Sandra Bowdler
Centre for Archaeology
University of Western Australia
Nedlands WA 6009 Australia
There are several aspects of islands which interest us archaeologically. One is the obvious relationship between islands and maritime technology. It is now well known that Australia was colonised at least 40,000, and possibly 60,000, years ago, and that that colonisation must have involved sea crossings. It might be assumed therefore that the use of watercraft would have a long tradition in Australia and we would expect a long continuous history of exploitation of offshore islands. This is not however borne out by the evidence.
Another reason why islands are of interest is because their defined geographical parameters allow them to be perceived as laboratories which permit the examination of various theoretical propositions. Biogeographers in particular have developed general propositions about animal ecology in island settings, and have extrapolated these to the human use of islands (Keegan and Diamond 1987). Again, however, the Australian evidence confounds expectations in this area.
Several Australian offshore islands have archaeological evidence of occupation which dates to the Pleistocene. In every such case however they were not then islands but part of the continental land mass, and tell us nothing about early use of islands or watercraft. These islands came into being with the post-glacial eustatic sea level rise. In some cases, it is possible to consider the effect of their separation from the mainland, that is, the phenomenon of islands becoming islands and how this affected their human populations. Some modern offshore islands seem to have been unoccupied in the ethnographic present but have archaeological evidence of prehistoric occupation. Others were exploited on a regular basis by Aboriginal people in recent pre-European times. There is a question as to whether any islands other than Tasmania were occupied by human groups on a permanent year-round basis. The distinction between occupation and exploitation, where total isolation is not assumed, is not easy to make.
Islands abandoned or isolated (table 1, table 2)
Many Australian offshore islands appear to have been occupied during the late Pleistocene or early Holocene, and then abandoned, or at least left unoccupied or unvisited. The usual interpretation is that when they became islands, they were too small to support a permanent occupation, and "relict" populations thus stranded sooner or later died out. Tasmania alone was large enough to sustain a human population in isolation from the mainland. The less explicit assumption in this reasoning is that the people on the nearby mainland in all these cases either did not possess the appropriate maritime technology, or did not have an economic interest in the resources of these islands, or both.
Kangaroo Island, 14.5 km off the coast near modern Adelaide, is a comparatively large (4400km2) island which has been a subject of archaeological interest and speculation for many years now. It lies 14.5km from the South Australian mainland, and was not occupied nor visited by Aborigines at the time of European contact. The oldest archaeological date for human occupation is 16,000 b.p.[1], which of course reflects a time when Kangaroo Island was part of Greater Australia. Separation would have occurred at about 9500 b.p., but occupation of the island continued until at least 4300 b.p., on the evidence of the archaeological site with the most recent date. There has been considerable debate as to whether the population then died off or migrated to the mainland, and what the reasons or mechanisms involved may have been. Lampert (1981 : 184-5) favours the extinction of a small continuing population at risk due to demographic and biogeographic considerations: too few people, not enough land, environmental deterioration and no evidence of watercraft during the critical period.
Tasmania, some fifteen times the size of Kangaroo Island (67,900km2), presents a very different case. The archaeological record indicates a human presence in Tasmania since at least 35,000 b.p.. Like Kangaroo Island, Tasmania was isolated from the Australian continent by the post-glacial sea rise, 12,500 years ago; like Kangaroo Island, there is no evidence whatsoever for any ensuing contact between Tasmania and the Australian mainland; but unlike Kangaroo Island, an Aboriginal population survived until modern times. Tasmania is, besides being a lot larger than Kangaroo Island, a lot further from the mainland.
There has been considerable debate about the effect of 12,500 years of isolation on a relatively small hunter gatherer population. Archaeological opinion has been divided. On the one hand is a school of thought which suggested that the effects of isolation were detrimental, and that Tasmanian Aboriginal society was on the way to extinction (Jones 1977b, 1978). On the other, is the argument that Tasmanians at the time of European contact were in fact enlarging their universe, and exploiting new resources and new territories including the exploitation of small islands (see below) (Allen 1979, Bowdler 1980, 1982). Recent research on human skeletal remains has suggested that not only must the Tasmanian population have been much larger than previously thought, but also that the physical differences between Tasmanian Aborigines and Aborigines of the southeast Australian mainland were in many respects much less than would be expected after 12,500 years of separation (Pardoe 1986, 1991).
