historyanalysisThe Conversation: Arts + Culture (US)c. 1850s · Far-west Queensland, Australia
We found a cache of rare Aboriginal artefacts, telling a story of trade and ingenuity
Around 170 years ago, someone in far-west Queensland buried a bundle of 60 large stone tulas, flaked stone woodworking tools, near a waterhole and never came back for them. Archaeologists excavated the cache in 2023 and found that the tools were complete and some fitted back together, so they were made at the same time from the same stone. Optically stimulated luminescence dating, which measures when quartz grains were last exposed to sunlight, placed the burial with 95% probability between 1793 and 1913. A similar cache found in 1988 nearby shows the practice was repeated rather than a fluke. The team thinks the tools were made for trade along long Aboriginal exchange routes, with the Pitta Pitta people who hold Native Title for the land, but the dates cannot show whether colonial disruption stopped the owners returning.
Quartz grains in soil act like a clock: sunlight resets them, and when buried they accumulate a trapped charge from natural radiation. In the lab, stimulating the grains with light releases that charge as a faint glow, and the amount of glow shows how long ago the grains were last in daylight. The team collected samples in darkness so no fresh light reset them.
It reveals long-distance trade, planning and resource management in Australia's interior before the colonial era, and challenges assumptions about how desert peoples lived. Its dating also places it in the turbulent decades of European arrival in the region.
A tula is a word from the Wangkangurru language of the Simpson Desert region for a flaked-stone tool hafted to a handle.
background
Stone tools have been used throughout human history but are most closely associated with prehistoric cultures and in particular those of the Stone Age. Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or knapped stone, the latter fashioned by a craftsman called a flintknapper. Stone has been used to make a wide variety of tools throughout history, including arrowheads, spearheads, hand axes, and querns. Knapped stone tools are nearly ubiquitous in pre-metal-using societies because they are easy to manufacture, the tool stone raw material is usually plentiful, and they are easy to transport and sharpen.
The study of stone tools is a cornerstone of prehistoric archaeology because stone tools are very resistant to natural degradation and therefore ubiquitous components of the archaeological record. Ethnoarchaeology is used to deepen understanding of, and to explore the cultural implications of, stone tool use and manufacture.
From Wikipedia: Stone tool (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗
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