Graphic: Figure 1. Map displaying the place of Murrawong in the Decrease Murray River Gorge area of South Australia.
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Credit rating: Flinders University
The discovery of a unusual bone artefact in close proximity to the Reduce Murray River casts much more gentle on the prosperous archaeological record on Ngarrindjeri country in southern Australia.
Particulars of the Murrawong bone level, dated concerning c. 5,300-3,800 several years aged, has have been explained by Flinders University, Griffith University and other specialists in a new paper in Australian Archaeology.
Probably manufactured from a macropod (kangaroo or wallaby) bone, the position was likely utilized for piercing tender resources – for illustration, employed as a pin on a cloak made of possum furs – or potentially as a projectile position, say the investigate leaders Dr Christopher Wilson and Professor Amy Roberts from Flinders University Archaeology.
Even though stone artefacts and shell middens are typically observed on the surface area, bone objects are mostly uncovered all through excavations. The very last similar a person was uncovered in the Lessen Murray River Gorge was in the 1970s.
Dr Wilson, a Ngarrindjeri gentleman, suggests that “even one come across of this variety gives us with options to realize the use of bone systems in the area and how this kind of artefacts have been tailored to a riverine natural environment.”
“Bone artefacts have lacked the same amount of research in comparison to artefacts built of stone, so every single discovery reminds us of the numerous substance lifestyle made use of by Aboriginal peoples in this place,” provides Professor Roberts.
The artefact was identified all through modern excavation get the job done. The undertaking was undertaken in collaboration with the Ngarrindjeri neighborhood.
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This investigation varieties element of a more substantial undertaking that Dr Wilson is top to look into the abundant archaeological history on Ngarrindjeri country.
The paper, ‘Analysis and contextualisation of a Holocene bone level from Murrawong (Glen Lossie), Lessen Murray River Gorge, South Australia’ (2021) by C Wilson, AL Roberts, M Langley, L Wallis, R Luebbers, C Westell, C Morton and the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal Company has been printed in Australian Archaeology DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2021.1886893
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