Some smaller islands show a history similar to that of Kangaroo Island, while others appear to reflect the Tasmanian situation. In the first category are most of the islands of Bass Strait, lying between Tasmania and Australia. Jones (1976, 1977a) published a detailed survey of Tasmania's offshore islands, as well as Tasmanian Aboriginal watercraft and their capabilities. The larger islands in Bass Strait, namely King in the west, and the larger Furneaux islands (Flinders, Cape Barren, Clarke) were not occupied nor visited by Aborigines in the ethnographic present. At the time of Jones's writing however there was some archaeological evidence for prehistoric occupation of these islands, dated to between 6500 and 7000 years ago on Flinders Island and c. 7700 b.p. on King Island. It was assumed that these dates represented an early Holocene occupation by a relict Pleistocene population stranded on the newly formed islands by the post-glacial sea rise. These populations were however too small to survive on these islands, themselves too small to support a viable independent population and too far from either mainland (Australian or Tasmanian) for visitation or seasonal occupation. Recent research by Brown (1993) and Sim (1994) has in general confirmed this view, although Sim's work in particular challenges some specific details of Jones's modelling. Sim confirms the evidence on King Island of human occupation dated to c.7700 b.p., at a time she calls the "final peninsula or initial island phase". She suggests that current geomorphological research shows that this is about the time King Island was finally severed from northwest Tasmania. With respect to Flinders Island, a number of midden sites show occupation of the island qua island between 7000 and 5000 b.p.. At the present time, the most likely interpretation is that this represents the lingering survival of a stranded population, as for Kangaroo Island.
It is of interest to note that two small islands, Swan and Waterhouse, only 3km off the northeast tip of Tasmania (that is, between Tasmania and the Furneaux group) were not visited or occupied in the ethnographic present, and no trace of any archaeological remains has been found on them. In these, they contrast with the Hunter Islands off the northwest.
Several offshore islands of the Western Australian coast may also come into this isolated and abandoned category. In the Montebello Islands, discussed above, sites on Campbell Island have evidence of early Holocene occupation. Noala Cave has occupational evidence continuing from 27,200 b.p. through 10,000 b.p. to 8700 b.p.. Hayne's Cave has occupational evidence dating between 8200 and 7500 b.p.. There is no evidence of more recent occupation (Veth 1993).
There is further but undated evidence which points to similar situations. Unstratified stone artefacts are known from the Recherche Archipelago in the south (Stanley, Gulch and Middle Islands), Rottnest and Garden Islands near Perth and Barrow Island off the Pilbara coast. Ethnographic evidence, especially for the more southerly islands, suggests these islands were neither visited nor occupied at the time of European contact (Dortch and Morse 1984).
Conversely, Bathurst and Melville islands off the north coast of Australia, which necessitate a 13km water crossing, supported a flourishing population of Tiwi people at the time of European contact, who apparently had no contact with the Northern Territory mainland (Jones 1976). It has been suggested that they represent a population in isolation since the time of post-glacial sea level rise, but unfortunately no archaeological work has yet been carried out here. Genetically and linguistically however the Tiwi are very different from mainland Aborigines (Kirk 1987). Similar claims have been made for the Kaiadilt of Bentinck Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria, but these seem somewhat less credible (Jones 1977a, Birdsell 1977, Tindale 1977).
Islands exploited (table 3)
In considering the archaeological evidence which follows, it is probably useful to indicate my awareness of the shortcomings of the data and explain the assumptions on which some of the ensuing comparisons and interpretations are based. They are those which in fact obtain for virtually all archaeological data, and derive from an uncertain and statistically unreliable data base. Those islands which are included in the discussion are those on which archaeological research of some professional kind has been carried out. In some cases but not many this research has been exhaustive; in others it has been systematic; in others again it has been statistically reliable (not necessarily the same thing); in many it has been part of a mitigative project of some kind and thus directed by considerations other than (but not necessarily conflicting with) those of academic research; in some it has been opportunistic and/or casual. I make the assumption that the oldest archaeologically-associated radiocarbon date for any given site indicates the date of the first human occupation of that site unless there is compelling evidence to the contrary; and, similarly, I assume that the oldest such dated site on an island indicates the earliest occupation of that island. I assume the case for this is strengthened by multiple mutually supporting instances. It hardly needs to to be said that these assumptions are subject to refutation by future research.
Cave Bay Cave, on Hunter Island off the northest tip of Tasmania, was occupied during the Pleistocene and abandoned, but then reoccupied 6000 years ago, when the sea reached its present level. This last occupation represented by a dense midden layer can be interpreted as representing a similar phenomenon to that seen on Flinders and King Islands, with a subsequent period of abandonment. Unlike the two larger islands however, Hunter Island was rediscovered by Tasmanian Aborigines, 2500 years ago, with visits continuing into the ethnographic present. This is documented not only at Cave Bay Cave, but at another rockshelter on Hunter Island, occupied briefly 4-5000 years ago, abandoned, and reoccupied within the last 1500 years. Three other dated open midden sites on Hunter Island were first occupied within the last 1500 years. I have argued that the period of abandonment after c.5000 may have been due to the island becoming shortly thereafter a true island for the first time (Bowdler 1984, 1988).
