Ship shape: an exploration of maritime-related depictions in Indigenous rock art and material culture

Author Tacon, Paul, May, Sally K.

Published 2013

Journal Title The Great Circle

Copyright Statement © 2013 Australian Association for Maritime History. The attached file is reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal's website for access to the definitive, published version.

Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/59668

Link to published version http://aamh.asn.au/great-circle/

Funder(s) ARC

Grant identifier(s) DP0877463

Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au Ship shape: an exploration of maritime-related depictions in indigenous rock art and material culture

Paul S.C. Taçon (1) and Sally K. May (2)

(1) PERAHU, School of Humanities, Gold Coast campus, Griffith University, Queensland, 4222 (E-mail: [email protected]). (2) School of Archaeology and Anthropology & Rock Art Research Centre, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200 (E-mail: [email protected]).

Maritime contact history and rock art The arrival of Europeans and Asians to indigenous1 lands of Southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific heralded great change for the native inhabitants of these areas. Although there is an extensive literature about contact history and the changes that occurred with colonisation, until recently there has been little published on how rock art can inform this topic. Rock art consists of human-made marks on natural rock – paintings, drawings, stencils, prints, engravings, bas-relief and figures made of beeswax. It is found all over the world in rock shelters and caves, on boulders and platforms. These are special, often spectacular places that reflect ancient and contemporary experience, identity, history, spirituality and relationships to land. Rock art also provides us with unique insights into human cultural evolution, settlement patterns, what long extinct animals looked like and contact between different cultures. In this sense rock art can be considered a unique historical archive. In order to explore ways in which rock art could be used as an historical archive alongside written records, photographs, oral history and archaeological excavation we developed a project on contact period 7 The Great Circle Paul S.C. Taçon and Sally K. May Vol. 35, No. 2. The Great Circle Ship Shape Vol. 35, No. 2.

rock art, the first national study of this kind. The project, Picturing art2 and in a number of rock art bodies overseas.3 Ships and boats are Change: 21st century perspectives on recent Australian rock art, particularly frequent4 but there are also depictions of horses, camels, especially after European contact, began in 2008 with funding from aircraft, trains, buggies, bicycles and motor vehicles. At some sites in the Australian Research Council. It was initiated by the authors with Australia, such as Djulirri in Arnhem Land’s Wellington Range, there Alistair Paterson and June Ross. Some of the aims in establishing this are dozens of rock art depictions of ships of varying ages at the one project were to: location along with other forms of transport (May et al.). There are also many smaller rock art sites where certain watercraft were engraved, • Use contact rock art imagery to give voice to Indigenous artists painted or drawn that are just as significant, such as Inthanoona in the and their communities Pilbara of Western Australia (Paterson and Van Duivenvoorde). Indeed, • Re-define our understanding of Australian contact rock art as we explored further we soon found there is a wealth of maritime • Explore the impact of contact encounters on particular communities imagery in rock art as well as Indigenous material culture and that a and how these interactions were mediated through rock art lot of it, although very detailed, was made soon after various contact • Define how rock art changes (or does not change) throughout the events.5 contact period It must have been an amazing experience for Indigenous people to • Explore regional, Australia-wide, and international trends in see unusually large watercraft full of new people wearing strange dress contact rock art for the first time. But for the most part fascination overcame fear and Indigenous peoples were more than happy to go on board the great Picturing Change includes study in four key regions – Wollemi wooden beasts that arrived on their shores. Thus Bungaree of Sydney National Park (NSW), the Pilbara (WA), Central Australia (NT), became one of Australia’s great maritime explorers, accompanying and western/northwestern Arnhem Land (NT). Alongside Picturing Matthew Finders and Phillip Parker King on key voyages that accurately Change, Daryl Wesley has been investigating the archaeology of charted Australia’s coastline for the first time.6 The indigenous Motu northwestern Arnhem Land through an Australian Research Council- people of what is now the Port Moresby area of Papua New Guinea funded project with Sue O’Connor: Baijini, Macassans, Balanda, and were so fascinated by a visit by the H.M.S. Basilisk in February 1873, Bininj: Defining the Indigenous past of Arnhem Land through Culture the first European vessel and the first Europeans they had encountered, Contact. Wesley’s work focuses on changes that have occurred in that they insisted on measuring and recording its length and breadth, as the Indigenous occupation of northwestern Arnhem Land since the Captain John Moresby recounts: earliest contact. He is investigating the interrelationship between local On one occasion an incident happened here which bringing with them a populations, Macassans, and Europeans. In particular, he is focused bundle of rushes, and knotting them together carefully measured the length on the Indigenous and Macassan archaeological sites to explore the and breadth of the ship. They evidently wished to preserve a record of the chronology and complexity of occupation in the local area through size, for they stowed the rush lines away in their canoe with many signs of wonderment.7 rock art and the excavation of cultural deposits in rock shelters and at Macassan shore based trepang processing sites. Tupaia, a native Tahitian, travelled with Lt. (Later Captain) Cook to New Zealand in 1769. Because of his talents, soon after boarding he Things that bring new people became the ship’s linguist, anthropologist and artist, as well as a superb One of the first observations we made while conducting field research navigator.8 When in New Zealand, one of the first things that reputedly was that transport – the things that brought new peoples to Indigenous happened is that Tupaia climbed a hill with Maori chiefs and made a lands – was one of the most popular themes in Australian contact rock rock drawing of a ship.9

