Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T01:55:19.896Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Goba of Mua: archaeology working with oral tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Bruno David ,
Ian McNiven ,
Louise Manas ,
John Manas ,
Saila Savage ,
Joe Crouch ,
Guy Neliman  and
Liam Brady
Bruno David
Affiliation:
School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia
Ian McNiven
Affiliation:
School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia
Louise Manas
Affiliation:
Mualgal Native Title Group, Kubin Community Council, Mua Island, via Thursday Island, Queensland 4875, Australia
John Manas
Affiliation:
Mualgal Native Title Group, Kubin Community Council, Mua Island, via Thursday Island, Queensland 4875, Australia
Saila Savage
Affiliation:
Mualgal Native Title Group, Kubin Community Council, Mua Island, via Thursday Island, Queensland 4875, Australia
Joe Crouch
Affiliation:
Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia
Guy Neliman
Affiliation:
Mualgal Native Title Group, Kubin Community Council, Mua Island, via Thursday Island, Queensland 4875, Australia
Liam Brady
Affiliation:
School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A team of Elders and community officials from the island of Mua in the Torres Straits got together with archaeologists from Australia to study an episode which occurred on the island before the coming of Christianity in 1871. Oral tradition located the burial place of the father of an ancestral islander named Goba, and the investigation of a rock shelter nearby gave a dated sequence of occupation and a fresh sighting of rock paintings, all relating to the period. Each type of evidence gave context to the other, and the project offered a vivid example of how history is fashioned.

Keywords

Torres Straitoral traditionrock artcommunity archaeology
Type
Method
Information
Antiquity , Volume 78 , Issue 299 , March 2004 , pp. 158 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anyon, R. & Ferguson, T.J 1995. Cultural resource management at the Pueblo of Zuni, New Mexico, USA. Antiquity 69: 913–30.Google Scholar
Barham, A.J. 1999. The local environmental impact of prehistoric populations on Saibai. Quaternary International 59: 71–105.Google Scholar
Barham, A.J. 2000. Late Holocene maritime-societies in the Torres Strait Islands, northern Australia – cultural arrival or cultural emergence? In O’Connor, S. & Veth, P. (eds), East of Wallace’s Line: Studies of Past and Present Maritime Cultures of the Indo-Pacific Region. Modern Quaternary Research in Southeast Asia Vol. 16, Pp. 223–314. A.A Balkema: Rotterdam.Google Scholar
Beale, B. 2003. Rock of images. The Bulletin, 10 June: 26–28.Google Scholar
Biolsi, T. & Zimmerman, L.J. (eds) 1997. Indians and Anthropohgists: Vine Deloria, Jr., and the Critique of Anthropology. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Brady, L.M., David, B., Manas, L. & THE MUALGAL NATIVE TITLE GROUP. In press. Community archaeology and oral tradition: commemorating cultural awareness on Mua Island, Torres Strait. Journal of Australian Indigenous Education.Google Scholar
David, B. 2002. Landscapes, Rock-art and the Dreaming: an archaeology of preunderstanding. Leicester University Press, London.Google Scholar
Echo-Hawk, R.C. 2000. Ancient history in the New World: integrating oral traditions and the archaeological record in deep time. American Antiquity 65(2): 267–290.Google Scholar
Grimm, E.C. 1987. CONISS: a FORTRAN 77 program for stratigraphically constrained cluster analysis by the method of incremental sum of squares. Computers and Geosciences 13: 13–35.Google Scholar
Haddon, A.C. (ed.) 1901–1935. Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, 6 vols. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.Google Scholar
Harris, D.R. 1977. Subsistence strategies across Torres Strait. In Allen, J., Golson, J. & Jones, R. (eds), Sunda and Sahul: Prehistoric Studies in South East Asia, Melanesia and Australia: pp. 421–463. Academic Press: London.Google Scholar
Herle, A. & Rouse, S. (eds). 1998. Cambridge and the Torres Strait: Centenary Essays on the 1898 Anthropological Expedition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hemming, S., Wood, V. & Hunter, R. 2000. Researching the past: oral history and archaeology at Swam Reach. In Torrence, R. & Clarke, A. (eds), The Archaeology of Difference: Negotiating Cross-Cultural Engagements in Oceania. One World Archaeology 38: 331–59. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. 1994. Customary exchange across Torres Strait. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 34: 241–446.Google Scholar
Lawrie, M. 1970. Myths and Legends of Torres Strait. University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia.Google Scholar
L’Oste-Brown, S., Godwin, L., Henry, G., Mitchell, T. & Tyson, V. 1995. ‘Living Under the Act’: Taroom Aboriginal Reserve. Cultural Heritage Monograph Series, Vol. 1. Brisbane: Queensland Department of Environment & Heritage.Google Scholar
Marshall, E. 2002. Community Archaeology. Special issue of World Archaeology 34(2). Oxon: Routledge Journals.Google Scholar
Mason, R.J. 2000. Archaeology and Native North American oral traditions. American Antiquity 65(2): 239–266.Google Scholar
McNiven, I.J. 1998a. Shipwreck saga as archaeological text: reconstructing Fraser Island’s Aboriginal past. In McNiven, I.J., Russell, L. & Schaffer, K. (eds), Constructions of Colonialism: Perspectives on Eliza Fraser’s Shipwreck: pp. 37–50. London: Leicester University Press.Google Scholar
McNiven, I.J. 1998b. Enmity and amity: Reconsidering stone-headed club (gabagaba) procurement and trade in Torres Strait. Oceania 69: 94–115.Google Scholar
McNiven, I.J. & Hitchcock, G. in press. Torres Strait Island marine subsistence specialization and terrestrial animal translocation. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Cultural Heritage Series.Google Scholar
McNiven, I.J. & Russell, L. in press. Towards a decolonisation of Australian indigenous archaeology. In Chippindale, C. & Maschner, H. (eds), Handbook of Archaeological Theory. Altamira Press: Walnut Creek.Google Scholar
Nicholas, G.P. & Andrews, T.D. (eds). 1997. At the Crossroads: Archaeology and First Peoples in Canada. Publication No. 24. Burnaby (B.C.): Archaeology Press, Department of Archaeology Simon Fraser University.Google Scholar
Shnukal, A. 1998. At the Australian-Papuan linguistic boundary: Sidney Ray’s classification of Torres Strait languages. In Herle, A. & Rouse, S. (eds), Cambridge and the Torres Strait: Centenary Essays on the 1898Anthropological Expedition: pp. 181–200. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.Google Scholar
Tennant, K. 1959. Speak You So Gently. Victor Gollancz, London.Google Scholar
Walker, D. (ed.) 1972. Bridge and Barrier: the Natural and Cultural History of Torres Strait. Department of Biogeography and Geomorphology, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University: Canberra.Google Scholar
Wilkin, A. 1904. Tales of the war-path. In Haddon, A.C. (ed.) Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. Vol. 5 Sociology, Magic and Religion of the Western Islanders: pp. 308–19. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.Google Scholar
Woodroffe, C.D., Kennedy, D.M., Hopley, D. & Rasmussen, C. 2000. Holocene reef growth in Torres Strait. Marine Geology 170: 331–46.Google Scholar