Archaeology of Torres Strait turtle-shell masks: the Badu cache.

David, Bruno ; McNiven, Ian ; Bowie, William 等

Abstract: Turtle-shell masks are distinctive Tortes Strait Islander objects that were used during ritual performances, and carefully curated, during ethnographic times. Yet the history of these rituals and their material expressions are poorly understood. The numerous instances of turtle-shell masks collected during the nineteenth century and currently held in museum collections around the world, and the chance discovery of one such mask cached in a rock-shelter on the island of Badu, now allow for their historicising through a program of AMS radiocarbon dating. Initial results are reported. Ethnographic accounts and oral traditions present the historical researcher with not only rich cultural details, but also a means by which to track back in time the origins of those same cultural practices. For if cultural practices possess material correlates--particular artefact or site types, or specific technological conventions--it should theoretically be possible to investigate archaeologically when those material items, and in the process the associated cultural practices, first appeared in the depths of history. Yet, as archaeologists, seldom do we come across material objects, or patterning of material remains, that can be identified with particular and ongoing cultural practices. In Torres Strait there are few material objects and site types that can be said to be distinctively and singularly 'Torres Strait Islander' in cultural expression. Of those that can be, bu (trumpet, Syrinx) shell alignments, dugong bone mounds, curved 'shark-mouth' drums and turtle-shell masks are perhaps the most readily recognisable. Yet these are not common, and until now no turtle-shell mask had been recorded archaeologically. Indeed, while 80 turtle-shell masks and effigies--many of which incorporate mask-like components--are known from museum or private collections, all were likely collected prior to the twentieth century AD. Apart from a few masks recently made by Indigenous artist Vic McGrath, and one in the collection of the National Museum of Australia made in 1993 by Patrick Thaiday (Mosby & Robinson 1998:101, 102), no new examples are known from the last 100 years.

Turtle-shell masks nevertheless promise to shed considerable light on the historical emergence of ethnographically known Torres Strait Islander cultural practices. Such masks were carefully curated and recycled through the generations, and for this reason ethnographic examples likely include ancient as well as more recent creations. As was recently demonstrated by AMS radiocarbon results of 490[+ or -]60 years and 550[+ or -]50 years BP for a well-preserved wooden anthropomorphic woodcarving from Rapanui, durable items in museum collections have considerable potential for chronological investigation (Forment et al. 2001). An AMS dating program on minute samples of turtle-shell masks held in museum and private collections should reveal key information on the historical appearance of turtle-shell masks and their historically emergent roles in Islander cultural practice. Similarly, the dating of turtle-shell masks represented in rock-art presents a second avenue for tracing their antiquity. The chance finding of one such mask in a cave on Badu presents us with a third opportunity, which we now take, to initiate a research program to determine the ages of turtle-shell masks with local Islander communities.

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Turtle-shell masks: their nature and function in Torres Strait Islander culture

Torres Strait is a 150 km-wide watery realm separating the Australian and New Guinean mainlands (Figure 1). It is home to Tortes Strait Islanders who, like their ancestors, harvest the seas for fish, turtle and dugong. Torres Strait was put on the world anthropological map by Alfred Haddon and colleagues on the 1898 'Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits'. Haddon documented in detail cultural features of each of the three distinctive Islander groups--Western (now divided into Top Western and Western), Central, and Eastern--in six volumes published between 1901 and 1935. In academic circles, Torres Strait is most famous as the place where the Melanesian and Australian (Aboriginal) cultural and ecological domains meet and as a transition zone between the horticultural and hunter-gatherer worlds (Harris 1977). However, it is more than this, for Torres Strait Islanders share aspects of Melanesian (in particular New Guinean south-central coast) and Aboriginal (particularly north-eastern region) broad cultural traits, but possess their own distinctive cultures and trace their own, distinctive Islander histories. The endemic turtle-shell masks and associated cosmologies and cultural practices are examples of the distinctiveness of Torres Strait Islander culture. Coring of reefs and islands reveals that the Straits were established 8000 to 7000 years ago and that island formation is ongoing (e.g. Barham 2000). Islander society must have developed within this period, although no archaeological research has yet been attempted on the historicity of distinctively Islander cultural practices.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Most turtle-shell masks were made from panels of Hawksbill turtle-shell (Eretmochelys imbricata) tied together with cord. They were, during the early European contact period, critical components of various Islander ritual performances and cult practices, such as the increase or celebratory (e.g. dogaira wetpur and alag dances of the Eastern Islands; mawa dances of the Western Islands), mortuary (e.g. markai dances of the Western Islands; keber le dances of the Eastern Islands), and initiation (e.g. Malu-Bomai ceremonies of the Eastern Islands; the Sigai-Maiau cult of lama Island; and the Kulka cult of Aureed) ceremonies, commemorating the ancestors in the process (e.g. Beckett 1987; Haddon 1908a:204-6, 209-10; 1908b:271, 273-7; 1912:297-8; 1935:142, 166, 369, 390-1; Haddon & Myers 1908:281-313; Haddon et al. 1904:348-9, 373-8; Herle 1998; Meyer 1995; Moore 1968, 1989; Myers & Haddon 1908:135; Pretty 1963). Jeremy Beckett recalls being told by a very old Badu man (Tamwoy) in 1959 of animal masks made from turtle-shell connected with totemic ceremonies. Turtle-shell masks were often stored in special places, sometimes hidden from everyday view. For Zer in the Eastern Islands, Haddon (1935:166) writes of a 'house built of small stones' used to store turtle-shell masks. Here such masks were generally kept in 'cult centres' and were looked after by specially designated and recognised important men (see also Jukes 1847; Moore 1978).

