Did Aboriginal Australians Use Pottery?
A recent discovery challenges the belief that Aboriginal Australians didn’t use pottery before European arrival
I never gave much thought to pottery. Every site had a little bit of it, and I had to be on the lookout for it when excavating. When reading about finds from the Romans, Maya, Han Dynasty, or early Bantu migrants to South Africa, pottery is almost always listed somewhere in the results.
So I was somewhat surprised when I came across this journal article, which explained how pottery wasn’t the norm in Australian excavations; in fact, concrete evidence of its existence and manufacture locally had never been found. Intrigued, I read on, and this is what I found out.
In direct contrast to the well-established pottery-making traditions found in nearby south Papua New Guinea, east Indonesia, and the western Pacific, which date back many centuries, it has long been accepted that the Aboriginal Australians did not manufacture or use pottery before the arrival of the Europeans. This absence of pottery manufacture in mainland Australia has long intrigued researchers, particularly given the proximity to pottery-manufacturing communities in the surrounding Pacific and the active exchange networks that linked them with the Aboriginal Australians.
In collaboration with their colleagues, Prof. Sean Ulm and Prof. Ian McNiven have made a fantastic discovery. They uncovered the oldest dated pottery originating at Jiigurru (Lizard Island Group), Australia, on the Great Barrier Reef. The pottery was locally produced using clays and tempers from Jiigurru. Its age overlaps with a period when the Lapita people of southern Papua New Guinea were known to make pottery, between 2950–2535 cal BP and 1910–1815 cal BP (before present). This discovery provides concrete evidence of pre-European pottery in Australia, dispelling the long-held belief that Aboriginal Australians did not manufacture or use pottery.
Pre-European Pottery Use in Oceania
What comes to mind when I say traditional Aboriginal Pottery? If nothing concrete comes to mind, you are in a similar position to most people.
In contrast to the Torres Strait Region, Mainland Australia lacked evidence of pre-European pottery use for decades. This absence had often been used to support bigoted views, which suggested that Aboriginal societies lacked cultural complexity. Meanwhile, pottery use and manufacture had been well-established in the Torres Strait Region for centuries. The Torres Straight Region pottery tradition originated with the Lapita culture that emerged in Papua New Guinea around 3300 cal BP. Concurrently with the emergence of pottery, the Lapita people were embarking on their great voyages, in which they spread their distinctive pottery and shell-making technologies and, additionally, introduced a diverse range of plants and animals, including pigs, dogs, and chickens, to the western Pacific. Within a few centuries, the Lapita people and their descendants had settled in the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, leaving behind a trail of evidence linking their material culture to one another.
With such widespread pottery use around Oceania, it had been puzzling to researchers why the same use and manufacture of pottery seemed absent from Australia. This was even more perplexing when one considered that the neighbouring potter-bearing, seafaring communities were all within reach of Australia and likely could and would have engaged in active trading networks. The Australian Aboriginals did not make a few examples of pottery excavated dating back to the past 400 years; instead, they were the results of activities by the Makassan people from Sulawesi.
Various explanations arose to explain Aboriginal Australians' lack of pottery use; some suggested insufficient archaeological sampling (we hadn’t been looking hard enough) or Pacific groups avoiding the already populated Australian landmass, thus never bringing pottery or the knowledge of how to manufacture it to Australia. The latter was particularly confusing since the Lapita people actively cohabited for centuries with existing local peoples across Near Oceania, so why exclude the local peoples of Australia specifically?
Discovery of Pottery on Jiigurru
Jiigurru was once part of the mainland; however, the mountainous coastal plain was separated after a post-glacial sea-level rise. By the time Jiigurru was first occupied, ca.6500 years ago, the island was some 30 km off the contemporary mainland.
Jiigurru, also called Lizard Island, received its name from Captain James Cook, who named it after the large sand monitors (Varanus gouldii) he saw roaming the island in 1770. However, the island is also home to various species of birds, geckos, snakes, and fish. Today, the island is predominantly a National Park, though it also contains a resort, an airstrip, and an internationally renowned marine research station.
To the traditional owners of the Guugu Yimithirr nation, the island was a place of ceremony, initiation, gathering, and passing down knowledge to young men. Initiation trips lasted a few months, while Dingaal families travelled to Jiigurru to access food such as fish, turtles, shellfish, and yam. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, European mariners noted huts, canoes, and hearths scattered across the island.
