Stylistic analysis of stone arrangements supports regional cultural interactions along the northern Great Barrier Reef, Queensland

Abstract

Stone arrangements are frequently encountered on the Australian mainland and islands. They have high significance values to Indigenous Australians and are usually associated with the material expression and emplacement of socio-religious beliefs and associated ceremonial/ritual activities. Despite their ubiquity, stone arrangements are an understudied site type with their distribution and morphological variability remaining poorly documented and their functional variability poorly understood. Although in most parts of Australia the authorship of stone arrangements is unambiguously Aboriginal, for far north Queensland this is less clear for places where Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders, and more recently South Sea Islanders, all with documented traditions of stone arrangement construction and use, are known to have operated. A comparative stylistic analysis of stone arrangements constructed by Aboriginal people, Torres Strait Islanders and Island Melanesians of the southwest Pacific reveals that although Lizard Island Group stone arrangements are predominately of Aboriginal authorship, some arrangements exhibit cultural influences from neighbouring areas. In this respect, Lizard Island Group stone arrangements appear to be a further material expression of the Torres Strait Cultural Complex and Coral Sea Cultural Interaction Sphere.

Keywords:

• Coastal and island archaeology
• stone arrangements
• Lizard Island
• Great Barrier Reef

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge and thank the traditional owners and members of the Dingaal community in our collaborative archaeological research into the long-term history of the Lizard Island Group. In particular, we thank Elaine McGreen, Phillip Baru and Johnny Charlie for support. Thanks to Anne Hoggett and Lyle Vail at the Australian Museum Lizard Island Research Station (LIRS, Australian Museum) for their hospitality and generous logistical support. We thank Jo McDonald (University of Western Australia) and Craig Sloss (Queensland University of Technology) for advice. Work on this paper was undertaken while SU was visiting as an Honorary Fellow in the School of Social Sciences, the University of Western Australia. This research was undertaken under permit WITK1283 5313 issued under S9(1)(A) Nature Conservation (Administration) Regulation 2006 by the then Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number FT120100656].