Posted on 03/18/2003 6:22:49 AM PST by vannrox
Secrets of the stones
For nearly 8000 years, the Gunditjmara people of western Victoria farmed eels. They modified more than 100 square kilometres of the landscape, constructing artificial ponds across the grassy wetlands and digging channels to interconnect them. They exported their produce and became an important part of the local economy. And then white settlers arrived and all they left of the Gunditjmara's thriving industry were several hundred piles of stones that had formed the foundations to the people's huts.
Since the 1970s, archaeologists have suspected that the stone remains in the Lake Condah region were evidence that the local Aborigines had lived in villages. But it was not until an eight-year research project was carried out by a Flinders University archaeologist, Heather Builth, that the real importance of the remains became clear.
The area was naturally a wetland, but Builth discovered that the Gunditjmara had modified it with weirs, channels and dams to make the landscape eel-friendly. But her research revealed something even more remarkable. The output from these eel farms would have been enormous - she estimates it could have fed up to 10,000 people. Her hunch was that this was more like an ancient fishing industry than a subsistence farm, and she set out to prove it.
She had noticed the landscape was scattered with burnt, hollowed-out trees, often right next to the eel traps. Could the structures have been ancient smokehouses? Builth took soil samples from the base of four trees. When the results came back it was her eureka moment: the samples did contain traces of eel fat. Suddenly the whole picture changed. "The Gunditjmara weren't just catching eels," she says. "Their whole society was based around eels."
Archaeologists know a society undergoes a quantum leap in sophistication when it can produce surplus food, because the community has more time for pursuits other than basic survival. "This puts the people here in a different category than we've generally put Aboriginal groups," says Builth. We usually think of Aboriginal people as living in small communal bands, where power and wealth are shared relatively equally. But Builth believes the Lake Condah farmers' society was much more complex: "I think what we had here was a hierarchical, structured society."
Perhaps the biggest surprise about the Gunditjmara prehistoric fishing society came when Builth asked a Monash University geologist, Professor Peter Kershaw, to try to put a date on it. He drilled into some of the ponds that still have water (much of the area was drained in the 19th century) to take cores of soil. To geologists, these long, five-centimetre-wide tubes of sludge are like time machines, because the sludge is laid down gradually over millennia. Kershaw was able to drill down 13 metres before hitting the bedrock, which produced a core that stretched down to soil made 18,000 years ago.
Like a forensic scientist, Kershaw hoped to date the eel farm from indirect evidence. He sliced the core into thin sections (one centimetre corresponds to about 20 years) and meticulously identified the various pollens in each. Eventually he found the region of the core where the plant species abruptly changed. The vegetation had gone from being dominated by plants that preferred a drier environment to water-loving aquatic species. "This doesn't occur naturally," says Kershaw. "It had to have some help. People have been here - that is the most likely explanation."
But the most dramatic finding was when Kershaw radiocarbon-dated the part of the core showing the abrupt change. It was 8000 years old, making the fish farming industry at Lake Condah one of the most ancient. "This is a very early time and puts the indigenous people here up there with the best of them anywhere in the world," says Builth.
The only comparable group at this early time were the indigenous people on America's north-west coast, who caught salmon as they naturally migrated up the rivers. But the Gunditjmara's farming practices were far more developed. They brought the young eels in from the ocean and trapped them in their artificial waterways for up to 20 years.
Builth was attracted to Lake Condah because of the boulders scattered all over the ground. Many of them seemed to be clumped into circular patterns. Since the '70s people had argued these were the remains of the village huts, but the claims had always been controversial - and the fact that the lost Aboriginal village attracted many amateur archaeologists each year didn't help give the site credibility.
In 1990 the Lake Condah stone circles were officially surveyed and the conclusion - after just a 40-day study - was that most of the circles were not hut foundations at all. They were more the product of overly active and untrained imaginations misinterpreting natural formations.
Builth was especially surprised by this because the surveying archaeologist was sent out by the Victorian Archaeological Survey (now Aboriginal Affairs Victoria), a body meant to look after Aboriginal heritage.