Farr (1987:17) noted that Torres Strait 'tortoiseshell sculpture is the most accomplished in the world'; detailed descriptions and photographs of most ethnographically known Torres Strait turtle-shell masks were reported by Fraser (1978). Haddon (1912:298-304) identified five major morphological categories of turtle-shell masks/headdresses in Torres Strait, although their functional distinctiveness is uncertain:

* small masks ('visors') which cover only the upper part of the face

* masks representing a human face

* masks representing a complete animal (with or without a human face)

* masks representing an animal's head (with or without a human face)

* masks with a box surmounted by an animal.

Turtle-shell effigies can be distinguished from masks by their contexts of display and use, and morphologically also (although mask-like components can be included). Effigies tended to be kept and curated in their places of abode, including caves. Masks, on the other hand, were often stored or hidden at some distance from their places of use, being retrieved for ceremonies held elsewhere.

While we do not know when turtle-shell masks first began to be manufactured and used in Torres Strait, such masks and their associated ceremonies appear to have originated in Torres Strait, given their absence in other parts of the Pacific. As early as 1606, Captain Don Diego de Prado y Tovar (de Prado 1930:159), sailing with Captain Luis Vaez de Tortes (together the first known European navigators to sail through Torres Strait), had observed turtle-shell masks on the island that they named Isla de los Perros--later identified as Zegey Island in the Central Strait by Hilder (1980:72-81):

 In the morning we went ashore and to the village,
 which was abandoned, and we found a quantity of
 turtle ... and a quantity of masks made of the said turtle,
 very well finished, and a fish called albaroca ['small
 striped tunny'] imitated so naturally that it seemed to
 be the very thing, and a half man-half fish of a yard and
 a half high, also made as a good sculptor might have
 finished it.

Most, if not all, of the extant turtle-shell masks and effigies were collected in the nineteenth century--and in particular during the late 1800s--from islands frequented by sailors, naturalists/ anthropologists, local residents and missionaries. McNiven (2001:191) has argued that, during this period, 'Tortoise-shell trade between Torres Strait Islanders may have intensified in order to have stocks available for European trade encounters'. This increased commercial demand for turtle-shell by European sailors (for the manufacture of jewellery and other ornamental objects) likely also saw increased manufacture of turtle-shell masks on the islands. Certainly frontier trade initiated increased production of other culture materials in Torres Strait (McNiven 2001; Moore 1998). After the arrival of missionaries in the 1870s there was a noticeable curbing of traditional ceremonies and the manufacture and use of associated paraphernalia on most islands. As Alfred Haddon noted in his 1888-89 journal, 'the missionaries have abolished their dances and feasts' (p. 84, cited by Beckett 1998:29). Accordingly, turtle-shell mask manufacture had decreased significantly, if not ceased altogether, by the turn of the twentieth century. Jeremy Beckett (1998:37) commented that 'the missionaries felt able to destroy or remove sacred objects associated with the old cults, break up ceremonies, and ban various other practices that were not specifically unchristian, but which offended their sense of propriety'. Elsewhere, he cited Charles Myers' 1898 journal (p. 70, in Beckett 1998:40): 'The early missionaries insisted on the burning of their Malu', and concluded that the 'fact remained that the missionaries were able to destroy the Malu head-dress'. However, we note in this context that some oral histories today suggest that Malu went away or buried himself. Other commentators (e.g. Bishop Passi) see Malu as having pointed the way to Christianity.

