While researching the Macleay Museum’s collection of stone tools for the new exhibition titled Written in Stone, I have thought about ways to present this material to people who are not aware of the cultural meaning of the tools. This paper is an abstract from the exhibition’s catalogue.
Stone objects were part of an Aboriginal tool kit which people used across the Australian mainland and Tasmania over a period of at least over sixty thousand years. They challenge people to imagine the deep past, to visualise how people lived in the pre-industrial world. The diversity of Aboriginal cultural and linguistic groups in Australia produced a variety of tool types. The diversity of stone source materials and the practical knowledges of the different material properties of different forms of stone show an intimate engagement with and knowledge of the Australian landscape. Through countless hours of craftsmanship, ingenuity and practical necessity the makers of these stone tools transformed a common element of the Australian landscape into objects that employed functional, symbolic, philosophical and spiritual purposes.
Stone tool artefacts can be arranged by type or ordered through time periods and analysed for evidence of the information they hold just like historical documents in an archive. These tools are local histories of negotiating landscape and the strategies of land use. The raw materials that are made into stone tools and their associated quantity and qualities depict the use of the land in which they are found as well as the history of its occupation. Each is an element of a larger cultural framework that is linked to an indisputable evidence of a prior occupation of the landscape that the modern Australian nation is built on. Their diversity, distribution and ultimately their presentation as records of the continuing presence of Aboriginal history and knowledge in Australia are part of an ongoing process of understanding and learning.
Stone tools
The Macleay Museum exhibition groups tools according to their geographical distribution which not only highlights the dominant types of stone used by different language groups but also presents these items as elements of a tool kit no different to the axes, knives, grinders or chisels that are used in building sites, camping grounds or in kitchens today. Stone tools are the most persistent artefact found among occupation sites compared against other implements made from the more perishable organic elements of wood, shell and bone. They were crafted with a specialist knowledge that maintained connection to country and an adherence to cultural knowledges and protocols. Over millennia Aboriginal peoples modified their stone tools along with other implements so as to adapt to the changing environments of their lands. Aboriginal peoples’ trade networks, their sophisticated working of numerous types of stone and the diversity of its application into art, tools, food utensils and weapons have considerable information to teach a contemporary audience. Their sophisticated production techniques embody the practice of teaching and education through oral history and demonstrate the resilience of oral traditions and the ingenuity of Aboriginal people in Australian over many millennia.
Stone tools were commonly used for tasks such as grinding, cutting, piercing and pounding. However, many finely worked stone implements were used for entirely different purposes. More malleable forms of stone are used in an artistic application as a pigment. Ochre is one of the softest minerals in the range of geologic source material that comprises the Aboriginal tool kit. The use of various hues of ochre in shades of red, purple, yellow and umber and its application onto the surface of rock shelters, wooden artefacts and ceremonial designs painted onto bodies is an iconic representation of Aboriginal cultural identity, and required not just artistic talent but knowledge of sourcing, ability to trade, mix and apply the pigments onto a wide range of surfaces. The locations of ochres, stone tools and whole geologic features demarcated the territorial and cultural boundaries of Aboriginal lands and linguistic territories. Many rock formations and landmarks serve as signposts to the storylines of the histories and journeys of ancestors that are integral to other kinds of knowledge communicated through song, performance and temporary marks made in the ground.
Stone axes and grindstones from the original Macleay Bequest
In 1892 the University of Sydney accepted a bequest of items from the colonial Macleay family who first came to Australia in 1827. This private collection predominantly contained natural history specimens, but included some artefacts of Aboriginal manufacture. Mostly acquired prior to 1887, the ethnographic collections comprised largely of stone tools and represents early attempts at classifying Aboriginal people through different types of stone tool artefacts that they used. Early collectors of natural history specimens sometimes had close relationships with Aboriginal people who in many instances guided and assisted them to find particular types of plants or animals that were then traded among collectors and into museum collections around the world. These Aboriginal guides shared their knowledge and passed on information. As an interest in the cultural practices of Aboriginal people became increasingly prevalent internationally, some natural history collectors also began acquiring objects from the Aboriginal people they encountered.