The results were even written up in a sarcastically titled paper: Romancing the Stones. It was too much for Builth and that paper drove her to start her Lake Condah research. The research eventually ended with a PhD thesis and her
findings have been presented in various Australian journals, as well as at four archaeology conferences overseas. Many of her international peers acknowledge she has found the first real proof in the 20-year debate over whether Aborigines in this part of Australia were nomadic. "I think [her findings] are very significant," says Dr Ian McNiven, senior research fellow in Australian archaeology at Monash University. " Nobody has been able to demonstrate the complex relationship these people had with the land before - they constructed that landscape."
The archaeologist who conducted the original work for the Victorian Aboriginal Survey declined to comment as she did not know Builth's work.
To prove that the circles of stones were not natural formations, Builth painstakingly measured and weighed each of the rocks in them. She then performed a statistical analysis and showed that the chance of these hundreds of circles coming together naturally was almost zero. The only likely remaining explanation was that the circles were the stone foundations of huts.
Builth also suspects the Gunditjmara traded the smoked the eels they produced across Victoria and South Australia. The famous escaped convict William Buckley, who lived with Aborigines for many years, mentioned eels from western Victoria in his diaries, as did Victoria's first protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson.
You're left wondering how previous archaeologists could have missed all this, given the scale of the operation and the fact that the fish farms would have still been operating when Europeans arrived. Builth suspects it's because the Gunditjmara disappeared very quickly after the white settlers came.
By the time archaeologists had arrived in Australia, the only Aboriginal people still leading traditional lifestyles in significant numbers were those on the less desirable land. "Most studies - certainly anthropological studies - focused on people dwelling in desert in semi-arid conditions, because they were the last people to live in their traditional land," she says. "These people [the Gunditjmara] were the first to lose their land - that's the difference."
Science has finally proved what the Gunditjmara people say they knew all along - that they were not nomads.
Ken Saunders, a Gunditjmara elder living in Victoria, says: "We weren't nomads. We didn't wander all over the bloody place and go walkabout. We had an existence here. We used to trap eels ourselves and use the eel traps. And some of the young fellas today still use the traps. So the eels were part of our diet. I still eat the bloody things today."
Using a combination of archaeology and ethnographic-historical eyewitness evidence, archaeologist Heather Builth has built up a detailed picture of a sophisticated society run by the Gunditjmara.
The people spent much less time acquiring food than nomadic people. Not only could they fish eels whenever they wanted, many other foods were also readily available all year round. By building the artificial ponding system they had also unintentionally created an artificial wetland rich in roots and tubers. These could be harvested during all seasons, as could eggs and the many waterbirds attracted to the wetlands. The Gunditjmara's relatively sedentary life freed up their time, allowing them to develop a more complex society.
The chiefs became very powerful because they controlled the enormous wealth of the wetlands. They arranged the marriages of their people and had up to four wives (commoners were restricted to one). The society was so highly structured that the chief's power filtered down to the lowest levels. Everyone had their role and it was very hard to deviate from it.
The Gunditjmara also had significant influence in the regional economy, which stretched from South Australia to Victoria and probably well into NSW. They traded their eels for important materials they didn't have, such as quartz and flint, to make knives and other stone artefacts. They also imported complete stone axes and exported possum-skin coats, which the women wore when they came of age. Showing just how far Gunditjmara society had moved beyond basic survival needs, they even imported wooden implements that were of no use. Purely for status, the spear-like objects were made from wood that grew only in Victoria's Cape Otway ranges.
The first European settlers arrived illegally in 1834. (Sydney did not know about them.) The Gunditjmara collapsed very soon afterwards, in part because the chiefs had so much power, Builth believes. Once the chiefs had been removed, the highly structured system they controlled just fell apart. By the 1880s local farmers had started draining the eel farms.
Graham Phillips is a reporter and producer for the ABC's Catalyst program. His report on Lake Condah airs on ABC TV tonight at 8.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/12/1047431096364.html
March 13 2003
Times and tides of a rich society
Look how much poorer and more technologically backward Australia is now.
The abo eel empire was the true glory day of Oz.
not every problem, only the problems where genocide of local population was perceived as solution.
This is the state of disputation in modern academia, and also in modern political debate. "Just ignore any evidence to the contrary, and you're good to go."
