverse is certainly not true. In many places throughout Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal people continued to manufacture knapped tools using stone raw materials, while in others they ceased flaking stone or glass tools very shortly after European intrusion, adopting new technologies that did not require the use of stone or glass in their manufacture but which were used in traditional or continuous ways. It needs to be emphasised that the presence of glass artefacts directly suggests the use of a site after sovereignty, but the absence of glass artefacts does not indicate the absence of use of a site by Aboriginal people after sovereignty.

Continuity of site function and of tradition

One of the emerging areas of research for contact archaeology is the presence of skeuomorphic glass artefacts in the archaeological record, that is, glass artefacts that may replicate the form of stone artefacts but which do not appear to replicate their function and, indeed, may not have ever been 'used'. I have suggested elsewhere that many assemblages of glass artefacts in Australia are composed of ad hoc pieces of glass which form sharp edges which have been used for cutting and scraping tasks in a relatively unmodified form, and highly worked forms of glass artefacts which show little or no evidence of use (Harrison 2003). Wolski and Loy (1999), using residue analyses, demonstrate that unretouched or marginally modified glass shards were used consistently by Aboriginal people for a range of scraping and food preparation tasks (see also Harrison 2000b).

Given that many scraping and cutting tasks were able to be undertaken using such 'informal' unmodified glass pieces, the persistent occurrence of 'formal' knapped glass artefacts that imitate the form of stone artefacts requires further investigation. In my previous analysis of assemblages from the Kimberley and western New South Wales, I suggested that the function of these formal 'copies' of stone artefacts in glass may be symbolic rather than economic, motivated by gestures of irony and contact magic, rather than any economic need (Harrison 2003). The term 'hypertrophic' has been applied by archaeologists elsewhere to describe such apparently 'symbolic' knapped tool types (e.g. Sassaman 2005).

Clearly, issues of continuity in site function, and thus the land-use pattern which the archaeological site reflects, cannot be addressed though the continuity of occurrence of formal artefact types on glass which replicate those on stone except where analysis of the patterns of wear and residues on the edges of tools suggests this is the case. In some cases, instances of continuity in site function could be demonstrated using such analyses even where the form of stone artefacts is not replicated in glass. However, the continuity of manufacture of formal stone artefact types on glass may represent continuity of tradition, even where the artefacts are not used for any economic or extractive purpose. Stephen Silliman (2001) discusses a comparative example in the archaeology of Indigenous settlements on cattle ranches in nineteenth-century northern California. He suggests that the continued manufacture of formal stone artefact types, even in situations where people have access to guns and metal tools that replace their function, is a form of political decision that reflects active, daily practices of negotiating colonialism (Silliman 2001:203). Stone artefacts were manufactured as the active materialisations of native culture and identity in the new social orders of the colonial world. I think there is much worth in Silliman's argument that, in the absence of evidence for the use (or requirement to use) formal tools (for our argument, in glass not stone), the continued manufacture of formal tool types should be linked with the active physical memorialisation of Indigenous identity--as a form of embodied, mnemonic practice. Clearly, analysis of such material correlates of the maintenance of Indigenous identity has an important role to play in native title archaeology.

Other kinds of modified 'Western' objects

While much of the archaeological work has focused on knapped bottle glass artefacts as the type artefact of post-contact Aboriginal archaeological sites, many other modifications were made to 'European' material culture items by Aboriginal people to meet their own needs. Many of these objects are modified in distinctive ways which we know were only undertaken by Aboriginal people, and some of which were only made in particular regions of Australia. Once again, although the presence of such artefacts might be a positive indication of the use of a site after sovereignty, the reverse is not necessarily true. Unlike knapped glass artefacts, which tend to be constrained in their formal characteristics by the technique of manufacture and the shape of the glass bottle, many of these other post-contact artefacts are highly regionally variable in form.

