The archaeology of Maliwawa: 25,000 years of occupation in the Wellington Range, Arnhem Land

Abstract

The archaeology of Bald Rock 1, Bald Rock 2 and Bald Rock 3 at the sandstone outcrop of Maliwawa has established ∼25,000 years of Indigenous occupation in the Wellington Range, northwestern Arnhem Land. Flaked stone artefacts were found from the beginning of the sequence, with ground-edge axes, pounding and grinding technology and ochre recovered from deposits dating from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the recent contact period. Maliwawa was occupied during the LGM and other major regional environmental changes arising from post-glacial sea level rise and stabilisation along with the climatic variability of the Indonesian Australian Summer Monsoon (IASM) and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), supporting models that define Arnhem Land as a refugium. Lithic assemblages are represented by a quartz and quartzite flake abundance technological strategy, with an unusual lack of stone points observed, although other typical Arnhem Land Holocene retouched lithics are present. Raw material diversity in the late Holocene, alongside a variety of emergent pan-Arnhem Land rock art styles in the Wellington Range, supports the proposition of increasing exchange between Indigenous groups. These changes in the archaeological record signal the expansion of cultural systems throughout western Arnhem Land, documented historically and archaeologically, at the time of culture contact.

Keywords:

• Arnhem Land
• archaeology
• Wellington Range
• lithics
• Last Glacial Maximum
• ENSO

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Traditional Owners Ronald Lamilami and his family of the Managowal clan for their support, guidance and enthusiasm throughout fieldwork since 2008. Fieldwork was undertaken by DW, SO and TJ as part of the Baijini, Macassans, Balanda and Bininj: Defining the Indigenous Past of Arnhem Land through Culture Contact Linkage Project. Rock art of Maliwawa was recorded by the ‘Picturing Change: 21st Century perspectives on recent Australian rock art’ project [DP0877463]. The authors would like to thank the Northern Land Council for permits and CartoGIS for production of the map used in this publication. The authors are grateful for fieldwork assistance from the Australian National University, Flinders University and University of Queensland students, volunteers from the Heritage Conservation Branch, Department of Natural Resources, Environment, Arts and Sport and other volunteers from abroad. The authors also thank the student volunteers who dedicated weeks to processing the material from Maliwawa in the lab, especially Katherine Seikel and André Fleury. The North Australia Research Unit (ANU) in Darwin supported the project with a base of operations for the fieldwork in the Northern Territory. Finally, this manuscript was substantially improved by the constructive comments of three anonymous reviewers. Any errors contained within are authors’s own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This study reports on artefact discard as being indicative of human presence and occupation at Maliwawa, although we acknowledge that a range of processes can be responsible for an abundance of stone artefacts in an assemblage, where discard might relate to mobility, raw material availability or technological changes (Hiscock 2002:257; Hiscock and Clarkson 2000:102). We also exercise caution when making specific conclusions about technological responses to external environmental and climate stressors.

Additional information

Funding

Fieldwork and analysis 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 supported by Australian Research Council fellowship DE170101447 ‘People, Animals and Ochre’.