i r terra australis 20 l The Sea People HO I AT I THE WHITSUNDAY ISLANDS, CENTRAL QUEENSLAND Pandanus Online Publications, found at the Pandanus Books web site, presents additional material relating to this book. www.pandanusbooks.com.au Terra Australis reports the results of archaeological and related research within the region south and east of Asia, though mainly Australia, New Guinea and Island Melanesia - lands that remained terra australis incognita to generations of prehistorians. Its subject is the settlement of the diverse environments in this isolated quarter of the globe by peoples who have maintained their discrete and traditional ways of life into the recent recorded or remembered past and at times into the observable present. Since the beginning of the series, the basic colour on the spine and cover has distinguished the regional distribution of topics as follows: ochre for Australia, green for New Guinea, red for South-East Asia and blue for the Pacific Islands. From 2001, issues with a gold spine will include conference proceedings, edited papers and monographs which in topic or desired format do not fit easily within the original arrangements. All volumes are numbered within the same series. List of volumes in Terra Australis Volume 1: Burrill Lake and Currarong: coastal sites in southern New South Wales. R.J. Lampert (1971) Volume 2: 01 Tumbuna: archaeological excavations in the eastern central Highlands, Papua New Guinea. J.P. White (1972) Volume 3: New Guinea Stone Age Trade: the geography and ecology of traffic in the interior. I. Hughes (1977) Volume 4: Recent Prehistory in Southeast Papua. B. Egloff (1979) Volume 5: The Great Kartan Mystery. R. Lampert (1981) Volume 6: Early Man in North Queensland: art and archaeology in the Laura area. A. Rosenfeld, D. Horton and J. Winter (1981) Volume 7: The Alligator Rivers: prehistory and ecology in western Arnhem Land. C. Schrire (1982) Volume 8: Hunter Hill, Hunter Island: archaeological investigations of a prehistoric Tasmanian site. S. Bowdler (1984) Volume 9: Coastal Southwest Tasmania: the prehistory of Louisa Bay and Maatsuyker Island. R. Vanderwal and D. Horton (1984) Volume 10: The Emergence of Mailu. G. Irwin (1985) Volume 11: Archaeology in Eastern Timar, 1966-67. I. Glover (1986) Volume 12: Early Tongan Prehistory: the Lapita period on Tongatapu and its relationships. J. Poulsen (1987) Volume 13: Coobool Creek. P. Brown (1989) Volume 14: 30,000 Years of Aboriginal Occupation: Kimberley, Northwest Australia. S. O'Connor (1999) Volume 15: Lapita Interaction. G. Summerhayes (2000) Volume 16: The Prehistory of Buka: a stepping stone island in the northern Solomons. S. Wickler (2001) Volume 17: The Archaeology of Lapita Dispersal in Oceania. G.R. Clark, A.J. Anderson and T. Vunidilo (2001) Volume 18: An Archaeology of West Polynesian Prehistory. A. Smith (2002) Volume 19: Phytolith and starch research in the Australian-Pacific-Asian regions: the state of the art. D. Hart and L. Wallis (2003) Volume 20: The Sea People: late Holocene maritime specialisation in the Whitsunday Islands, central Queensland. B. Barker (2004) THE SEA PEOPLE Late Holocene maritime specialisation in the Whitsunday Islands, central Queensland Bryce Barker Editorial team: jack Golson and Sue O'Connor PANDANUS BOOKS Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Cover: Looking south-east from the South Molle Island Aboriginal quarry over Planton Island to Whitsunday Island. Photograph by L. Lamb. Back cover map: Ho/landia Nova. Thevenot 1663 by courtesy of the National Library of Australia. Reprinted with permission of the National Library of Australia. © Publication and format Pandanus Books, 2004. Published by Pandanus Books in association with the Centre for Archaeological Research and the Department of Archaeology and Natural History, The Australian National University. Copyright of the text remains with the contributors/authors, 2004. This book is copyright in all countries subscribing to the Berne convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher. Typeset in Palatino 10.5pt on 14pt by Pandanus Books and printed by Elect Printing, Canberra . National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Barker, Bryce The Sea People: late Holocene maritime specialisation in the Whitsunday Islands, central Queensland Bibliography ISSN 0725-9018 ISBN 1 74076 092 1 1. Archaeology - Queensland - Whitsunday Islands. 2. Aboriginal Australians - Queensland - Whitsunday Islands - Antiquities. I. Australian National University. Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. II. Title. (Series: Terra Australis; 20). 