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An Aboriginal shield collected in 1770 at Kamay Botany Bay: an indicator of pre-colonial exchange systems in south-eastern Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2014

Valerie J. Attenbrow  and
Caroline R. Cartwright
Valerie J. Attenbrow
Affiliation:
1Australian Museum, 6 College Street, Sydney South, NSW 2010, Australia 2Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Caroline R. Cartwright
Affiliation:
3Department of Conservation and Scientific Research, The British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG, UK
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Abstract

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A bark shield now in the British Museum can be identified from documentary and pictorial evidence as one collected by Captain Cook during his first voyage to Australia in 1770. Such shields often had special value to their Australian Aboriginal owners and hence might have been exchanged over considerable distances. This particular shield is known to have been collected in Kamay Botany Bay but analysis of the bark of which it is made revealed it to be of red mangrove, a tropical species found today more than 500km distant on the New South Wales north coast. It hence bears valuable testimony to the long-distance exchange networks operating in eastern Australia in the period before the disruption caused by European colonisation.

Keywords

AustraliaKamay Botany BayCaptain Cookred mangrovebark shieldvariable pressure SEMindigenous exchange networks
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 88 , Issue 341 , September 2014 , pp. 883 - 895
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2014

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