Historicizing the Spiritual: Bu Shell Arrangements on the Island of Badu, Torres Strait

Abstract

Bu (Syrinx aruanus) shell arrangements are often found in ritual sites across Torres Strait. The position of such sites within Indigenous cosmologies has been ethnographically documented for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This article historicizes Indigenous spiritscapes by tracking back in time the history of this particular material expression of spiritual belief in Western Torres Strait. We argue that the last c. 400 years saw major shifts in ritual engagements with seascapes in Western Torres Straits. These transformations may have been Indigenous responses to the traumatic events of early contact with European seafarers, in particular the earliest Spanish sailors of 1606.