930.1099436 www .pandanusbooks. com .au Pandanus Books are distributed by UNIREPS, UNSW, Sydney NSW 2052 Ph 02 9664 0999 Fax 02 9664 5420 Editorial Team: jack Golson and Sue O'Connor Production: Ian Templeman, Duncan Beard, Justine Molony and Emily Brissenden Dedication I dedicate this volume to the contemporary Aboriginal Traditional owners of the region, whose continuing presence and dynamism is testimony to the strength of their culture. It is also hoped that this research will contribute to a greater understanding and respect for the achievements of Aboriginal culture and society within the region and Australia generally. terra australis 20 vii Foreword BRYCE BARKER gained his Honours degree from the Department of Anthropology and Sociology in the University of Queensland in 1987. His Honours thesis focused on a faunal and taphonomic analysis of a newly excavated rock shelter, Narcurrer, located within a limestone sink-hole in south-eastern South Australia, close to the border with south-western Victoria. This project provided him with skills in the analysis of archaeological materials and an interest in issues of socio-cultural and environmental change and particularly their relevance to the mid- to late-Holocene period on the Australian mainland. With these questions in mind, he turned his attention to a new doctoral project centred on the tropical Whitsunday Islands off the central coast of Queensland in 1989. With luck on his side, he soon located and excavated a coastal rock shelter, Nara Inlet 1, situated on Hook Island, which has emerged as the key archaeological site and sequence for the region. This site, which forms the basis of this monograph, provided him with a continuous Holocene coastal sequence going back beyond 9000 years ago and spanning the time when the Whitsunday Islands were disjoined from the mainland by rising sea levels to assume their present form around 7000 years ago. He was now in a position to evaluate questions of change, including their socio­ cultural and palaeoenvironmental dimensions, throughout this period. Further excavation and analysis of a set of related sites in the islands expanded his data base even further. World debates surrounding 'change' within hunter-gatherer societies, past and present, became polarised in the 1980s, largely between environmental/biological and socio-cultural schools of thought. This was the case also in regard to Australian prehistory, where emphasis was placed on the primary role of environment, with socio-cultural factors relegated to a secondary place. Hunter-gatherers were constructed largely as 'passive' peoples in contrast to more 'dynamic' horticultural or agricultural societies. Contrasting Aboriginal Australia and its prehistory with that of nearby Papua New Guinea sustained this dichotomy in the Australasian region. In this case, the 'classic' divide between 'hunter' and 'farmer' shaped the core frame­ works guiding research. From early on, Papuans seemed to be moving towards 'environmental manipulation' and 'agriculture', while in Australia, 'change' was viewed largely as an adjustment to environmental variations. The result of the world debates that resounded throughout the 1990s and beyond largely transformed our concept of the 'hunter-gatherer'. Today, 'hunter-gatherers' include a very broad range of socio-cultural variation overlapping with horticultural I agricultural peoples and even with traditionally more 'complex' societies. The same could be said of their histories or 'prehistories'. Constructions of 'Aboriginal Australia' and its prehistory have been transformed in a similar way, expanding beyond the constraints of the past (including the colonial past), as is reflected in more recent research. All time periods are being examined in this way, including those of the more distant Pleistocene. terra australis 20 ix Bryce Barker's research was guided by and has contributed to questions emerging from these debates. He employs a broad perspective on issues of change throughout a prehistoric sequence spanning more than 9000 years. Also, he considers the emergence of more specialised marine societies on the Whitsunday Islands that more closely resemble the ethnohistorical peoples of the region. These socio-cultural processes were more clearly apparent during the late-Holocene period - the past few thousand years and, in particular, the past 600 years. This monograph, therefore, in many ways is pioneering research of complex issues of prehistoric change. Bryce Barker obtained his doctorate from the University of Queensland in 1996, which I supervised myself, as I had his prior degree. He is now Senior Lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland and has