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Elsewhere in the Pacific Indigenous peoples’ encounters with originally was a two masted European vessel with a Macassan-like Europeans and their maritime vessels led to a range of new depictions rudder but it was later repainted to turn it into a steamer. Furthermore, of watercraft on items of material culture as Davies and Taçon reveal Aboriginal artists did not make exact replicas of what they observed but in Paper 6. instead would often illustrate incongruous key features of watercraft The Great Circle and rock art to tell stories. So sometimes ships are shown in ways that would not actually have been seen, such as with sails and an anchor set at the same After a preliminary article on ship depictions in Australian rock art, time (Figure 2) or an x-ray view of the inside of hulls. This both adds to 10 published in the National Maritime Museum’s journal Signals, we and confuses interpretation. decided it was time for a more comprehensive volume on this particular topic. This special volume of The Great Circle is the result, partly because this journal had published a couple papers on rock art images of ships in 1994 and 2004.11 We solicited a range of papers on different aspects of ship depiction from a wide range of locations: The Pilbara (Paterson and Van Duivenoorde; Bigourdan), The Kimberley (Ross and Travers), Arnhem Land (May et al.; Davies and Taçon) and various parts of the Pacific including the southern coast of Papua New Guinea, the Torres Strait and the Solomon Islands (Davies and Taçon). Space did not allow for more but papers could also have been written on maritime depictions in rock art from Queensland, New South Wales and New Zealand, as well as places further afield such as southern Southeast Asia.12 One of the challenges addressed in all of the papers is the difficulty of identifying particular ships and, at times, even the type of watercraft painted, drawn or engraved at rock art sites. Unfortunately, most ship imagery cannot be associated with particular vessels but occasionally Figure 1: Charcoal drawing of a brig with a small ship drawn underneath the spanker we can use historical records, particular features illustrated and a process (sail) in a rock shelter near the Hawkesbury River, New South Wales. This is a close of elimination to narrow the possibilities (see especially Bigourdan’s approximation of the Lady Nelson, known to have carried grain on other supplies on paper and May et al.; Figure 1). More success can be obtained in terms the Hawkesbury in the early 1800s. of identifying the type of vessel depicted although at times even this Conclusion is impossible if a very general or schematised image was produced. Rock art and early post-contact material culture provides a unique However, in order to undertake any sort of identification it is important historical archive that needs better exploration, especially in terms of to identify the specific vessel features shown in the rock art imagery maritime-based cross-cultural contact and indigenous perceptions of 13 as Wesley et al. advocate and as has been done in all of the papers outsiders – the ‘reverse gaze’ of history.14 This is because this imagery published here. gives us insight into cultural change as experienced by Indigenous Another problem is that some images changed over time with new peoples themselves. Perhaps the production of the images gave layers and/or features added. For instance, as May et al. describe, the Indigenous artists a sense of empowerment and participation in events earliest European ship at Djulirri, Wellington Range, Arnhem Land unfolding around them, as ongoing research suggests. No doubt the

10 11 The Great Circle Paul S.C. Taçon and Sally K. May Vol. 35, No. 2. The Great Circle Ship Shape Vol. 35, No. 2. imagery was important for story telling – conveying to others personal Notes on abbreviations observations of encounter, exchange and change. These depictions In some papers ‘BP’ is used in relation to time. It stands for ‘Before certainly convey aspects of history, maritime history in particular, and Present’. ‘OSL’ stands for optically stimulated luminescence, a major are both historical records and reflections on a changing world. They archaeological dating technique different from radio carbon dating. tell us of the things that fascinated artists the most and provide us with ‘DStretch’ is a program that allows one to change the colour, intensity a unique record of our cross-cultural past. and hue of rock art designs in digital photographs in order to better make out what was originally painted or drawn.15

Figure 2: White pipe clay painting of a schooner with both sails set and anchor set, Hawk Dreaming, Kakadu National Park. Acknowledgements We especially would like to acknowledge the indigenous artists of Australasia and the Pacific who left us a unique and rich historical record in the form of painted and carved imagery of maritime encounters with outsiders. The Australian Research Council funded Picturing Change research with Discovery Grant DP080877463. Griffith University and the Australian National University are thanked for supporting this research through the lifetime of the grant and beyond. We also thank many rock art and maritime experts for generous intellectual support and feedback and Mack McCarthy for indulging us with this special issue of The Great Circle. Susan Davies is thanked for alerting us to the Moresby reference about the Motu measuring the Basilisk.