While the use of bottle glass is of some interest to archaeologists because of the continuation of stone knapping techniques in an introduced non-lithic medium, the adoption of metal as a raw material had a far wider and longer-term impact on the development of post-contact Indigenous technologies. Akerman and Bindon (e.g. 1984, 1995) are among the few writers who have taken a consistent interest in metal artefacts and their role in post-contact material cultures. Working from ethnographic data, museum collections and field observations, they provide a number of overview descriptions of metal artefacts from the greater Kimberley region (see also Akerman 1979, 1983). Of particular relevance to this study, Akerman and Bindon (1984) describe a number of metal counterparts to stone adze forms used in this region. In the areas of the Kimberley where hafted edge ground stone or shell adzes were used, an oval shaped piece of shear blade or other metal object approximately 15 cm long was attached to a wooden handle 20 cm long to form a metal-bladed adze. In areas where the 'tula' type adze was made, a short (up to 10 cm) section of hand shear blade, metal file or carpenter's chisel was hafted onto a short wooden handle using copper wire or twine and spinifex resin. A curved vehicle spring of around 45 cm in length was also made into an adze of this form by merely filing an edge on one or both sides (Akerman & Bindon 1984:369). Significantly, Akerman and Bindon (1984) note that the metal artefact forms follow closely the traditional geographical division between areas where 'edge ground' and 'tula' type adzes were manufactured prior to sustained European contact with the area.

Other regional analyses of metal artefact forms include this author's analysis of the assemblage of metal artefacts from the Old Lamboo site in the southeast Kimberley (Harrison 2002b), and a complementary study of post-contact artefacts including modified metal objects from nearby Gordon Downs pastoral station (Smith 2001). Particular regionally distinctive forms discussed include metal 'Kimberley' spear points made on horseshoes, and wire indenters used in the manufacture of pressure-flaked Kimberley points.

Even where metal objects have not been modified, their provenance or the combination of particular artefact types is instructive of the presence of post-contact Aboriginal settlements. For example, Kabaila (1995:86) has documented the frequent finds of mouth-organs at post-contact Aboriginal camping places in Wiradjuri country in New South Wales, along with a tradition of the manufacture of other home-made musical instruments such as 'bush' violins (see discussion of these material culture items for western New South Wales in Harrison 2004b, and further discussion below). By documenting known post-contact Aboriginal places, archaeologists are building up a database with which to assess the likely presence or use of historic places by Aboriginal people for which there is little or no information available. The presence of such objects in the landscape can be shown to clearly demonstrate the presence of groups of Aboriginal people at a time postdating sustained non-Indigenous settlement of that area.

Post-contact stone artefact industries

Many Aboriginal people continued to manufacture stone artefacts after European settlement. This has been particularly the case in northern Australia, where sustained non-Indigenous settlement occurred much later and where, in some areas, Aboriginal people still outnumber invaders. This has meant that Aboriginal material cultures have been transformed less when they are compared with pre-contact material cultures in those areas. There have been several regional case studies of post-contact stone artefact assemblages that are relevant here. These studies show the potential for archaeological models that document changes in stone artefact assemblages after European contact that could be used to develop predictive models which could determine, in the absence of modified 'Western' artefacts, whether a site had been occupied during the period following European settlement.

Scott Mitchell (1996, 2000) documents changes in stone tool industries as a result of contact with Macassans in the Cobourg Peninsula region of Arnhem Land. Although he is dealing here with post-contact sites relating to the Macassan period, the principle could just as readily be applied to post-European contact sites. Mitchell compared stone artefact assemblages from a number of pre- and post-contact Aboriginal middens in his study area. He found a change in the variety and number of stone artefacts in the post-contact middens, suggesting acceleration in regional exchange within the study area in the contact period. In particular, there were much higher frequencies of stone artefacts manufactured on non-local stone raw materials in postcontact midden sites. This case study could potentially be used to produce a model for testing whether a site had been used in the period following contact with Macassans on the basis of an analysis of stone tools contained within the site.

