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1 In search of the archaeology of portable art from Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and Australia
Duncan Wright, Michelle C. Langley, Mirani Litster, and Sally K. May
Research into prehistoric Eurasian, American, and African portable art is well established. Similar such artefacts from Australian, Pacific, and Southeast Asian archaeological contexts, however, remain proportionally underreported â and consequently â widely unknown outside of these regions. This volume aims to highlight research into portable art taking place in this region, the immense diversity and richness of these works, and raise issues which transfer across international contexts.
The term âportable artâ will be used in this volume to describe personal ornamentation (beads, pendants, body painting, clothing), figurines, and engraved, painted, or otherwise decorated objects able to be moved from one location to another. Also included is any day-to-day item in which âmessagesâ are held and transmitted through their morphology and/or decoration (sensu Wiessner 1983; Wobst 1977). While recognising that this definition goes beyond the traditional assessment of portable art, we suggest that in this regional context (Southeast Asia, Pacific, Australia), ethnographic studies reveal that it is unwise to be restrictive. We have in mind the ethnographic study of stone axes in West Papua, considered ritual and art objects (war trophies, sacred axes, stones for barter, and exchange at weddings and funerals), as much as they were utilitarian items (PĂ©trequin and PĂ©trequin 1993:361, 371). We also have in mind the nuanced and changing role of Kimberley points from Western Australia, which initially served practical functions and later became widely sought-after portable art objects (Harrison 2004).
The inherent symbolic function of these items provides archaeologists with incredible insights into a range of important topics, including human cognitive development, cultural variability, interaction between communities, and interaction with environments (e.g., Bar-Yosef 1998; Fernandez and Jöris 2007; McBrearty and Brooks 2000; Vanhaeren and dâErrico 2006; White 2007). Indeed, Vanhaeren and dâErrico (2006:1107) argue that the study of the relative abundance of portable art objects at early sites, their occurrence in different, mutually exclusive forms, and the potential for ethnographic analogies makes the study of these artefacts particularly important for building understandings of past peoples and their cultures.
Archaeologists have long been puzzled by the proliferation of portable art objects in Europe ~45â35,000 years ago and the relative paucity of these objects along early human migration routes towards Wallacea and Australia (Balme et al. 2009). In fact, portable art objects from these latter regions barely register in global narratives (e.g., Dubin 2009), a situation mirrored by an exhaustive bibliography on beads compiled in 2013 (and updated in 2016; Karklins n.d.), which provides only five pages on Australia/Pacific and 23 pages for Southeast Asia, as opposed to 82 pages devoted to North America and 201 pages for Europe and the Mediterranean. This situation is no reflection on the scholarship of these authors, but more likely a proportional bias in research targeting each respective area. It is telling that a recent paper identified fewer than 272 published sites dating between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago in the combined landmass of Sunda-Wallacea-Sahul exposed by present sea levels (Malaysia, Indonesia excluding West Papua, Brunei, Timor-Leste, and the Philippines plus Australia and Papua). In contrast, over twice this number of sites with occupation dating between 39,500 and 11,500 years ago have been excavated from a single sedimentary basin in Franceâs Dordogne region â an area some 99.5 per cent smaller (Brumm et al. 2017).
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Additionally, researchers increasingly question the appropriateness of using Europe as a heuristic baseline for portable art research, suggesting that âgrand narratives are currently on hold, universal statements should be treated with caution, and local rather than global is currently kingâ (Gamble 2003:639; see also dâErrico and Stringer 2011; Henshilwood et al. 2004:404). This global approach has gained traction following remarkable portable art discoveries outside of Europe. These discoveries include shell beads dating from 135,000 bp at Skhul in Israel (Vanhaeren et al. 2006) and 75,000-year-old beads from Blombos Cave in South Africa (dâErrico et al. 2005), as well as similar others in Africa and the Near East. It has also influenced a growing number of researchers who explore the role of Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific in modern human cognitive development (e.g., Balme et al. 2009; Brumm and Moore 2005; Davidson 2010; Davidson and Noble 1992; Habgood and Franklin 2008; Langley et al. 2011; OâConnell and Allen 2007; SzabĂł et al. 2007). These studies draw on internationally significant, archaeological case studies including the earliest evidence for ritual (ochred) burial by Homo sapiens, at Lake Mungo in New South Wales, Australia (Bowler et al. 2003), along with the earliest recorded human cremation in the world also found at this same location. Direct ages for rock art have been hard to come by; however, ochre/haematite crayons and fragments of buried painted limestone have been found in >40,000-year-old deposits in the Kimberley and Arnhem land regions of northwest Australia. The recent discovery of 38,000 to 40,000-year-old hand stencils and figurative art (based on uranium-series dating of coralloid speleothems) from cave sites in the Maros karsts of Sulawesi strengthen this early association (Aubert et al. 2014).