It is possible that a similar sequence can be demonstrated for Bruny Island off Tasmania's east coast. Ethnographic use of this island by Tasmanian Aborigines is well documented (Bowdler & Ryan 1988). It is somewhat closer to the mainland (1.5 km) than Hunter (2.5 km) and with a safer crossing in terms of currents and weather patterns. Radiocarbon dates were obtained during the 1960s by non-systematic sampling of midden sites. One date is of the order of 6000 b.p., another of about 5200 b.p.; there are several of the order of 2500 b.p. (Jones 1976, Reber 1967). Does this represent a discontinuous sequence replicating that of Hunter Island, or was this a continuous occupation and the dates a fortuitous coincidence? More detailed recent research, of which only preliminary results are yet available (Dunnett 1993), does not completely dispel the possibility of a period of abandonment. Six sites are dated to between 7500 and 5000 b.p. Only one of these sites has more than a single basal date. This is Bruny Island Midden 2, from which three statistically identical dates of c.5200 were obtained during the earlier research period; there is a further date of c.2000 b.p. from a sample said to have been obtained from the edge of the site; the possibility remains that it does not actually date human occupation. Two sites are dated to c.4500 b.p. and c.4000 b.p. respectively, and four to 2500 b.p. and less. Without further information, it is difficult to say whether Bruny Island was occupied continuously from its pre-island state until the ethnographic present, or whether a small population hung on here in increasing isolation until c.4000 years ago and then, as with Kangaroo Island, died out, and, as with Hunter Island, a re-colonisation occurred c.2500 b.p.
It has been suggested that in tropical Australia a different pattern of island exploitation prevails than that in the south. In the northeast, Rowland has carried out research on two of the Keppel Islands off the Queensland coast. North Keppel Island appears to have two separated periods of occupation, one dated between 4000 and 3500 or perhaps 3000 years ago, and a later one dated after 1000 b.p.. South Keppel Island has occupation evidence dated only after 640 b.p.. Rowland has suggested that North Keppel was visited on an occasional basis from 4000 years ago, but permanent occupation of both North and South Keppel Islands only occurred after 700 b.p.. It is not absolutely certain that these small islands were permanently occupied by the same people, but certainly there is evidence for more intensive occupation in this later phase (Rowland 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983b, 1985b). More recent research somewhat to the north in the Northumberland and South Cumberland Islands generally supports this pattern, with evidence of occupation dating from c.3000 b.p. (Border 1994).
Further north again, research in the Whitsunday Islands suggests the possibility of continuous occupation from the time of the sea reaching its present level until the ethnographic present. The rockshelter site of Nara Inlet on Hook Island has archaeological deposit evincing no break in its sequence, with a basal date of c.8150 b.p. which must predate actual insulation, and subsequent dates of 4000 b.p., 2000 b.p. and 550 b.p. On Whitsunday Island itself, the Hill Inlet rockshelter has basal occupation evidence dated to 2700 b.p. Barker (1989, 1991) argues that while he believes the Nara Inlet evidence supports an interpretation of continuous occupation from c.8000 years ago, there is none the less a significant change in the nature of that occupation. Between 8000 b.p. and 3000-2500 b.p., the evidence suggests a "fairly low level of visitation", but after that time, the evidence represents "a more intensive use of the site and a more broadly-based marine resource procurement strategy" (Barker 1989: 70).
In northwestern Australia, O'Connor's research in the Buccaneer Archipelago on the Kimberley coast has demonstrated an apparently comparable antiquity for island occupation. She excavated three sites on two islands, a rockshelter site on Koolan Island (which is considerably less than 1 km from the mainland), and a rockshelter and an open site on High Cliffy Island, which is reached by an 8 km sea crossing. On the basis of the evidence from High Cliffy rockshelter, O'Connor (1992, in press) concluded that the island was first occupied c.3000 years ago, and used relatively intensively from that time until the ethnographic present. She also drew attention to what appeared to be the "markedly different patterns of offshore island exploitation identified between northern and southern Australia" (O'Connor 1992:59). This view has been modified somewhat by further subsequent analysis and dating of HC3, the High Cliffy open site, under O'Connor's direction (Underwood 1992; O'Connor 1994). The site has a basal date of 6690±300 (Wk 1864) at a depth of 70cm; a date of 660±170 (Wk 2460) at a depth of 61cm; and a modern date (Wk 1863) at a depth of 30 cm (all dates are on charcoal). Alternative interpretations are possible, as with some of the other island sites we have considered above. Either, there was an initial occupation of the island qua island just as the sea reached its present level, and very low level visitation/occupation continued until c.3000 b.p. (rockshelter date), further intensifying within the last 700 years; or, as with some of the other islands discussed, a relict population was stranded on the new island over 6000 years ago; or, an incipient but incompletely insulated piece of land was in use until a final severance occurred; but island visitation from the mainland only began 3000 years ago.
