Great Barrier Reef discovery overturns belief Aboriginal Australians did not make pottery, archaeologists say

Wed, 8 May 2024 12:32:38 +1000

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/10/great-barrier-reef-discovery-overturns-belief-aboriginal-australians-did-not-make-pottery>

"Groundbreaking archaeological research may have upended the longstanding
belief that Aboriginal Australians did not make pottery.

A paper published in the Quaternary Science Reviews on Wednesday details the
finding of 82 pottery pieces from a single dig site on a Great Barrier Reef
island, dates them at between 3,000 and 2,000 years old and determines that the
pots were most likely made by Aboriginal people using locally sourced clay and
temper.

The pieces are the oldest securely dated pottery discovered in Australia and
weave Indigenous Australians into an ocean-going network of people in Papua New
Guinea, the Torres Strait and Pacific Islands who formed a “community of
cultures across the Coral Sea”, the paper finds. Fragments of pottery have also
been found on the Torres Strait.

The archaeologists say the finds open “a new chapter in Australian, Melanesian
and Pacific archaeology”."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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