THESIS ABSTRACTS
INVESTIGATIONS IN INVASION
INNOVATION: THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL
AND HISTORICAL STUDY OF A WWII
LANDING VEHICLE TRACKED IN SAIPAN
W. Shawn Arnold
M. Maritime Archaeology, Department of Archaeology, Flinders
University, November 2010
The advent of amphibious watercraft such as the amphibious
tractor for use during World War II (WWII) is directly
responsible for saving numerous lives. The ability to drive
invasion forces through the water and over shallow reefs to
deliver them on-shore prevented considerable causalities as
it prevented the invasion force from having to wade hundreds
and sometimes thousands of metres across lagoons under heavy
enemy fire. Unfortunately, these machines have been nearly
forgotten through time and have taken a back seat to studies of
technology such as the planes and tanks of the era.
The amphibious tractor, also known as the Amtrac
or Landing Vehicle Tracked (LVT), was the workhorse of
WWII in the Pacific Theatre. Its unique ability of being
capable of travelling both in and out of the water provided
it an advantage over other vehicles. Amtracs were called
upon to perform a wide array of tasks, including delivering
assault troops to the beach, evacuating wounded, delivering
supplies, and acting as mobile command posts and mobile
weapons platforms.
The aim of this study is to further our understanding of
the significance of amphibious vehicles used during WWII,
particularly in relation to the Battle of Saipan. This thesis
explores the necessity of amphibious craft due to the physical
and environmental demands of the battlefield. Drawing on both
archaeological and historical data, the thesis investigates the ways
in which crews made changes to the vehicles during the war in
order to protect and prolong the life of not only the vehicle but
also the crews themselves. This thesis also looks at how these
modifications directly influenced later Amtrac production
designs. Using process analysis, the remains of an Amtrac located
in Tanapag Lagoon, Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern
Mariana Islands, are examined in order to determine the extent
of battle modifications and possible explanations for the site’s
present location.
JUST PASSING THROUGH: THE
ARCHAEOLOGY OF Late nineteenth
and early twentieth century
settlements between mundaring
and kalgoorlie, WESTERN
AUSTRALIA
Samantha Bolton
PhD, Archaeology, The University of Western Australia,
September 2009
In 1892 gold was discovered near what became Coolgardie,
Western Australia. The subsequent gold rush brought people
from all over Australia and the world to the newly established
towns of Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie. It is a semi-arid region and
daily life was dictated by a constant search for both water and gold.
To service the increasing population of the Eastern Goldfields,
a telegraph line, railway line and water pipeline, known as the
Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, were built. The Goldfields
Water Supply Scheme, designed by C.Y. O’Connor, is a pipeline
that pumps water from Mundaring, east of Perth, to Kalgoorlie,
560km to the east, and was one of the major engineering feats of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
As a result of people travelling to the Goldfields and the
infrastructure built, small settlements were established along
the migration and settlement corridor between Perth and
Kalgoorlie. Some were occupied for a short period while others
are still occupied today. The population at these sites was mostly
transient. The types of settlements included railway stations,
pump stations, water condenser sites and workers’ camps, and
provided stopping points along the route to the Goldfields
supplying food, and more importantly, water.
In the late nineteenth century the Eastern Goldfields were a
frontier and were settled in a period of British colonialism and
colonisation. These factors, along with the transient nature of
the sites and the people that lived there, affected the types of
settlements that developed and the material culture used. As well
as the range of uses, the nine settlement sites studied in detail
were occupied for varying periods, and yet the archaeological
pattern was very similar.
There has been a great deal of work on mining sites in
Australia and the United States, looking at both technology and,
more recently, social aspects. However there has not been as
much work done on other types of sites on the frontier, such
as workers’ camps and stopping points. The settlements on the
way to the Eastern Goldfields were established in an important
period of Western Australia’s history. They provide an insight
into what life was like in this harsh environment and how people
adapted to living in the region.
The sites were compared with similar sites in Australia and
the United States, such as those occupied during the same time
period; were isolated; had specific functions such as mining
and workers’ camps; or were in a similar environment. As a
result of the pattern observed in the Mundaring-Kalgoorlie
migration and settlement corridor, and the comparison with
other sites, a model for identifying short-term workers’ camps
in the archaeological record was developed. Temporary sites
are characterised by few formal structures, very little building
material, a high number of cans, a low number of ceramics and
a low number of non-essential or ‘luxury’ items. One of the most
important aspects of this model is that it is not defined by the
presence or absence and relative amount of a single artefact type,
rather it is the combination of all of these factors that defines a
temporary site.
