Indigenous built structures and anthropogenic impacts on the stratigraphy of Northern Australian rockshelters: insights from Malarrak 1, north western Arnhem Land

Abstract

Malarrak 1 is currently the northernmost excavated rockshelter on the Australian mainland, located in the Wellington Range in north western Arnhem Land. The site contains a rich late Holocene deposit, with extensive contact rock art, stone artefacts, shell, bone, contact materials, ancestral human remains, and other cultural material. Excavation of the Malarrak 1 rockshelter and analysis of its sediments revealed many impacts on site formation processes within the deposit. We attribute the disturbance to possible erosion or sediment deposition during periods of intense rainfall and also to the construction of timber structures within the site. This is supported by modern and historical observations and is the focus of this paper. The extent of the disturbance to Malarrak 1 provides a cautionary tale for other excavations in the region that may be affected by similar Indigenous site occupation, as these anthropogenic activities enhance the risk of further impacts arising from biological and geomorphological processes that can impinge on the stratigraphic integrity of the cultural deposits.

Keywords:

• Post-holes
• Northern Australia
• rockshelter
• Wellington Range
• Arnhem Land
• taphonomy

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Traditional Owners Ronald Lamilami and his family of the Manganowal clan for their support, guidance and enthusiasm throughout fieldwork from 2008 to 2010. Fieldwork was undertaken by DW and SO as part of the Baijini, Macassans, Balanda, and Bininj: Defining the Indigenous Past of Arnhem Land through Culture Contact Linkage Project. Rock art of Malarrak 1 was recorded by the Picturing Change Project [DP0877463]. The authors would like to thank CartoGIS for production of the map used in this publication. Grateful thanks for the Australian National University (ANU) volunteers as well as volunteers from Flinders University, the University of Queensland, Heritage Conservation Branch, Department of Natural Resources, Environment, Arts, and Sport and others from abroad. Thanks are also due to Katherine Seikel and Melissa Hetherington for laboratory supervision. The North Australia Research Unit (ANU) in Darwin supported the project with a base of operations for the fieldwork in the Northern Territory. The authors would like to acknowledge the Thomson Family, Museums Victoria, and Northern Territory Library, Department of Tourism and Culture for the use of images in this publication. The authors would like to thank Patrick De Dekker for comments relevant to the research and Jessica Reeves for providing palaeoclimate data in addition to three anonymous reviewers who provided very constructive feedback on the submitted manuscript. All errors contained within are our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Project program [LP0882985] with contributions from the Linkage Partners Bushfires Council NT and the Department of Sustainability, Environment Heritage and Water. Daryl Wesley was also supported by Australian Research Council fellowship DE170101447 ‘People, Animals and Ochre’. Ian Moffat was supported by Australian Research Council fellowship DP160100703 ‘The Drumbeat of Human Evolution: Climate Proxies from Rockshelter Sediments’.