In dejence oJArnhem Land rock art research
Australian Rock Art Research Association. Occasional AURA
Publication No. 6.
Haskovec. 1. 1992b Mt Gilruth revisited. Archaeology in Oceania
27:61-74.
Haskovec, 1. and Sullivan, H. 1986 Nujombolmi: The Li/e and
Work of an Aboriginal Artist (2 Vols). Canberra: Report to
the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Lewis, D. 1983 Art, archaeology and material culture in Arnhem
Land. B.A.(Hons) thesis, Department of Prehistory and
Anthropology, The Australian National University, Canberra.
Lewis, D. 1988 The Rock Paintings of Arnhem Land, Australia:
Social, Ecological and Material Culture Change in the PostGlacial Period. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports,
International Series 4 15.
Maynard, L. 1976 An archaeological approach to the study of
Australian rock art. Unpublished MA thesis. University of
Sydney, Sydney.
McCarthy, F. 1976 Rock Art of the Cobar Pediplain in Central
Western New South Wales. Canberra: Australian Institute
of Aboriginal Studies.
Morwood, M. 1979 Art and stone. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
Department of Prehistory and Anthropology, The Australian
National University, Canberra.
Morwood, M. 1980 Time, space and prehistoric art: A principal
component analysis. Oceania 15(2):98-109.
Mountford, C. 1956 Art, Myth and Symbolism: Records of rhe
American-Australian Scientific F~peditionto Arnhem Land.
Vol. l. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Schrire, C. 1982 The Alligator Rivers: Prehistory and Ecology in
Western Arnhem Land. Canberra: Department of Prehistory,
Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National
University. Terra Australis 7.
Ta~on,P. 1987 Internal-external: A re-evaluation of the 'X-ray'
concept in western Arnhem Land rock art. Rock Art Research
4(1):36-50.
Trezise, P. 1971 Rock Art of South-East Cape Z'ork. Canberra:
Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Wright, B. 1968 Rock Art of the Pilbara Region, Nor-tlz-West Alcstralia. Canberra: Australian Institute of .Aboriginal Studies.
Occasional Papers in Aboriginal Studies No. I l . Prehistoty
and Material Culture Series N o . 2 .
2$
A preliminary analysis of basal grindstones from the Carnarvon Range,
Little Sandy Desert
Peter ~ e t h and
'
Sue
conn no?
Australian prehistorians have devised morphological categories for grindstones in order to separate those assumed to
be of a generalised knction fiom those used more specifically for grinding seeds (cf. Cane 1984; Smith 1985, 1986).
This division is a functional one, with grindstones, or 'arnorphous grindstones', being multipurpose tools used to grind not
only plants but also other materials such as animals and minerals. In contrast, seedgrinding implements are described as
being more specialised tools. Their primary, if not exclusive,
function is to process edible seeds. Amorphous grindstones
are characterised as having a flat grinding surface, while formal grindstones used in the wet milling process have one or
two deeper grooves.
In challenge to these morphological categories, it has been
argued that the two extreme types of form are functional variants of the same implement, representing its successive reduction through time, often presumably to its final discard state
(Cane 1989:113; Gorecki et al. forthcoming). It is noted that
grindstones are far more efficient and versatile in earlier stages
of reduction than when worn (cf. Gorecki et al. forthcoming).
Tindale (1974:lOO) suggested that the discard behaviour
surrounding these implements not only relates to the degree
of wear but also to the availability of new stone supplies.
1
2
Dept of Anthropology and Archaeology, Jarnes Cook University of
North Queensland, Townsville, QLD 48 1 1, Australia.
Division of Archaeology and Natural History, Research School of
Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University,
Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.
When the raw material used for grindstones is derived from
distant sources it is more likely to be used to the maximum
of its functional life.
We believe that the dichotomous classification between
amorphous grindstones and millstones is questionable and to
illustrate the point we present data recently collected from
basal grindstones at a major occupation site in the Little Sandy
Desert, Serpent's Glen (Fig. 1). The site complex lies on the
southern edge of the Carnarvon Range and contains an extensive and diverse flaked stone assemblage, large quantities of
grinding material and a painted rockshelter, which has recently
been dated to the Pleistocene (O'Connor et al. in prep.). Stone
supplies for grindstones are abundant at the site. Relevant
attributes were recorded from a sample of the first 100 intact/
near-intact basal grindstone platforms located within a 150 m
radius fiom the main rockshelter at Serpent's Glen. Attributes
included:
a. type of raw material,
b. length of maximum axis,
c. width of maximum axis,
d. thickness normal to plane of other axes, and
e. depth of ground depression below original rock face.
Data for these attributes are presented in Table 1. Additional
notes were also taken of such features as rejuvenation and
pecking. The context of the site and typical grindstones are
shown in Figures 2 and 3.
Australian Archaeology, Number 43, 1996
Veth and O'Connor
metamorphosed
sandstone N = 83
sandslone N = 17
Table l
22.11
16.19
6.78
1.09
19.65
14.53
4.29
1.77
Mean dues for aWuks d bad grindstone pklfums, SpeMs
Glen, Carnarvon Range, Western Australia.
rejuvenation was recorded on 38 specimens and tended to correlate with those grindstones where the depth of depression
was 2 mm or greater.