Additionally, it is hypothesised that the characteristics are
not solely due to the temporary nature of the sites, but once a
Number 72, June 2011
63
Thesis Abstracts
settlement starts to become permanent, the population changes,
bringing more women and children. It is a result of this change
that the settlement becomes more formalised, a greater range of
amenities is provided and the material culture changes, resulting
in an appearance of permanence.
Daily life at the settlements in the Mundaring-Kalgoorlie
migration and settlement corridor was characterised by the
transient lives of the people who lived there. The period of
British colonisation, colonialism and expansion of the frontier
influenced the settlements that formed, and choice of material
culture was limited due to supply. Although it was known from
historical records that different groups lived in the region, they
could not be seen in the archaeological record, and the factors of
colonialism, colonisation, the frontier and transience resulted in
a homogenous archaeological record.
BEYOND THE ORTHODOX VIEW: A BODY
OF EVIDENCE FOR FOOD GETTING, PLANT
DOMESTICATION AND FARMING BY THE
“HUNTER-GATHERERS” OF PRE-COLONIAL
AUSTRALIA
William J. Ellwood
BA (Hons), Department of Anthropology, Archaeology and
Sociology, James Cook University Cairns, December 2009
Like the concept of terra nullius, the idea that pre-colonial
Australia was a continent of hunter-gatherers can be overturned.
Ethnohistoric records indicate that Aboriginal resource
exploitation cannot be adequately described as a generalised
hunter-gatherer economy. This thesis maintains that the
majority of pre-colonial Australian economies show evidence
of food procurement activities comparable to practices that
are attributed to the complex hunter-gatherer and agricultural
economies of other parts of the world. Moreover, these practices
occur not only in the so-called rich environments of the coastal
fringe and rivers, but also in the semi-arid interior of Australia.
Therefore the characterisation of the Aboriginal Australians
as generalised hunter-gatherers in supposedly impoverished
environments misrepresents both the Australian environments
and human exploitation of those environments. This thesis
explores the need to reopen a discussion addressing the use and
understanding of the hunter-gatherer and agriculturalist models
of subsistence. I argue for a revision of the various models in
use not only in Australia, but also worldwide. Finally, this thesis
brings an Aboriginal perspective to the study and understanding
of subsistence strategies and practices.v
GRAVE DOUBTS: TESTING THE
ACCURACY OF LATE 19TH CENTURY
CEMETERY DATA
India Green
BA (Hons), School of Social Science, The University of
Queensland, October 2010
Cemeteries contain a wealth of knowledge about past and
present attitudes towards the deceased and can provide a
comprehensive dataset for analysis. Historical cemeteries, in
64
particular, provide an opportunity to examine the prevailing
ideologies of the time through comparison and integration
with documentary records. Little work has been undertaken
on cemetery analysis in Queensland, despite the existence of
fairly complete burial records and mortality data for most
of the state’s major cemeteries. Previous research in the field
has frequently assumed that cemetery and census data are
interchangeable and are a representative sample of the entire
population. This research tests the validity of cemetery data
by comparing it against the available census records. Historical
analyses of the Mackay Cemetery and Toowong Cemetery
are compared against Queensland census data for the period
1876 to 1901. Statistical analyses were performed using ChiSquare tests to determine the similarity or difference between
the two data sources. These analyses confirm that there are no
statistically significant differences between the cemetery and
the census data. This research demonstrates that researchers
can be confident in their use of cemetery data to reconstruct
historical populations.
IDENTIFYING CAMP 46R, THE BURKE AND
WILLS ‘PLANT CAMP’
Nick Hadnutt
BA (Hons), School of Social Science, The University of
Queensland, October 2010
Archaeological investigations of colonial period exploration sites
are poorly represented within archaeological literature, despite
their significance as places where colonial powers sought to
define and control new territories. My thesis contributes to this
research field by presenting a comprehensive analysis of a camp
site claimed to be Camp 46R of the Burke and Wills expedition
of 1860–1861. The thesis primarily seeks to answer the question
of whether this site is Burke and Wills Camp 46R. The research
incorporates a detailed analysis of five separate collections of
artefacts recovered from the site, an inventory of the expedition
equipment compiled from primary and secondary sources and a
site formation analysis.
The thesis matches information contained within the primary
sources to specific artefacts and features identified within the site.
A clear temporal occupation range for the site is developed that is
compatible with the dates of the expedition. Evidence associated
with both cultural and non-cultural site formation processes is
identified, allowing a clear interpretation of the formation of the
site and subsequent distribution of the artefacts. This research
clearly identifies the site as an important Burke and Wills campsite.
