Archaeological Evidence for a Sealer's and Wallaby Hunter's Skinning Site on Kangaroo Island, South Australia

ABSTRACT

Wallaby hunting began by sealers on Kangaroo Island south of Australia in the early 1800s as an off-season supplement to their whaling and sealing activities in the Southern Hemisphere. Compared to the northern hemisphere, very little is known about the activities of sealers who ventured to the south, particularly their means of survival between seasons and what occurred after leaving the industry. Other archaeological investigations around coastal Kangaroo Island have identified sealing and whaling, but sealer's camps are largely absent in such studies. This article presents the first reported archaeological site related to the “wallaby hunting” industry that operated on Kangaroo Island in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Wallaby hunting allowed sealers in this part of the southern hemisphere to shift to living permanently on Kangaroo Island. This site also provides critical ecological information on the impact of sustained hunting of mammals on islands. Prior to the arrival of whalers and sealers, Kangaroo Island underwent a hiatus in occupation for 4,000 years. Their arrival led to the local extinction of the Broad Faced Potoroo (wallaby-sized mammal) and the Kangaroo Island (dwarf) emu. The article adds to the poorly known biogegeographical data for these two animals as well as other mammals identified in the site assemblage.

Keywords:

• biogeography
• formation processes
• historical ecology
• human impacts
• indigenous people
• taphonomy
• zooarchaeology

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank the anonymous reviewers and JICA editors for their comments and guidance on this article. Complete dental elements were identified by Graham Medlin (SA Museum Honorary, Subfossils Collection) with assistance from Matthew McDowall (Flinders University, Ph.D. candidate Biological Sciences). Some dental elements and all post-cranial elements were identified by the author, who takes responsibility for any errors. Philip Blacksmith and Eleanor Adams assisted with imaging. The former National Estate Grant Program (Australian Heritage Commission) provided the funds that led to the initial identification of this site and Anthony Maguire (DEWNR, SA) has given much-appreciated support to the research effort.