Surviving examples of turtle-shell masks are known from Mabuiag, Murulag, Naghir, Iama/Tudu, Waier, Met and Erub in Torres Strait, and two examples are known from Mawatta and Parama Island near the Fly River mouth in southern Papua (being close kin and trading partners with, as well as raiders of, Torres Strait islands). Turtle-shell masks do not appear to have been manufactured or used on Saibai in northern Torres Strait, but the absence of museum examples from other islands such as Badu, Boigu, Mua, Poruma, Ugar, Waibene, and Warraber is in some instances at least likely due to a lack of collecting. One could also expect Badu to have had or made turtle-shell masks, given that Jeremy Beckett recorded cultural knowledge of such masks from Tamwoy on Badu Island, and also since many Badu Islanders came from, and continued close contacts with, Mabuiag during the early European contact period. In addition to these museum collections, rock-paintings of turtle-shell masks on Dauan and Mua, and ethnographic recordings of dances and masks on Thursday Island, suggest a wider distribution than indicated by museum collections.

Turtle-shell masks in rock-art

Two turtle-shell masks are currently known from rock-art in Torres Strait. At Kabadul Kula (site Dauan 1), on the island of Dauan in north-western Torres Strait, is a painting of an anthropomorph with a fish effigy headdress topped by a feather dheri (itself a traditional form of headdress or mask). This head dress is essentially identical in form to known turtle-shell headdresses from Tortes Strait (McNiven et al. 2002, in press). The Dauan turtle-shell mask painting remains undated, but is unlikely to be more than a few hundred years old given its exposed coastal setting.

At the Lady Hill site on Mua (site Mua 28), another mask is represented in the rock-art. This fish-shaped mask has very similar characteristics to the Dauan painting: the fish shape is comparable, with a left-facing mouth held open by a vertical line. The Mua mask is surmounted by a faded, indeterminate design. This faded painting will be reported in detail elsewhere (see Brady et al. 2004).

The Badu cache

Badu is the third largest of the Torres Strait islands (Figure 2). Situated in the Western Group, it currently supports a single village--Badu Village, on the eastern coast--but other named villages are known from recent oral tradition. On 18 June 2001, we commenced a project on the cultural history of Badu Islanders, a collaboration of the Mura Badulgal (Torres Strait Islanders) Corporation representing the Indigenous peoples of the island, the Badu Island Council, archaeologists Bruno David, Ian McNiven and Joe Crouch and more recently Liam Brady (Monash University), palaeobiogeographers Cassandra Rowe (Monash) and Simon Haberle (Australian National University), and physical anthropologist Denise Donlon (University of Sydney). On that first day we visited rock-shelters at Ikis, considered by senior Badulgal a sacred area, on the western side of the island to record the island's rock-art. Towards the end of the first day, we noticed a small natural cavity (about 1 x 1 m in diameter, 500 mm in height) in a distant granite boulder (Figure 3). On investigation, we found a cache containing an incised and drilled Hawksbill turtle-shell mask fragment consisting of an almost intact panel (Figures 4 and 5), plus a very small section of a second panel; one small, cut piece of long-bone, possibly human; two small shell valves; a quartz tool showing evidence of use; and a few pieces of Melaleuca paperbark (paperbark trees do not grow in the vicinity of the site). The large turtle-shell mask panel was lying directly on granite rocks inside the cavity, and was held in place by a single granite rock that had been positioned on top of it. It is uncertain which of Haddon's five turtle-shell mask types this item belongs to, for each of the five could possess such a face-panel. The other cultural items were spread over an area of approximately 300 mm diameter around the mask panel. The second, small piece of turtle-shell was breaking down as a result of its contact with seasonally humid soft sediments between the rocks on the cavity floor.