TOOLKITS AND UTILITY IN AUSTRALIAN
LITHICS: A COMPARISON OF A
COMPREHENSIVE WOODWORKING KIT
AND DISCARD ASSEMBLAGES
John Hayward
B. Archaeology (Hons), Department of Archaeology, Flinders
University, October 2010
The concept of a ‘toolkit’ has been used to describe functional
aspects of lithic assemblages since the 1960s, but has proved
Number 72, June 2011
Thesis Abstracts
difficult to define. The history of the concept, which emerged
from the analysis of European Mousterian assemblages by
Binford and Bordes, is traced from its roots to the present-day.
In Australia it has become a generalised term which has been
used to explain the complete range of technologies available
to a culture, as well as defining strategies for risk management
and mobility. This research investigates the concept and its
applicability to Australian lithic assemblages.
In 1970 a cache of 105 stone artefacts was discovered at the
top of a sand dune in the arid landscape around Lake Hanson
on South Australia’s Arcoona Plateau. Its finder interpreted
the cache as ‘a comprehensive woodworking kit’. This ‘tool-kit’
is compared with assemblages from four sites collected from
nearby Mungappie Creek by the same person. The analysis
compared the number of artefact types, their sizes and the
materials used at each of the Mungappie sites, including the
Lake Hanson cache. Using the notion that a functional toolkit
would need to have more potential utility than a discarded one,
an assessment of the potential use life of an artefact in the form
of ‘utility units’ was employed to indicate the possible presence
of toolkits at each of the Mungappie sites. Results indicated
that the toolkit cache was a unique collection of artefact and
material types that were rare in any of the four Mungappie
assemblages. There are profound differences between discard
assemblages and discrete entities such as caches and toolkits,
suggesting the need for a revision of the ‘toolkit’ concept from
a generalised to a specific terminology.
BEYOND THE COOTHARABA MILL: AN
ARCHAEOLOGY OF SOCIAL INTERACTION,
PRACTICES AND COMMUNITY IN
COLONIAL AUSTRALIA
Karen Murphy
PhD, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland,
October 2010
This thesis explores a new approach for understanding
communities in the historical past. It examines community as
a fluid entity, constructed through the social interactions and
practices of its members. This approach is used to investigate
the community associated with the operation of the Cootharaba
sawmill, in late nineteenth century southeast Queensland.
Previous archaeological approaches to understanding
community have been founded on the paradigm of a ‘natural’
community; a naturally-occurring, spatially-bounded, static
entity. Recent approaches have viewed the community as
‘imagined’; a unit with ties to external entities and comprising
active internal agents. My research adopts the latter approach
using concepts of agency and practice to model the community
as both a physical and a mental phenomenon. This practiceoriented approach recognises that the community is a social
institution that structures and is structured by internal agents
and external forces.
As Canuto proposes, a community can be seen as comprising
four elements – locale, habitus, agency and pacing – which enables
spatial, ideational, interactive and temporal interpretations to
be made about a community. A study of a community must
consider the multiple scales of interaction and the broader
external contexts in which the community operates. My research
provides a methodological contribution to studying historical
period communities by providing a framework of indicators
to address the physical nature of the archaeological remains of
a community’s actions and practices in order to examine the
mental and social aspects of the community.
Archaeological data for this study were generated from
extensive survey and excavation of the residential area of the
Cootharaba sawmill settlement. Historical research included
the investigation of a range of primary and secondary sources
concerning the lives and characters of the Cootharaba story.
The archaeological and documentary evidence enabled each of
the indicators to be examined in order to identify the actions
and practices of the community at the domestic, local and
regional scales.
The social group of the community of Cootharaba was
a complex, interacting social institution that operated in
different ways at different scales. The company operating
the sawmill, McGhie, Luya and Co., was the key to the
establishment and ongoing existence of this community and
as such the company and the organisation of its operations
was the overarching structuring factor of the community.
Examining the community solely through this lens, however,
provides a biased view and marginalises the majority of the
population – the women and the children. Using three scales
of practice to examine the interaction and social constitution
of the community of Cootharaba provides for the elucidation
of the complexities and variances both between and within
groups in the community.
This research demonstrates that communities are
not simply equable to a spatially-bounded location; the
relationship between community and locality is not necessarily
a one-to-one relationship. For the Cootharaba community
there were relationships between people in different localities
but who still belonged to the same community group. The
linkages and inter-relationships between the people of the
Cootharaba community, the localities where they lived and
interacted and the material culture they created and used
all occurred within a broader social and historical context.
This research examines the relationship between the people,
localities, and material culture of the Cootharaba community
within its context of nineteenth century Queensland. The
community development, maintenance and dissolution were
reliant on natural resources and their extraction and were tied
to the economic highs and lows of the Queensland colony.