"The vegetation had gone from being dominated by plants that preferred a drier environment to water-loving aquatic species. "This doesn't occur naturally,"
Um, every swamp on earth has a man made origin? Ridiculous. It is perfectly possible the swamp came first, the eels second, the people using them third. The core procedure described only detected swamp plants 8000 years ago, not the whole economy. "But in recent times they dig things that produce additional swamp". If so, because they were running out of swamp. Doesn't mean they made all the swamp in existence 8000 years ago. Get a grip.
As for the statistical analysis of stones, um, nowhere is it written that all geological processes produce a normal distribution of stone sizes. There are many places where you find naturally occurring rings of rock, rocks in particular size ranges, etc, for reasons like thawing and cracking. Is it possible they were huts? Sure. Is it possible the fellow ridiculing the idea simply knew more geology and there isn't any reason to think the circles man made? Also sure.
Then there are the details of the hierarchical society and the four wives per chief and all the rest of that. Without the slightest bit of evidence. Not one scrap is mentioned, and a moment's thought is all that is necessary to see there cannot possibly be any evidence of such social arrangements and systems back 8000 years in the presence of swamp plants, or in rock huts if they are huts (and if so, where are the associated accumulations of bone etc?)
Then there is the crazy idea that it was all still there and thriving before the nasty white people came, and nobody noticed it. For which there is no evidence or testimony. The only thing they actually know is that people there eat eels and have farmed them for a while. They have no idea whether the system supported many people (that it could doesn't mean it does - North Korea farms rice). They have no reason to think if it did, it all didn't collapse for some internal reason long before anyone pale arrived.
Then there are the supposedly useless sticks from elsewhere. Um, nobody collects useless artifacts from the four corners of the earth, least of all people in poverty. They are almost certainly weapons - "spearlike". And they are evidence not of elaborate systems of trade - why would anyone think eel meat would keep over hundreds of miles of travel? They are instead evidence that at least some of the people who lived or passed through the area were nomadic. As just about the whole aborigine population was and still is.
What is pretty obviously going on here, is that anthropologists and other slightly more scientific types are inventing fantasy social systems for aborigines and projecting them backward deep into the past on the thinnest sorts of evidence. Is any of it possible? Sure, lots of things are possible. Is any of it established by old swamp plant life and recent eel meat leftovers? Not remotely.
Builth was especially surprised by this because the surveying archaeologist was sent out by the Victorian Archaeological Survey (now Aboriginal Affairs Victoria), a body meant to look after Aboriginal heritage.
She was disturbed because a scientist who was supposed to have an agenda did not it let it interfere with her scientific interpretation?
I don’t know who’s right, but it appears to me that Heather Builth had more than strict science in mind when she began her analysis.
Great discovery. Who could tell, Australians have stones.
Re: "And then white settlers arrived "...
I think I am going to be ill...
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What? They didn't go through the usual channels? No passports, no visas?
Absolutely!
Consider how America has leapt forward with golf, RV's, and Harleys!;-)
Save me some!
I was struck by the severely negative tone of JasonC’s comments, look at his personal page and there it says it has been “suspended or removed”.
Some comments like how could they carry the eels hundreds of miles without the spoiling, ignores or fails to notice the information about smoking them. Also, I agree that if the level of complexity described did indeed exist, then killing off a few top leaders could destroy the whole arrangement. Then too, there are always white man’s diseases to finish the job.
The crime of the European settlers was a crime of advancement. These are the normal results when a much advanced civilization impinges on a much more primitive culture. The modern “problem” for European origin i.e. “white” people is that Europe was much more advanced than anyone else except, in some respects, China.China was already in contact with or known to most of the lesser cultures on which it impinged. There was no sudden migration across barriers by a more urbanized culture that had developed immunities and resistances to diseases that are especially prominent in dense populations- urban areas- so Europeans brought diseases to less dense and isolated populations. We do not know about peoples and cultures that died off because of sudden contact with Chinese adventurers and traders across mountain ranges simply because our histories are the histories of our own civilizational forebears. Europeans have always been much more individualistic and did and do things on their individual volition rather than as carefully organized expeditions of the government. So they went farther and faster.
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