The potential for using portable art objects discovered in Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific to explore cognitive and socio-political developments are high. The recent discovery of a 430,000-year-old engraved freshwater mussel shell from Trinil, Java has been interpreted as evidence for symbolic behaviour by Homo erectus (Joordens et al. 2015), previously thought to be the domain of Homo sapien sapiens. These authors âpredict that it is only a matter of time before comparable evidence is discovered, filling the gap between this early case of shellfish exploitation, shell tool use and engraving, and its later counterpartsâ, a sentiment echoed by Langley and OâConnor (2016:22) who state that âwith new excavations being undertaken across the Southeast Asian region at this time, we expect to see a complete overturning of the notion that this region was somewhat of a cultural backwater in terms of symbolic production in coming yearsâ. At Buang Merabak in New Britain a 35,000-year-old perforated sharkâs tooth was discovered providing insight into âdifferent cultural trajectoriesâ between Europe and the Pacific during the Pleistocene (Leaversley 2007:308). Such a scenario is supported by recent analysis of excavated material from Timor-Leste with the identification of worked and painted marine shell dating back to 42,000 cal. bp (Langley et al. 2016b; Langley and OâConnor 2016), while tooth and bone ornaments have been identified from 30,000-year-old deposits at Leang Bulu Bettue on Sulawesi, Indonesia (Brumm et al. 2017). On the Australian mainland, several sites have produced portable art objects dating to the Pleistocene, including marine shell beads (e.g., Mandu Mandu rockshelter in Western Australia [Morse 1993], bone beads (Devilâs Lair in Southwestern Australia [Dortch 1979, 1980]), and engraved or painted pieces (Devilâs Lair [Dortch 1979, 1980], and Spring Creek, Victoria [Vanderwal and Fullagar 1989]). Most recently, an ochre stained kangaroo fibula tool, which may be a nose-bone, was reported for >46,000-year layers at Carpenterâs Gap 1 (Langley et al. 2016a). When all of these finds are combined it becomes increasingly evident that portable art objects survive from the very earliest period of human settlement in this part of the globe. Aboriginal Australians have been linked through ancient DNA to the earliest modern human migrations outside Africa (Gibbons 2011), making study of their earliest cultures intrinsic to understanding global human cultural development.
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The distant past, however, is not the only period worthy of attention. Rock art from Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific provides pictographic evidence for the existence of a vast corpus of portable art objects most likely dating to the Holocene period. For example, Dynamic Figure rock art in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory are frequently depicted with arm and neck ornaments and headdresses decorated with tassels and feathers (Chaloupka 1993; May et al. in press). Surviving examples of Holocene symbolic material culture include that found within the burials at Roonka (located on the Murray River in South Australia), where drilled oyster shells and native cat mandibles were recovered (Pretty 1977). Here a late Holocene elaborate burial tradition was established including personal ornaments fashioned from bird skulls, reptile vertebrae, and wallaby teeth. During this later period (approximately 4000â5000 bp), a total of 70 inhumations were uncovered, amongst these the burial of a man and a child wearing wallaby teeth headdress and armband, a pendant made from a bird skull and a necklace of reptile vertebrae. Ochre was found on the feet of the child along with other items of personal adornment. Comparable âritual burialsâ including necklaces of over 100 teeth (kangaroo, wallaby, and Tasmanian devil) were discovered at Bunyan (Cooma) (Feary 1996) and Lake Nitchie (Macintosh et al. 1970; Pardoe 1988). Other examples from this time period include ochre-stained scaphopod shell beads from Riwi, Mt Behn, and Carpenterâs Gap 1 and 3 in Western Australia (Balme et al. this volume).