At the regional scale Serpent's Glen is a major occupation
site. It contains some of the highest numbers of intactlnearintact basal platforms noted at any site in the Little Sandy
Desert (cf. Veth 1993). When the site was visited in the company of the Aboriginal custodians in June 1995 the area was
identified as a major camping locality in close proximity to
a permanent water source. The grindstones were identified
as seedgrinding platforms. 'Ihe site also lies within Tindale's
(1977) Panara grass culture area with regional ethnobotanical
sources additionally emphasising the role of seeds as a staple
(Veth and Walsh 1988). Despite contrary suggestions, it is improbable that these grindstones were not used, at least partially, for grinding seeds. To suggest that none of them were
used for intensive seedgrinding is in our view untenable and
yet not one, from a sample of 100, could conceivably be
classified as a formal grindstone (after Smith 1986). In
addition, the large rockshelter located directly adjacent to the
open site has yielded thousands of flaked stone toneartefactsintermittently covering a period of over 24,000 years (O'Connor and
Veth in prep.). Only two grindstone fragments were recovered
from this stratified context, neither showing evidence of the
deep grooving associated with formal seedgnnding. Several
weeks of survey around the Serpent's Glen area failed to locate
a single specimen outside the range of this sample.
Approximately 200 km northeast of the Carnarvon Range
two basal grindstones with formal attributes were found at an
incerdunal well, known as Sunday Well. These were extremely thin, broken sandstone slabs which most likely represent the discard state of the artefacts. We believe that it is
no coincidence that these were located at some distance from,
and between, two stone supply zones, Durba Hills and the
Calvert Range (Fig. l Inset).
We argue that the abundance of suitable raw materials directly adjacent to the SerpentsGlen site and the likely preference
of prehistoric occupants for minimally reduced platforms provides a coherent explanation for the absence of deeply grooved
grindstones that might fall within the formal, intensive seedgrinding category. The Serpent's Glen data provide firher s u p
Figure l
Location map showing places mentioned in text. Desert port for the view that the dichotomy between formal and nonformal grindstones does not accurately reflect the degree of relidivisions afler Mabbutt 1971.
ance on seeds but rather the accessibility of raw material and sub
It was immediately obvious that none of the grindstones sequent reduction of the implement (Gorecki et al. forthcoming).
could be assigned to the formal category, in that they lacked any
appreciable depth of depression (either circular, oval or elongate Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Dusty Stevens, Wiluna for accomin plan). In fact the range for depth of depression was 0-3 mm.
As Table 1 demonstrates, low mean values for depth of depres- panying us to the Carnarvon Range and for permission to
sion were recorded for both the harder metamorphosed sand- work on the sites discussed. Dr Colin Campbell, Archaestone and the more friable sandstone. Evidence of pitting/ ology and Natural History, RSPAS, The Australian National
Australian Archaeology, Number 43, 1996
.
A preliminary analysis of basal grindrtones fLom the Carnarvon Range, Little Sandy Desert
.
p
Figure 2
Serpent's Glen, C a m a m Range,view d open site.
-
--
.p
-
-
-
- -
-
p
p
-
~
Gorecki, P., Grant, M., O'Connor, S. and Veth, P, forthcoming The
morphology, hnction and antiquity of grinding implements.
Submitted for publication to Archaeology in Oceania.
Mabbutt, J.A. 1971 The Australian arid zone as a prehistoric
environment. In D.J. Mulvaney and J. Golson (eds) Aboriginal Man and Environment in Australia, pp.66-79. Canberra:
Australian National University Press.
O'Connor, S. 1995 Carpenter's Gap Rockshelter l : 40,000 years
of Aboriginal occupation in the Napier Ranges, Kimberley,
W.A. Australian Archaeology 40:58-60.
O'Connor, S., Veth, P. and Campbell, C. in prep. Pleistocene-aged
occupation of the Little Sandy Desert.
Smith, M.A. 1985 A morphological comparison of Central Australian seedgrinding implements and Australian Pleistoceneage grindstones. The Beagle 2(1):23-38.
Smith, M.A. 1986 The antiquity of seedgrinding in arid Australia
Archaeology in Oceania 21(1):29-39.
Basal grindstones, Serpent's Glen.
Figure 3
Tindale, N.B. 1974 Aboriginal Tribes ofAustralia. Berkeley: UniUniversity and Ewen Lawson, Anthropology and Archaeology,
versity of California Press.
James Cook University of North Queensland, are thanked for Tindale, N.B. 1977 Adaptive significance of the Panara or grass
assistance in the field.
culture of Australia. In R.V.S. Wright (ed.) Stone Tools as
Cultural Markers, pp.345-9. Canberra: Australian Institute
References
of Aboriginal Studies.
Cane, S. 1984 Desert camps: A case study of stone artefacts and Veth, P.M. 1993 Islanak in the Interior: The Dynamics of PreAboriginal behaviour in the Western Desert. Unpublished
historic Adaptations within the Arid Zone of Australia. Ann
Ph.D. thesis, The Australian National University.
Arbor, Michigan: International Monographs in Prehistory.
Cane, S. 1989 Australian Aboriginal seed grinding and its archArchaeological Series 3.
aeological record: A case study from the Western Desert. In Veth, P.M. and Walsh, F.J. 1988 The concept of 'staple' plant foods
D.R. Hams and G.C. Hillman (eds) Foraging and Farming,
in the Western Desert region of Western Australia Austrapp.99-119. London: Unwin Hyman.
lian Aboriginal Studies 2: 19-25.
Australian Archaeology, Number 43, 1996