[FIGURES 2-5 OMITTED]

The site has been recorded as site Badu 5. It is located along the lower slopes of a hill, 10 m above the surrounding plains and 1.5 km inland of the old Argan village. After discussion with community elders, the Mura Badulgal (Torres Strait Islanders) Corporation made the decision to remove all cultural items for temporary safekeeping at the Queensland Museum until such time as their return is recalled by Badu Islanders. The Ikis cache is the first documented example of a turtle-shell mask from Badu, but morphologically typical of masks known from other parts of Torres Strait.

An AMS radiocarbon determination was obtained on the small piece of turtle-shell found in the cache. The result, 525 [+ or -] 40 years BP (OZF817), indicates that the mask was highly probably made sometime between 1717 and 1950 AD (95.4% probability on Calib 4.3, using a delta-R value of 49 [+ or -] 45 years for the Torres Strait region), and probably between 1810 and 1950 AD (at 68.3% confidence level). Given the mask's location close to Argan, a village occupied before and during early missionary times, the fact that none of the present elders on Badu had ever seen a turtle-shell mask (but they had traditional knowledge of such masks), and the history of land use, it is most likely that the mask was made and cached on the island sometime during the late nineteenth century. Within a broader Torres Strait context, this first radiocarbon result sheds little new light on the antiquity of turtle-shell masks; the Luis Vaez de Torres expedition revealed that the tradition of turtle-shell mask manufacture is at least 400 years old. However, it does alert us to the presence of datable caches on islands, and of their potential for the investigation of the history of Islander cultural practices through a detailed and long-term investigation of material remains.

Given its antiquity, one likely scenario presents itself to explain the social context of the Badu turtle-shell mask cache. Following the advent of missionary activity in 1871 in Torres Strait, and a few years later on Badu, the unfinished or unassembled mask was made by knowledgeable Islanders as part of traditional cultural practices associated with Island dancing and the performance of ceremonies, cults and/or the commemoration of clan or legendary heroes. Under such a scenario, the mask was cached or hidden in the rock cavity at Ikis, near Argan, prior to its completion in response or resistance to pressures to curb traditional dancing and the use of associated paraphernalia under early Christian impacts on Badu. Masks were often sacred and in some contexts secret in the Western Islands, and there are therefore reasons why an apparently unfinished (or at least unassembled) mask such as this one should have been hidden from particular social groups--or to protect it from changing social circumstances--in a small, secluded rock cavity; yet close enough to Argan village for retrieval if needed.

The Badu 5 turtle-shell mask is the first Torres Strait turtle-shell mask to be dated by radiocarbon. It demonstrates the potential of determining the antiquity of this characteristically regional cultural expression. If this mask lasted more than 100 years in a cave, it alerts us to the possibility that many turtle-shell masks in museums were very old when collected in the nineteenth century. Our aim is now to determine the antiquity of a large sample of museum masks, as part of a larger research program aimed at investigating the historical emergence of characteristically Torres Strait Islander cultural practices.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank the Mura Badulgal (Torres Strait Islanders) Corporation, the people of Badu Island, the Badu Island Council, AIATSIS and the Australian Research Council for grants, and the School of Geography and Environmental Science at Monash University for making this research possible. Thanks also to Gary Swinton for drafting Figures 1 and 2, and Cassandra Kelly for Figure 5.

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Bruno David, Ian McNiven, Joe Crouch and Liam Brady are archaeologists based at the Programme for Australian Indigenous Archaeology at Monash University. They have been working, individually and as a team, in Torres Strait since the mid to late 1990s.

School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Clayton, Vic. 3800

<bruno.david@arts.monash.edu.au>

<ian.mcniven@arts.monash.edu.au>

<Joe.Crouch@arts.monash.edu.au>

<Liam.Brady@arts.monash.edu.au>

William Bowie, Manuel Nomoa and Peo Ahmat are Badulgal, Torres Strait Islanders from Badu Island (WB is Chairman of the Mura Badulgal (Torres Strait Islanders) Corporation, representing the Indigenous people of Badu).

[WB] Mura BadulgaI (Torres Strait Islanders) Corporation, Badu Island, via Thursday Island, Qld 4875

[MN and PA] Badu Island Council, Badu Island, via Thursday Island, Qld 4875

Michael Quinnell is Curator of Cultures and Histories, working with Torres Strait Islanders at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane.

PO Box 3300, South Brisbane, Qld 4101

Anita Herle is Curator for Anthropology at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Cambridge CB2 3DZ, England, <ach13@cam.ac.uk>