I employed a similar method to Mitchell in an analysis of similarities and differences in the flaked stone artefact component of assemblages at pre- and post-contact sites in the south-east Kimberley (Harrison 2002c). Through oral history, field survey and documentary research, I located a number of both pre- and post-contact sites in the study area. One feature of many of the sites identified through oral and documentary research as 'post-contact' sites was the general absence of flaked glass tools, and high frequencies of knapped stone artefacts. If I had been reliant on the presence of glass artefacts on these sites to identify them as in use in the post-contact period, I would not have been able to identify them. This suggested that an analysis of the stone artefact assemblages on post-contact sites in the area was required.

Through a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of stone artefacts from sites which appeared to have been used either in the pre-contact or post-contact period (but not both), I suggested a model of differences in the stone artefact assemblages that could be used to identify pre-contact and post-contact archaeological sites in the study area. Assemblages from 'mixed' pre-contact and post-contact sites demonstrating continuity in site location are more complex to delineate but might also be identified using this model if the site structure was intact enough so that distinct artefact manufacturing or camping 'episodes' could be identified in the site, and the model applied separately to them. This general model is summarised in Table 1.

The model, although clearly in need of further testing and refinement due to the small numbers of sites included in developing it, suggests an increase in the numbers of stone raw materials on post-contact open sites, an overall lower proportion of the stone artefact assemblage which is retouched, but of those artefacts that are retouched, a higher proportion of the assemblage being composed of stone points. While pre-contact sites on permanent water which have been used repeatedly by large groups of people over long periods of time might show some of the characteristics suggested for post-contact sites, they can in general be distinguished from post-contact sites through the proportion of the assemblage composed of stone points and the proportion which is retouched, although this aspect of the model also needs further refinement. This model does, however, provide an example of the sort of model which could be used for distinguishing in a crude manner between pre- and post-contact sites in the absence of any other data that might identify their use in the historic period. It could also be used as an independent line of confirmation for claimants who give oral accounts of the use of particular sites in the post-contact period.

Distinguishing between Aboriginal and settler historic sites

The discussion above focuses on distinguishing between pre- and post-contact Aboriginal sites on the basis of analyses of changes in stone tool technology, in areas where stone tools continued to be manufactured into the recent past and where Aboriginal people generally did not acquire large numbers of 'Western' objects that would be deposited in archaeological sites. There will also be cases where the opposite extreme needs to be examined. In some areas, and particularly in south-eastern Australia, Aboriginal people adopted the use of manufactured 'Western' objects very early into the contact period, and tended to cease flaking stone or glass artefacts relatively rapidly (but see Colley's 2000 analysis of the archaeology of Greenglade rockshelter in southern New South Wales). Of course, there were exceptions to this rule, but there are likely to be a number of 'post-contact' Aboriginal sites in these areas that are, at face value, difficult to distinguish from settler historic sites. As in the example of stone artefacts discussed above, it is possible to model the composition of post-contact Aboriginal sites in a region through a study of other known post-contact Aboriginal settlements.

A good example is the series of books published by Peter Kabaila for Wiradjuri country in New South Wales (1995, 1996, 1998). He details the artefacts found at a number of historic Aboriginal camping places in the Murrumbidgee, Lachlan and Macquarie river basins. Byrne and Nugent (2004:61ff) have summarised Kabaila's artefact recordings to suggest a general model for the characteristics of Aboriginal post-contact sites in New South Wales. These include:

* the high incidence of pieces of fencing wire used in the building of huts, the pegging of animal skins, and the manufacture of domestic implements and children's toys;

* remains attesting to the high incidence of recycling, for example the use of kerosene tins as buckets, meat safes and cladding for buildings; and

* the high incidence of remains attesting to the presence of musical instruments and wind-up gramophones (Byrne & Nugent 2004:62).