More recent research showed that Jiigurru was a crucial nexus in the 1800s for trade and connections between communities. These trade networks facilitated the exchange of objects and ideas. Some of these traded items included bamboo smoking pipes, which were widely adopted by the communities participating in the trade network. Meanwhile, other items, like shell-handled spearthrowers or dog-tooth necklaces, while also traded, were more locally restricted and not widely adopted by surrounding communities.
In 2006, very badly worn and rounded pottery sherds were discovered on Jiigurru. However, the initial analysis, including attempts to date the shards, was inconclusive, and further analysis suggested that they were not of local origin. A decade later, Ulm and McNiven partnered with the Aboriginal Traditional Owners and established a new research program to consider the recovered deposit dating to the Late Lapita/ post-Lapita period.
Within the deposit, pottery!
The 82 pottery sherds were recovered and analysed; it was determined that they dated back to the Late Lapita and Post-Lapita periods, long before Europeans arrived anywhere near Australia, and had been locally manufactured. The pottery was thin-walled, meaning less clay was needed to manufacture it, and it was optimally suited to cooking, using less fuel than pots with thicker walls.
The low number of sherds suggests that very few pots were made. This is in contrast to most sites in which pottery is found, where shards number in the thousands, indicating they were continually manufactured, used for cooking, and broke, only to be replaced again by new pottery. The limited number of pots at Jiigurru suggests these pots were not likely used for everyday cooking and had much more limited use. I wonder if pottery was only manufactured and used for specific ceremonies or by a select number of people. When these ceremonies or the community that made the pottery ceased, the need and knowledge of pottery manufacture may have disappeared with them.
Future studies will need to test the residue on the sherds to determine what function they may have served and perhaps explain why only so few were manufactured.
Impact of the Finds and Future Implications
The sherds attest that pottery was used and made in Australia long before European settlers arrived. It also points to the likelihood of finding more pottery in the vast and archaeologically unknown northeast Queensland coastline. Perhaps these undiscovered sherds answer why pottery manufacturing and use was discontinued along the Australian Queensland coast but not the nearby Papua New Guinean coast over the past 2000 years.
The use and manufacturing of pottery on Jiigurru ended after 1815 cal BP. Perhaps the traditions, ceremonies, or simply the community that used them ceased to exist, and thus, the knowledge and need to manufacture pottery disappeared, too—replaced by new ceremonies, traditions, and communities that did not need pottery or the knowledge of manufacturing it.
Other than information on pottery manufacturing, the findings attest to the navigational capabilities of the Asian aboriginals. Considering the islands’ positioning 30km off the coast of mainland Australia, the Asian aborigines must have had advanced watercraft voyaging technology, which enabled them to navigate the open sea. However, they would not have settled on Jiigurru permanently, as the island is too small to support permanent occupation. Therefore, the local inhabitants likely had seasonal forays to the island, similar to the recent past.
Pottery unearthed on Jiigurru Island, Australia, manufactured locally between 2950–2535 cal BP and 1910–1815 cal BP, provides the earliest known evidence of pottery production in Australia before European arrival. These findings challenge stereotypical ideas about aboriginal communities and their technological capabilities.
The discovery provides concrete evidence for the use and manufacture of pottery in Australia before the arrival of Europeans. It highlights the maritime capabilities of the indigenous communities and highlights the exchange of ideas and objects across the western Pacific.
But why did it stop? My best guess is that pottery was only needed for one specific task, and when that tradition died, the use of pottery did, too. What do you think? And have you heard of locally made Australian pottery?
Researchers will need to continue their scientific endeavours to determine if other areas also produced pottery, for what reason, and why they eventually stopped.
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References
- Ulm, S., McNiven, I.J., Summerhayes, G.R., Wu, P.H., Bunbury, M.M., Petchey, F., Hua, Q., Skelly, R., Lambrides, A.B., Rowe, C. and Lowe, K.M., 2024. Early Aboriginal pottery production and offshore island occupation on Jiigurru (Lizard Island group), Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Quaternary Science Reviews, p.108624.
- Ulm, S., Mcniven, I.J. and McLean, K., 2024. Aboriginal people made pottery and sailed to distant offshore islands thousands of years before Europeans arrived. The Conversation.
- Waterson, P., Waghorn, A., Swartz, J. and Brown, R., 2013. What’s in a name? Beyond the Mary Watson stories to a historical archaeology of Lizard Island. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 17, I hap.590–612