The exchange of objects and raw materials has a long history among Aboriginal peoples. In some ways the new trade opportunities offered by encounters with settlers were a continuation of this older Aboriginal practice. It was also a turning point in the purposes of making stone tools and other artefacts as they were used as a form of currency as items of trade and exchange with international collectors and museums. Early objects that were collected were those that could be found on the surface of the ground such as grindstones and stone axes, it was only much later that archaeological excavations uncovered a much greater diversity of more specialised tools and artefacts.
The most common types of tools acquired in this 19th century collection are the axe and the grindstone. Many of these stone axes are simply designated as being from ‘East coast Australia’, which was common at the time. Today archaeologists record precise provenances. Through fine microscopy and mineralogical trace testing, older objects can also give details of the places they were sourced from. Particular patterns of scratch marks on the surfaces of stone implements can show whether it was used to strike against bones, plants, tree trunks or other stone material. Testing residues and traces of resins or possibly even residues of animal DNA or starch fibres can provide insights about the environments they existed in and what it might have been used for in daily life. Advances in scientific analysis tell us more about the people who made and used these tools in the past. Increased collaboration with Aboriginal community representatives surrounding archaeological excavation and analysis is revealing new understandings of the rich community and ceremonial life that these objects were part of; ideas that were inconceivable to 19th century collectors and museums.
Stone axe
At present the earliest known edge-ground stone axe use in Australia dates to 35,000 years ago, making it the earliest known tool made in the world. A stone axe required many hours of labour in its basic construction, and continuous upkeep. Stone axes, made from a variety of found and quarried materials, could be hand held or hafted onto wooden handles. South-eastern Aboriginal people’s use of stone axes declined with the introduction of small metal ‘tomahawks’ were given in trade and as gifts from the early 1800s. The introduction of the European broad-axe used in the large scale timber industries of the 19th century drastically changed many east coast Australian forest landscapes on a scale that stone axes could not. Aboriginal people adopted the use of the European broad-axe into their tool kit but also amended previous styles of axe making techniques to incorporate the modern material of steel for a traditional design and purpose.
Grindstone
Many grindstones were also easily acquired by early collectors because they were commonly left in places they were used and often too heavy to transport. The function of a grindstone is no different to the mortar and pestle commonly used in kitchens today. They were often left at particular sites to be re-used by people revisiting areas during seasonal harvesting of particular plants and were a key component in the processing of food. Found near water sources and camp sites, grindstones are reminders of the places people engaged in these daily activities.
Regional Variation
The Macleay Museum collection has Indigenous material from six distinct geographical regions represented in the exhibition: North West Australia, West Coast Arnhem land, Central Australia, Tasmania, Western NSW and Greater Sydney. Each region produced a different extensive tool kit according to stone resources and people’s needs; but certain tools or stone types are distinctive to each.
North West Australia
Quartz is particularly prevalent in the Kimberleys area, but represents only one of many sources of material used. The ‘Kimberley point’ is a small triangular stone point iconic to this region. People of the region used kangaroo bone — itself shaped with stone into an awl — to fashion these small dentated serrations. Kangaroo bones and pearl shell knifes were part of the extended tool kit in this area. Accounts record the high rates of production required to keep hunters equipped with spearheads.
West Coast Arnhem land
Regions represented in the exhibition include items commonly found in the lands of the Jawoyn, Wardaman and Yolngu. One of the most conspicuous artefacts associated across this region and as far south as central Australia is the Leilira blade. The term Leilira is a central Australian Arrernte word but the distribution of these macro blades stretches from the arid interior to the tropical Arnhem coastline and east into Queensland. A Leilira macro blade is a rectangular stone flake that is shaped by the striking of quartzite or silcrete stone finding fault lines inside the stone that produce a blade with an ideal weight and aerodynamic for use as a spear tip. They were also used un-hafted, as knives and in some regions they have been described as being 30cm long.