For western New South Wales I have also suggested the presence of fire buckets (modified kerosene tin buckets used to contain heaps of coal for cooking), and glass grave decorations might also be seen as diagnostic of Aboriginal post-contact settlement sites (Harrison 2004b). Similar sites in coastal New South Wales have been described by Smith and Beck (2003). The design of post-contact Aboriginal domestic structures has been considered by a number of authors in Settlement (Read 2000). The significance of such structural remains to archaeologists is twofold: in the identification of archaeological sites as distinctly 'Indigenous' places, and secondly, in an assessment of spatial organisation and site function.

While no single artefact or feature on its own would provide secure archaeological evidence of the presence of Aboriginal people on a site in the period following sovereignty, these general characteristics of post-contact Aboriginal settlements in south-eastern Australia might be used in combination with other lines of evidence to suggest continuity in the occupation of sites or use of a landscape. An even more complex set of problems is met when dealing with sites that were occupied by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in the recent past, either simultaneously or in succession. Williamson's (2002; see also Murray 1993, 2000b) analysis of the Burghley site in north-west Tasmania, first occupied by members of the Van Diemens Land Company and later for a brief period by Aboriginal people, suggests one approach to this issue.

Discussion and conclusion

Several potential areas for post-contact archaeology in native title emerge from this paper. In summary, these include:

* the ability to make links between material culture (patterning in time and space and inferred socio-cultural patterning) at particular places in the landscape (sites) associated with a particular group at the time of European contact, and the material culture in the same area after European contact;

* to illustrate or hypothesise continuity or change in site function;

* to illustrate or hypothesise continuity in traditional practices;

* as chronological markers to date periods of use of particular sites; and

* at a landscape level, to illustrate regional patterns of continuity and change in economy and interactions with the landscape.

It should be noted that much of the work of contact archaeology in this country has been demonstrated to be of little use in the absence of other data such as historical and archival records, and oral accounts (e.g. Byrne & Nugent 2004; Godwin & L'Oste-Brown 2002; Harrison 2004b; Hemming et al. 2000). A judicious reading of this other material will often be necessary to interpret the post-contact archaeological record adequately.

While my purpose in putting together this paper was to review the literature on post-contact archaeology in Australia to suggest some potential applications to native title processes, I think there are broader issues which are of relevance to the relationship between archaeology and native title and which need to be raised. In a review of After Captain Cook (Harrison & Williamson 2002), Richard Gould suggests that, where much of the work on contact archaeology in Australia has been concerned with developing the sort of 'conjectural histories' (after Murray 2002, 2004a) with which the Australian public might be able to understand both change and continuity in Aboriginal lifeways in the recent past as being equally 'traditional' (e.g. Byrne 1996; Harrison 2000a; Riches 2002; Torrence & Clarke 2000b; Williamson 2004; Williamson & Harrison 2002), the court of law is probably far more interested in 'archaeological facts that draw firm, scientifically grounded conclusions and that can rule out alternative conclusions than in multiple conjectural histories that may or may not be equally credible' (Gould 2004:622). He goes on to ask whether Australian archaeologists are really trying to convince the court of law or the court of history in developing such approaches.

This discussion raises issues of the ways in which archaeologists have represented notions of change and continuity in the archaeological record. For example, some archaeologists have attempted to explain change using the concept of migration. Over short time scales, processes of migration might be seen as signalling a 'break' in continuity, while at much longer scales, migratory processes may also be understood as part of long-term, regular patterning in fissioning and fusioning of clans and groups who occupy a particular territory (Keen 2004). The idea of continuity does not mean that nothing changes, while change does not mean that at some level continuity is lacking. The broader archaeological record includes many components, some changing, some not, over different scales. Clearly, it is as wrong to conclude that everything is changing (all things are in flux), as it is to conclude that everything continues (that there is a single 'Aboriginal' culture). Archaeologists need to develop more sophisticated ways of addressing continuity and change to make their work relevant to the native title process in general.

