and also serve to mark clan territories, since different clans recognise different spirit-beings.
âWe know this from what Aboriginal elders have told anthropologists over the last 100 years,â says David.
Others may simply be works of art â expressions of the quintessential human urge to leave oneâs mark. Tens of thousands of years ago, Margaret Katherineâs ancestors, nicely sheltered from the rain and wind, would have been cooking a meal on the floor of Gabarnmung and, no doubt, occasionally gazing up at the art work on the ceiling. Some of the art was old, even then, and a fragment broke off, landing on the ground to become buried by the caveâs fine dust, rich in charcoal soot. But ever so slowly, at a rate of centimetres per millennia. Elsewhere, in the lowlands, artefacts are buried at a rate of metres per millennia.
In mid-2011, six months prior to the Monash University gathering, Barker fished that fragment out of an excavation trenchjust 50 centimetres below the floor of the cave. When he had wiped off the dust to reveal the black cross, he realised he was holding archaeological gold. Now itâs hoped that a tiny bit of the pigment can be extracted from the painted cross in an attempt to get a carbon date. The process will partly destroy the tiny painting but, for Margaret Katherine, it will be worth it.
A lot is riding on this little rock art fragment. Itâs clearly very important for Margaret Katherine and the rest of her people. Science is helping the Jawoyn flesh out their deep history. In the few months of seasonal digging at the cave, which commenced in May 2010, the international team headed by David has made extraordinary finds. âWe are rewriting human prehistory,â Ian McNiven, a Monash University archaeologist and team member, told me.
David has assembled an illustrious team. As well as the Australians and New Zealander, there is a French contingent headed by Jean-Michel Geneste, from the Université de Bordeaux 1. Geneste is curator of Franceâs national treasure, the prehistoric Lascaux Cave. He also directs the international research program at Chauvet Cave, where dynamic charcoal paintings of ponies, rhinos, bison and lions evoke the technical mastery of a Japanese brushstroke artist. Human eyes had not viewed this labyrinthine gallery for tens of thousands of years until 1992 when a trio of cavers felt an updraft in the cliffs of the Ardèche river canyon in southern France, and lowered themselves in. A steel door now protects the cave from the public and each year only a handful of researchers may enter, under Genesteâs direction. Among Chauvetâs treasures is the worldâs oldest known painting, depicting two battling rhinoceroses. Tiny scrapes of charcoal pigment gave it a carbon date of 36 000 years old.
But people lived at Gabarnmung for thousands of years before Chauvet was occupied: charcoal deposited above the very bottom layers of the Arnhem Land cave has been carbon-dated at 48 000 years old. For Europeans this is the stuff of pre-history;they have no direct connection to this era. Not so for the Jawoyn. The paintings, tools, spears, ochre-anointed skulls and bones, are their history.
The 2010 dig at Gabarnmung also unearthed a piece of a basaltic stone axe 4 centimetres long and 2.5 centimetres wide, lying about 50 centimetres below the cave floor. It was not so startling to find a stone axe. Ancient people have been smashing two rocks together to produce stone tools for more than two million years. What was different about this axe was that someone had sat down with a stone and skilfully ground it until a sharp edge was made. Under the microscope the parallel striations wrought by the patient toolmaker are evident. Stone toolmaking was, like writing, one of those technological milestones that evolved independently in different civilisations. But the Gabarnmung axe supports evidence that it was people in Eastern Asia, New
âWe know this from what Aboriginal elders have told anthropologists over the last 100 years,â says David.
Others may simply be works of art â expressions of the quintessential human urge to leave oneâs mark. Tens of thousands of years ago, Margaret Katherineâs ancestors, nicely sheltered from the rain and wind, would have been cooking a meal on the floor of Gabarnmung and, no doubt, occasionally gazing up at the art work on the ceiling. Some of the art was old, even then, and a fragment broke off, landing on the ground to become buried by the caveâs fine dust, rich in charcoal soot. But ever so slowly, at a rate of centimetres per millennia. Elsewhere, in the lowlands, artefacts are buried at a rate of metres per millennia.
In mid-2011, six months prior to the Monash University gathering, Barker fished that fragment out of an excavation trenchjust 50 centimetres below the floor of the cave. When he had wiped off the dust to reveal the black cross, he realised he was holding archaeological gold. Now itâs hoped that a tiny bit of the pigment can be extracted from the painted cross in an attempt to get a carbon date. The process will partly destroy the tiny painting but, for Margaret Katherine, it will be worth it.
A lot is riding on this little rock art fragment. Itâs clearly very important for Margaret Katherine and the rest of her people. Science is helping the Jawoyn flesh out their deep history. In the few months of seasonal digging at the cave, which commenced in May 2010, the international team headed by David has made extraordinary finds. âWe are rewriting human prehistory,â Ian McNiven, a Monash University archaeologist and team member, told me.
David has assembled an illustrious team. As well as the Australians and New Zealander, there is a French contingent headed by Jean-Michel Geneste, from the Université de Bordeaux 1. Geneste is curator of Franceâs national treasure, the prehistoric Lascaux Cave. He also directs the international research program at Chauvet Cave, where dynamic charcoal paintings of ponies, rhinos, bison and lions evoke the technical mastery of a Japanese brushstroke artist. Human eyes had not viewed this labyrinthine gallery for tens of thousands of years until 1992 when a trio of cavers felt an updraft in the cliffs of the Ardèche river canyon in southern France, and lowered themselves in. A steel door now protects the cave from the public and each year only a handful of researchers may enter, under Genesteâs direction. Among Chauvetâs treasures is the worldâs oldest known painting, depicting two battling rhinoceroses. Tiny scrapes of charcoal pigment gave it a carbon date of 36 000 years old.
But people lived at Gabarnmung for thousands of years before Chauvet was occupied: charcoal deposited above the very bottom layers of the Arnhem Land cave has been carbon-dated at 48 000 years old. For Europeans this is the stuff of pre-history;they have no direct connection to this era. Not so for the Jawoyn. The paintings, tools, spears, ochre-anointed skulls and bones, are their history.
The 2010 dig at Gabarnmung also unearthed a piece of a basaltic stone axe 4 centimetres long and 2.5 centimetres wide, lying about 50 centimetres below the cave floor. It was not so startling to find a stone axe. Ancient people have been smashing two rocks together to produce stone tools for more than two million years. What was different about this axe was that someone had sat down with a stone and skilfully ground it until a sharp edge was made. Under the microscope the parallel striations wrought by the patient toolmaker are evident. Stone toolmaking was, like writing, one of those technological milestones that evolved independently in different civilisations. But the Gabarnmung axe supports evidence that it was people in Eastern Asia, New
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