The actions and practices of the community members were
also tied into the social expectations and requirements of the
society of nineteenth century Queensland and their mainly
British and Irish cultural backgrounds.
The study of the Cootharaba community demonstrates
the importance of social interaction and individual practices
in the formation of social groups, and in the maintenance of
community at different scales and across different localities.
The community was not just made up of the group of people
living at the physical settlement at Cootharaba. The Cootharaba
community was an active, interacting social institution that
was structuring and being structured by the internal actions
and practices of its members at the domestic, local and regional
scales, as well as by external forces well beyond the mill.
Number 72, June 2011
65
Thesis Abstracts
THE ROCK ART OF THE CHILLAGOEMUNGANA DISTRICT, NORTH
QUEENSLAND: SACRED SPACES, SHARED
BOUNDARIES AND TRADE
“BETWIXT THE MALE AND FEMALE
QUARTERS”: ENGENDERING THE
HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE PEEL
ISLAND LAZARET
Nicola Bliss Winn
April Youngberry
BA (Hons), Department of Anthropology, Archaeology and
Sociology, James Cook University Cairns, November 2009
BA (Hons), School of Social Science, The University of
Queensland, December 2010
The study of rock art in Australia has evolved over the past century,
growing from initial attempts to place rock art motifs into panAustralian chronologies based on style, to a diversified field of
research that draws on a wide range of sources. Rock art motifs
encode messages about many different aspects of the people who
produced the symbols. Not only are the motifs a glimpse into
the landscape of past human thought, they also serve as markers
of past socio-cultural landscapes, as well as often serving as
demarcations of the actual physical territories of the groups who
produced them. The rock art symbols encode information about
past group dynamics as well as prior economic, social, spiritual
and territorial contexts.
This thesis concentrates on the rock art of the ChillagoeMungana area in north Queensland, a rock art zone that
encompasses over 41 individual sites and 800 motifs. It examines
the Chillagoe assemblage using three current approaches
to rock art research in Australia. First, by investigating the
relationship between rock art production and ritual activities,
this thesis suggests that the motifs of the Chillagoe district may
have been produced in association with formalised, ceremonial
activities, rather than in more general habitation contexts.
Second, the information exchange model is applied to the rock
art motifs across the entire district, and this thesis asserts that
the Chillagoe-Mungana limestone belt may have been a shared
boundary for the four local Indigenous groups of the area in
the mid-to-late Holocene. The Chillagoe-Mungana limestone
belt may have served as an area that promoted group cohesion,
cooperation and bonding, as is evidenced by the rock art motifs.
Finally, this thesis explores a more regional perspective, focusing
on issues of trade and exchange. The Chillagoe-Mungana
district appears to be part of a wider semi-arid social network
that stretches through the interior of Queensland, with the rock
art motifs of Chillagoe exhibiting close cultural ties with areas
of western Queensland, such as Mt Isa and Lawn Hill. Trade
and exchange were an important aspect of this broader regional
network. This thesis suggests that the presence of seven baler
shell stencils in Spatial Cavern B of the Walkunders complex in
Chillagoe may serve as an indication of the movement of baler
shells, a common trade good of Aboriginal people, through
the Chillagoe district, a trade route that is currently unknown
by any other ethnographic, historical or archaeological source.
The occurrence of baler shell stencils in the Chillagoe area
suggests that the current models for the passage of trade goods
through Queensland may need to be extended further inland
than previously thought.
This thesis also strives to be a summary of many of the
diverse projects that have been undertaken in the ChillagoeMungana area, as well as to suggest some possible directions for
future research.
Gender is a key category for the organisation of social activity
and for ascribing symbolic meanings, and is thus integral to
descriptions of life in past societies. A more complex historical
archaeology of the Peel Island Lazaret, a twentieth century
total institution, is produced through the interpretive strategy
of engendering. Engendering is a theoretical approach which
grew out of feminist archaeologies, and focuses on the everyday
dynamics enacted between people. Because gender plays a role
in the structure of societies, it can provide understandings of
human social agency which are lacking from analyses that regard
gender as an essential characteristic. Nelson’s methodological
model for approaching gender in the archaeological record is
modified for use in historical archaeology, and the social theories
of institutions advanced by Goffman and Foucault contribute
to an understanding of responses to disciplinary power.
Individuals’ experiences are highlighted to facilitate the location
of personal and group actions. The social structures of the Peel
Island Lazaret disproportionately disadvantaged female patients,
but were also the locus of resistance actions. The diversity of
individual and interactive responses demonstrated through the
historical archaeological record reveals how the conditions of
incarceration interplay with male and female social identities.
66
Number 72, June 2011