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In Southeast Asia, the recent Holocene was associated with remarkable Dong Son industries, geometrically decorated urns, glass, carnelian and garnet beads, nephrite rings and bronze ornaments (e.g., Bellina 2003). Kain Hitam in Borneo exemplifies the extensive and diverse Holocene assemblages associated with âships of the deadâ burials. Artefacts recorded included 185 beads and one fragment of a glass bracelet, three bronze objects (two identical Chinese coins from the Early Tâang dynasty and a small vessel fragment) (SzabĂł et al. 2008). There were also tooth plugs manufactured from gold and 75 bone ornaments including: â24 finished and unfinished cylindrical beads, one-barrel bead, one bead curated to make a toggle, 10 âear cuffsâ . . . one rectangular plaque made from a male pig canine with holes bored in each corner, three teeth with holes bored through the root, two carved fragments of soft-shell turtle carapace/plastron . . . two bead spacersâ (SzabĂł et al. 2008:152).
In the South Pacific, case studies specifically focusing on portable art objects are less prominent. We draw the readerâs attention, however, to remarkable discoveries of Maori disc pendants recovered from deposits associated with initial settlement of New Zealand in the 12th or 13th century but continuing until European contact six centuries later (e.g., Pricket 2007). These suspended objects were commonly made out of whalebone or serpentine volcanic stone. Discs manufactured from pearl shell have also been found at early sites in East Polynesia. In the Marquesas and Maupiti, Society Islands, part of an ornament tradition which included necklaces of shell, porpoise, dog, and shark teeth also beads of stone, bone, and ivory are known (Walter 1996:516). The value of these case studies for understanding the regionâs human history is clear. What is harder to understand is why studies such as these (most of which make portable art the primary focus), in Australian, Pacific, and Island Southeast Asian contexts, are so rarely articulated into global portable art narratives.
One of the most exciting aspects of portable art research in Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific is the manufacture and use of comparable objects in the recent past and present with a vast range of object histories surviving in Indigenous communities and museum collections. Ethnographic studies (e.g., Akerman and Stanton 1994; Allen and Hamby 2013; McAdams 2008; Roth 1904; Wright et al. 2016) and museum collections (cf. Hamby 2005; May 2009; Lakic 1995; Peterson et al. 2008; Simak 2007) identify the prominence and variety of personal ornaments during the ethnographic past/present. Indeed, in Australia, this includes collections amounting to thousands of portable art objects (e.g., by Donald Thomson, Charles Mountford, Alfred Haddon; see Allen 2008; Moore 1984). Studies which combine data from ethnographic sources, museum collections, and archaeology can be powerful, providing insight into socio-political including totemic contexts and late Holocene community regionalisation (e.g., Langley and OâConnor 2015; Wright et al. 2016). However, much of the portable art data from the region is frequently buried in site reports or the grey literature (museum catalogues and consultancy reports), and is one avenue for future research.
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In May 2015, an Australian National University symposium: âThe Archaeology of Portable Art: Southeast Asian, Pacific and Australian Perspectivesâ attempted to bring portable art research in the region out into the open. This symposium brought together specialists from Europe, America, New Zealand, and Australia, these speakers addressing specific themes: object histories; use of ethnography/museum collections for informing archaeological research; use of âintangible technologiesâ and organic artefacts for expressing community affiliation/identity; cognitive development, the role of portable art in Pleistocene and Holocene expansions; and experimental studies. This volume includes papers presented at the symposium and draws together points and conclusions which we consider to be salient. It further aims to introduce the global readership to the diversity, vibrancy, and significance of portable art in the Southern Hemisphere.
The volume is divided into three sections based on the regions chosen for study: Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and Australia. These boundaries provide a useful structure for the volume; however, it is acknowledged that considerable overlap may exist between each region. The volume begins by exploring the portable art of Southeast Asia wit...