O'Connor, Barker and others have suggested that northern islands were generally exploited earlier than those in the south. While some of the islands in the north do show evidence of earlier occupation, this is not consistent (see figure 3). Other patterns which have been either asserted or predicted do not appear to be supported by the evidence. Jones (1977a) argued that, according to the archaeological and ethnographic record, water crossings greater than 13 - 15 kms were never regularly made. That this was not universally true is shown by Rowland's (1984) research in the Percy Islands. Furthermore, the expectation that islands closer to the mainland would have been visited before those further away is also not fulfilled (fig 4); Koolan and High Cliffy Islands are especially interesting in this respect. Neither is the idea that large islands might be targeted sooner than smaller ones demonstrated by the evidence (fig. 5).
Some at least of the cases which appear most obviously to dispute these ideas may be considered as anomalous for various reasons. Bruny Island and High Cliffy Island may not have been visited at the time of their earliest occupation as islands; as discussed above, in both cases this may represent groups stranded by the post-glacial sea rise, or making use of a peninsula or fordable island soon to be completely severed. The small amount of evidence which seems to suggest a late Holocene maritime occupation of King Island dated to 1100 b.p. is seen by Sim (1994) as best interpreted as the relic of inadvertent castaways, victims swept beyond their intended destination of Hunter Island.
Moa and Naghi Islands are Torres Strait islands, occupied by people generally thought of as Melanesian rather than Australian, and thus not really germane to this discussion. The dating of these may be of significance as indicating a time frame for possible contact between Australians and Melanesians in this area, but further systematic research is required here.
Eliminating these possible anomalies does not however produce a pattern which conforms to expectations (figs . 3b, 4b, 5b ). The case which most confounds expectations is that of Groote Eylandt. It is exceptionally large compared to the others, so much so that fig. 5b is reproduced without it, just to make clearer the relationships of the other islands (fig 5c). Groote Eylandt has been the subject of systematic doctoral research designed, at least in part, to establish the antiquity of its human occupation. While no details of this research have yet been published, it has been announced that no sites older than 1000 b.p. have been identified (Clarke 1992). This is of considerable interest, given its size, proximity to mainland and northerly location.
The only clear pattern discernible in the evidence as it stands is the more or less steady increase of islands brought into use through time, but particularly after c.3000 b.p.. This is illustrated in fig. 6, by way of a cumulative frequency graph, which is based on the assumption that where once an island visitation has resulted in a datable archaeological deposit, it continued in use or occupation until the ethnographic present. There is no archaeological or ethnographic evidence which contravenes this assumption for any of these islands. In many of the individual cases represented on this graph, furthermore, researchers have indicated evidence for an increase in use or occupation, in the form of more sites occupied through time, or particular sites showing apparently more intensive use through time, or both. There is no exact synchronicity in this, but in general it is thought to occur within two different time ranges. The first stage is identified for Queensland islands from about 3000 years ago (Barker 1989, 1991: Border 1994). The second stage is thought to occur within the last 1000 years, and is also identified for Queensland (Rowland 1983b, 1985b) and the Kimberley (O'Connor 1994).
The nature of the use of these islands, based on both archaeological and ethnographic evidence, constitutes a large topic which has been much canvassed for individual islands and groups of islands (e.g. Bowdler 1988, Bowdler and Ryan 1988, O'Connor 1990, 1992, 1994, Rowland 1984), and which will only be summarily dealt with here. In general, apart from Tasmania, Melville and Bathurst Islands and arguably Bentinck Island, none of the Australian offshore islands supported a population which lived an entirely independent existence, with no contact with the mainland. The degree of that contact however appears to have formed a continuum, from groups whose relationship with the land was focussed on an island or island group but made regular visits to the mainland and enjoyed economic and presumably social and ritual relationships with mainland groups, to groups whose essential territory was the mainland, but made sporadic, but generally seasonally scheduled visits to certain islands . It is generally assumed that these visits were primarily for economic reasons, to exploit particular resources, but the presence of prehistoric carvings on Three Hummock Island (one of the Hunter Group, Bowdler 1974) sounds a note of caution against such assumptions.