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ENDNOTES 8 Druett, J. 2011. Tupaia: Captain Cook’s Polynesian Navigator. Santa Barbra: ABC-CLIO, LLC. 1 The word ‘Indigenous’ with a capital ‘I’ is used when referring to the original 9 Gerard O’Regan pers. comm. 2012. And in New Zealand contact rock art ships peoples of Australia while ‘indigenous, without a capital ‘I’, is used when are one of the commonest subjects, see O’Regan, G. 2008. The shifting place referring to the original peoples of the larger region of Southeast Asia, Australia of Ngāi Tahu rock art. In Geoffrey Clark, Foss Leach and Sue O’Connor (eds.),

and the Pacific. Islands of Inquiry: Colonisation, seafaring and the archaeology of maritime 2 Taçon, P.S.C., Paterson, A., Ross, J. and S.K. May, 2012, Picturing change and landscapes. Papers in honour of Atholl Anderson, pp.411-422. Canberra: ANU changing pictures: contact period rock art of Australia. In J. McDonald and P. Press, Terra Australis 29. Veth (eds.), A companion to rock art, pp.420-436. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 10 Taçon, P.S.C. 2012, ‘On the rocks: ships at Aboriginal rock-art sites’, Signals Chichester. 99:22-29. 3 Mokhtar, S. and P.S.C. Taçon. 2011. The recent rock drawings of the Lenggong 11 Burningham, N. 1994. Aboriginal nautical art: a record of the Macassans and Valley, Perak, Malaysia. Antiquity 85 (328):459-475. the pearling industry in the Northern Territory. The Great Circle 16: 139-151; 4 For example see Ballard, C., Bradley, R., Nordenborg Myhre, L. & M. Wilson. Roberts, D.A. 2004. ‘Nautical themes in the Aboriginal Rock Paintings of 2003. The ship as symbol in the prehistory of Scandinavia and Southeast Mount Borradaile, Western Arnhem Land’. The Great Circle, 26(1), pp. 19–50. Asia. World Archaeology 35(6), pp. 385-403; Bigourdan, N. & M. McCarthy 12 For instance, see Lape, P.V., O’Connor, S. and Burningham, N., 2007, Rock 2007. Aboriginal watercraft depictions in Western Australia: on land, and Art: A Potential Source of Information about Past Maritime Technology underwater? Bulletin of the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology in the South-East Asia-Pacific Region. International Journal of Nautical 31, pp. 1-10; Bradley, R., Jones, A., Nordenorg Myhre, L. & H. Sackett 2002. Archaeology, 36, pp. 238–253. Sailing through stone: carved ships and the rock face at Revheim, Southwest 13 Wesley, D., McKinnon, J.F. and Raupp, J.T., 2012, Sails set in stone: a Norway. Norwegian Archaeological Review 35(2), pp. 109-118; Chaloupka, technological analysis of non-indigenous watercraft rock art paintings in north G. 1996. Praus in Marege: Makassan subjects in Aboriginal rock art of Arnhem Western Arnhem Land, Journal of Maritime Archaeology 7:245-269. Land, Northern Territory, Australia. Anthropologie 34(1-2), pp.131-142; Lape, 14 Ouzman, S. Indigenous images of a colonial exotic: imaginings from Bushmen P.V., O’Connor, S. & N. Burningham. 2007. Rock art: a potential source of southern Africa, Before Farming 1(6), 2003, pp. 239-256. information about past maritime technology in the south-east Asia-Pacific 15 See Harmon, J. 2008. Using Decorrelation Stretch to enhance rock art images. region. The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 36(2), pp. 238-253; Online paper. http://www.dstretch.com/AlgorithmDescription.html. O’Connor, S. and Arrow, S., 2008, Boat images in the rock art of northern Australia with particular reference to the Kimberley, Western Australia’, in Clark, G., Leach, F. and O’Connor, S. (eds.), Islands of inquiry: colonisation, seafaring and the archaeology of maritime landscapes (Terra Australis 29), ANU ePress, Canberra Australia, pp. 397-409; Rivera-Collazo, I.C. 2006. Historical ship graffiti on the walls of San Juan’s Spanish defense system: an interim report. The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 35(1), pp. 41-52; Roberts, D. 2004. Nautical themes in the Aboriginal rock paintings of Mount Borradaile, western Arnhem Land. The Great Circle 26(1), pp.19-50; Turner, G. 2006. Bahamian ship graffiti. The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 35(2), pp. 253-273. 5 E.g. see Taçon, P.S.C., May, S.K., Fallon, S, Travers, M, Wesley, D, and Lamilami, R, 2010, ‘A minimum age for early depictions of Southeast Asian praus in the rock art of Arnhem Land, Northern Territory’, Australian Archaeology,71, pp. 1-10. 6 Smith, K.V. 1992. King Bungaree: A Sydney Aborigine meets the great South Pacific explorers, 1799-1830. Kenthurst: Kangaroo Press. 7 Moresby, J. (Captain). 1876. Discoveries and surveys in New Guinea and the D’Entrecasteaux Islands: a cruise in Polynesia and visits to the pearl-shelling stations in Torres Straits of H.M.S. Basilisk. London: John Murray, pp. 156- 157.

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