Author: Siena Gwillim
Gwillim, Siena, 2023 What do you do with a dugout canoe: an investigation into how the introduction of dugout canoes transformed the social and economic landscape of Indigenous Australia., Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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This thesis aims to explore how the introduction of dugout canoes influenced the social and economic landscape of Indigenous Australians. The methodological approach focuses on the analysis of characteristics of Indigenous watercraft in rock art, and spatial distribution of dated middens throughout the Northern Territory exploring whether there is a connection between canoe depictions and changes within midden assemblages. This thesis supports the theory that the introduction of the dugout canoe changed the distribution and sustenance patterns of Aboriginal and the growing argument of an earlier date of first contact with the Macassans. Additionally, I propose that social differences and minimal value in interaction as the reason for the stunted proliferation of the dugout canoe through Australia. Overall, the dugout canoe provided Indigenous communities with a means to travel further with ease and facilitated more successful hunting of high value foods which altered the social and economic landscape of Indigenous Australians.
Australia is home to one of the longest continuously surviving cultures in the world, spanning at least 65,000 years, which was involved in international communication, trade, and relationships with the outside world well before the first European settlement in 1788. This includes centuries of annual visits from Makassar, Indonesia to the northern Australian Indigenous communities seeking out trepang, an edible type of holothurian, a sea cucumber used in Chinese medicine, but also known to collect pearls, pearl shells and turtles. Trips were made annually with fleets of wooden patorani-type praus and their timing was determined by the monsoonal winds. With them, the Macassan fishermen brought the techniques and tools required to create dugout canoes. As these voyages continued for centuries there grew a number of temporary villages and camps revisited if providing suitable anchorages (and some of the Tamarind trees planted by Macassans still survive in Arnhem land providing a great shade, Marcus Lacey, Senior Ranger, pers. comm.).
Keywords: Rock Art, Arnhem Land, DStretch, Archaeology, Indigenous Watercraft, Canoes
Subject: Archaeology thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2023
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Daryl Wesley