According to two archaeologists from the Australian National University, Indigenous Australians may have exchanged fishing rights on traditional lands for European glass beads from Macassan seafarers in the 18th Century. Aboriginal people negotiating access to their lands today may use the recent findings as evidence for native title claims.
Mirani Litster and Daryl Wesley excavated 30 beads from the Wellington Range in northwestern Arnhem Land. The two archaeologists reported on the significance of the European beads at the Australian Archaeology Association conference in Coffs Harbour this week.
"The majority of beads found in the Wellington Range assemblage consist of monochrome glass seed beads, either molded or drawn and hot tumbled," wrote the researchers. "There are other bead types present including blown beads, large spheroidal wound beads, bugle beads, bohemian faceted beads. Most beads would likely be produced in Venice, Italy or are of a Czech or Dutch origin."
Wesley said one of the excavated beads would have originated in Southeast Asia and was made of limestone. It is possible to tell where the glass beads originated by how they were made. He says they are about 2 millimeters in diameter and some were made to be threaded so as to make beaded fabrics and necklaces.
Previous archaeological digs have turned up beads but they were always thought to have come from European missionaries after 1916 and given to Aboriginal people for decoration. However, Wesley and Litster carbon dated the sediments and found they dated back to the 18th Century.
"Ethnographic, historical, and archaeological research now provides irrefutable evidence for beads in Indigenous society in both the pre-Mission and the early Mission era." Macassan seafarers were fishing off Arnhem Land long before Europeans discovered the area, says Wesley, and the beads coincide with that time.
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