The archaeological evidence for the late Holocene shows, unremarkably, a reasonably good fit with the ethnographic evidence for the use of watercraft. Figure 7 is based on a map used by Lampert (1982) when discussing Kangaroo Island. It is modified here to include data from northwest Australia, as the ethnographic and ethnohistorical records show watercraft extending south to Shark Bay, notably the mangrove plank double canoe raft of the Kimberley coast (Davidson 1935). Rafts are known historically from the coastal Pilbara region, where they were used by Aboriginal people of the Nickol Bay region to access at least some of the islands of the Dampier Archipelago. Canoes were also recorded from south of the Gascoyne River, although from the descriptions they might also be better described as rafts (Bowdler 1994). The antiquity of any of these forms is quite unknown.
Some 40,000 years ago or more, ancestral Aborigines negotiated water barriers up to 65km to populate Greater Australia. By the end of the Pleistocene, these erstwhile mariners found themselves marooned on newly formed islands. Only within the last 4-3000 years did they begin regularly to cross minimal water barriers, with increasing regularity in the last 1000 years. It is difficult at this time to suggest reasons for this apparent diminution of water crossing ability. There are two possible general explanations, which are not mutually exclusive and which certainly do not exclude other possibilities and permutations. On the one hand, it is possible that early Australian colonists abandoned the use of watercraft, and reinvented a maritime technology during the Holocene. It is possible that the kind of watercraft which brought people to Greater Australia from a tropical island world were not suitable for use in Australian coastal waters. On the other hand, perhaps the exigencies of adapting to a new and then deteriorating environment led to a less coastally oriented existence, until well after the period of maximum aridity.
The currently perceived pattern of mid to late Holocene island usage suggests that human behaviour is not necessarily explicable in terms of models derived from either "common sense", nor the behaviour of other animal species. There appears to be no relationship between the time of occupation of an island and its distance from the mainland, its relationship to other islands, the area of the island, nor any combination of these. This lack of obvious patterning with respect to all those variables tends to contradict most predictions based on biogeographical models (cf. Keegan and Diamond 1987; see also Cherry 1990). The most obvious cultural corollary to island exploitation is the presence of watercraft and an orientation towards marine resource exploitation by the source population on the adjacent mainland. This of course is obvious, but suggests that explanation lies not so much in general modelling as in patterns of regional development.
It can be observed that the beginning, or recommencing, of sea crossings coincided with the phenomena collectively identified as "intensification" in the Australian prehistoric record. This has been variously attributed to social change (Lourandos 1985), or more environmentally determined causes (Rowland 1983a). In naming this concept here, I am certainly not intending it as having any explanatory power in itself; it simply identifies the increased use of islands as one aspect of that interesting phenomenon. It has been noted that "intensification" in the archaeological record follows on the introduction of new stone tool types and the dingo (Canis familiaris) (Bowdler 1981), but these did not penetrate Tasmania's isolation, where the increased use of islands within this general time frame does however occur. On the one hand perhaps we are simply dealing with an apparent pattern, based on fortuitous archaeological discoveries, which will be quite dispelled by future research. On the other hand, it is possible we are dealing with a combination of cultural and environmental factors we do not clearly understand as yet. As with other aspects of the Australian archaeological record, it may be that the arrival of Europeans disrupted an ongoing process of profound change in Aboriginal cultural ecology.
Acknowledgements. This paper derives from one given at the International Conference on Early Man in Island Environments held at Nuoro, Sardinia (Italy) in September-October 1988. I wish to thank the organizers of that conference, particularly Paul Sondaar and Ian Glover, for its genesis. This is now however a very different paper. I am grateful to Andrew Border, Denise Gaughwin, Sue O'Connor, Mike Rowland, Robin Sim, and Peter Veth for sharing their data and ideas with me at different times. I must also acknowledge Sue O'Connor's valuable advice, comments and suggestions, especially as I usually appear to disagree with or ignore them. The maps were drawn by Sally McGann. Thanks also for constructive suggestions to Christopher Chippendale, Cyprian Broodbank and anonymous reviewers.
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[1] Generally speaking, I have not provided detailed radiocarbon dates for this article; they may in most cases be found in the references. Except where otherwise stated, I have followed the interpretations of dates used by the original researchers. Dates are uncalibrated, but shell dates have been corrected for the reservoir effect as suggested by Bowman (1985). This conforms to general Australian usages up until the present time.
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