Indeed, most contact archaeology has been as concerned with documenting change as continuity. In a particularly early example, Sharp's 'Steel axes for stone age Australians' (1952) provides a classic study of the social and economic consequences of the flow of metal and other non-Indigenous items into Yir Yiront territory during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sharp builds a picture of social relations that centred on the use, exchange and production of stone axes and emphasises the ways in which stone axes normalised and reproduced particular types of social relationships, particularly gender roles and social exchanges. Through the new ways in which steel axes were distributed, older men lost control of a source of power in their control of access to axes. Changes in trading patterns weakened the importance of social activities that revolved around ritual and social exchange, while creating new forms of dependence on white trading partners who exploited this dependence to impose authoritarian structures on members of the group (Sharp 1952:83-6). Similar post-contact social changes have been noted for the introduction of glass as a raw material for the manufacture of biface pressure-flaked points in the Kimberley (Harrison 2002a, 2004a).

Researchers working in the sub-field of post-contact archaeology have also suggested that different forms of archaeological evidence might be read as demonstrating continuity of attachment to country and landscape. For example, in my analysis of the graffiti in the shoeing forge building at the former East Kunderang pastoral station, I was able to match the initials and names of former pastoral workers against a series of continuous wages records from the period 1919-47, and discovered that where 22 out of 39 sets of initials could be identified, 21 of them belonged to Aboriginal people (Harrison 2004b:108). Such forms of evidence, although radically different from the kinds of evidence with which archaeologists are used to dealing in the pre-contact period, should also be read as evidence of continuity of attachment, and maintenance of attachment to country (see also McNiven & Russell 2002 on the connection between rock-art and graffiti).

While archaeologists clearly have a role in meeting the requirements of a legislative process which may result in land justice for Aboriginal people (in Gould's terms, convincing the court of law), I also think it is prudent to acknowledge the importance of another intellectual process, in which archaeologists are engaged in writing the sorts of histories which allow a change in the paradigm of native title away from the strict emphasis on continuity, towards a picture of Aboriginal society which has always been changing. While this project is certainly one which operates over a longer time scale, I would hope that addressing ourselves to the court of history in this manner will ultimately lead to changes in the court of law, and better outcomes for those Aboriginal people who have found themselves left out of the native title process because of the uncritical emphases on direct continuity which have characterised several prominent native title judgements in this country. The work of those archaeologists who have begun addressing themselves to the field of native title archaeology demonstrates that reasonably complex arguments about continuity and change can be built into arguments presented in both the courts of law and the courts of history. The challenge for archaeologists in Australia is to build research questions which can address such issues in their work outside the realms of native title litigation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

(1) thank Richard Fullagar and Peter Veth for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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Rodney Harrison

Australian National University

Rodney Harrison is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University in Canberra, where he undertakes research in contact archaeology and cultural heritage management. He has previously worked in the Cultural Heritage Research Unit of the Department of Environment and Conservation, NSW, and has undertaken field research in Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland. He is the author of Shared landscapes (UNSW Press, 2004) and co-editor (with Christine Williamson) of After Captain Cook (ACL, University of Sydney, 2002; Alta Mira Press, 2004).

rodney.harrison@anu.edu.au

Table 1 Summary of model for distinguishing between pre- and
post-contact archaeological sites in the south-east Kimberley based on
analysis of stone artefact assemblages (after Harrison 2002c)

Category of data Pre-contact site

Stone raw materials Low range of raw materials (1-7)

Exotic raw materials Low numbers of exotic raw materials

Site density Low artefact density (0.2-20 artefacts per
 [m.sup.2])

Retouched artefacts High proportion of assemblage retouched
 (25-50%)

Kimberley points Points are low proportion by number of
 retouched implements (0-35%)

Category of data Post-contact site

Stone raw materials Large range of raw materials (7-14)

Exotic raw materials Large numbers of exotic raw materials

Site density High artefact density (5-50) artefacts per
 [m.sup.2])

Retouched artefacts Low proportion of assemblage
 retouched (<25%)

Kimberley points Points are high proportion by number
 of retouched implements (>30%, up to 60%)