Central Australia
The conspicuous geologic features of the central Australian landscape such as Uluru for thousands of generations, served as gathering points for Aboriginal peoples from many different language groups for the sharing of knowledge, ideas and to conduct business including sharing resources and knowledges of stone tool manufacture. Even with this shared knowledge there was still variation: Spears used by the neighbouring groups of the Warlpiri and the Arrernte of central Australia show a marked difference in the way that the stone is attached to the spear and are examples of how different production techniques are associated with the learning of specific traditional knowledge’s, each as unique to the linguistic diversity that differentiates them into specific cultural groupings.
Tasmania
The Aboriginal stone tool kit differed from mainland Australia in that it did not have edge ground axes or hafted stone tools but the Tasmanian tool kit develop a specialised range of items that adapted to its particular climate without the need for the mainland instruments. Tasmanian stone tools are predominantly made from chert, crystal quartz, quartzite, and spongolite, the latter formed by sponges in ancient sea beds. Spongolite is readily available in the North West part of the island but is found in occupation sites across many other areas indicating its value as a trade item.
Western New South Wales
The similarity of stone tool types that are found in central Australia and the east coast of Australia show western New South Wales as an inter-zone. Many of the technological advances that are found in central Australia and the east coast that are represented in this region show this as an area where knowledge of stone tool manufacture was transmitted across vast distances, taught through demonstration and maintained through gift and trade.
Greater Sydney
In the greater Sydney region from the Hawkesbury River in the North, the Blue Mountains in the west and up to the edge of the Illawarra escarpment in the South there are known to be at least 22 clans, each with variations of a shared language. Stone tools of the Sydney region include microliths — small blades with multiple functional uses. The stone axes and micro blades in the exhibition are from Springwood, Era and Garie Beaches, Quibray Bay, Castlereagh and Ropes Creek, Bondi, Manly and the Hawkesbury River but the Sydney stone tools in Written in Stone are only a tiny fragment of evidence of thousands of years of occupation that lie beneath the surface of one of the most heavily urbanised areas of the country.
The Study of Aboriginal Stone Tools
The tools in this exhibition are drawn from the collections of geologists, archaeologists and museum collectors. Although their presence as museum objects and historic collections aids many peoples understanding of the history of the first peoples of Australia, their collection also destroyed useful information about occupation and circulation of Aboriginal people into and across Australia. Contemporary museum practice and policies and in relation to the acquisition of Aboriginal cultural materials have significantly changed since Aboriginal people have had greater national authority over their history and culture in Australia from the 1967 referendum onwards. Items in this exhibition were acquired prior to the implementation of various acts by state and federal government acts of parliament relating to the collection or sale of items of significant tangible cultural heritage to Aboriginal communities. These acts prohibit the private collection of artefacts from national parks and sites of significant cultural heritage. Before this, amateur and professional collector’s amassed large quantities of stone tools from various sites for both private and institutional collections.
Stones Tools Representing a Culture
The relationships between archaeologists and Aboriginal people in Australia have changed and developed as different advancements in technology have been able to provide new answers to questions that Aboriginal people have only recently been seeking themselves. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have always told the non-indigenous community in Australia that they were always here, they always were, and always will be. The use of stone tool artefacts to understand tens of thousands of years of occupation of the Australian landscape as well as the intergenerational migrations of people across the country cause us to contemplate the deep past but also the future of our own culture. How will we represent our period of life in Australia in a thousand years’ time? What artefacts will remain of our present day and age for future generations to understand us?
Matt Poll Curator Indigenous Heritage & Repatriation Project, Macleay Museum
Further Reading
Matt Poll, Written in Stone, University of Sydney, 2015
Susan M Davies & Rose Stack, Collected — 150 years of Aboriginal art and artifacts at the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney, 2002
