![ii
life who have helped me bring this work to its completion. Their assistance should not of course be construed
in any way as an endorsement of the arguments I have put forward. The individuals concerned include: The
library staff of the National Library of Australia, particularly the staff of the Petherick Reading Room and
the Map Room, Emeritus Professor John Mulvaney, Professor Peter Veth, Professor Rolf Gerritsen, Professor
Helen James, Professor John Parker, Dr Mary O’Dowd, Dr Nonja Peters, Dr Ian Keen, Dr Helen Lette,
Dr Annie Clarke, Dr Michael Pickering, Dr Fiona Walsh, Judith Scurfield, Allen Mawer, Katharine West,
Jamon Moon, Anita Jaroslawski, Margaret Saville, Jenny Ward, Rodrigo Aguilera, Lesley Hyndal, Bill and
William Mallard, Ron Gerritsen, W. C. (Bill) Gerritsen [deceased], Eleanora (Nora) Gerritsen [deceased], the
staff of the W.A. Department of Indigenous Affairs Library, Lyn Jones, Janet Buick, Shirley Fletcher, Bryce
Moore, Patti Steele, Lado Shay, Jim Croft, Murray Fagg, Max Cramer, Lloyd Browne, Arienne Alphenaar
of the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and Arts Central Library, Peter Reynders and Rohan
Reynders.
I trust that I have not overlooked anyone, and hope that you the reader will get the same enjoyment and
intellectual exhilaration from this book that I experienced in creating it.
Rupert Gerritsen
31 May 2008](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-13-320.jpg)
![Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture
of Australia, about 46,000 or more years ago.38
Other
more powerful influences began to manifest themselves
from the beginning of the 17th century with the arrival of
Europeans (principally the Dutch followed by the British)
and Indonesians (Macassans). These incursions had impacts
well beyond their points of contact.39
The Macassans, for
example, appear to have stimulated the ceremonial exchange
cycle in Arnhem Land in north Australia, hundreds of
kilometres beyond their immediate sphere of influence.40
Similarly we find valued European goods such as glass
and axes up to 200 kilometres or more beyond the bounds
of British colonisation, preceding the “frontier” by thirty
years.41
As in North America, smallpox epidemics also
preceded the “frontier”, devastating many populations, the
extent of its demographic, social and economic impacts still
the subject of considerable academic debate in Australia.42
Whatever the specifics, it is nevertheless beyond question
that there has been a progressive and profound alteration
of Indigenous societies in Australia as external influences
have increased. From an evidentiary point of view, where
relevant, such influences and the changes that have arisen
need to be recognised and taken into account.
In treating particular cases, areas, groups or regions it
further needs to be recognised that the impact of exogenous
influences was highly variable. Some may not have been
affected by influences preceding the frontier, others
dramatically so. When Aboriginal people first experienced
contact with non-Aboriginal people, usually British
explorers, “pioneers” and government officials, they were
often afraid and uncertain, but at the same time curious
about the strangers. Significant conflict usually followed
once it became apparent the colonists intended to usurp
their lands, resistance developed, and finally, in the face of
defeat, attempts were made to adjust to the encroachments
of the colonists and maintain some semblance of traditional
lifestyles. In many cases this was succeeded by a process of
disintegration, depopulation and near complete destruction
of traditional life. The rapidity with which this happened
was influenced largely by the degree of intrusion. Where
intensive settlement by colonial intruders occurred the
destruction of traditional life has been almost total and
38
Johnson 2006:57-61.
39
See for example Reynolds 1978.
40
Thomson 1949:5-6; Clarke 2000:328-333.
41
Morgan 1852:192; Hepburn 1853:62; An Old Hand [Hamilton]
1880:20; Curr 1886:1:78;2:375-6; Sharp 1952:69; Clark 1987:29-30.
42
Ames 1991:937-8; See for example Butlin 1983,1993; Lourandos
1997:35-8.
Aboriginal people have struggled, and still struggle, to
maintain some semblance of their culture. Conversely, that
process was much slower, much later or less intense in large
parts of the arid and semi-arid zones and the tropical north
of Australia. In some of these areas the land was perceived
by the colonists to be of little economic value, resulting
in minimal economic impact and low non-Aboriginal
population densities. In some cases, such as in Arnhem
Land in the north eastern part of the Northern Territory,
deliberate decisions were made to restrict access by non-
Aboriginal people and traditional culture has adapted and
continues in a rich but modified form.43
Consequently, in
considering ethnographic evidence the interplay of all these
factors and forces need to be weighed in determining the
degree any specific item of evidence accurately reflects
particular features of traditional, i.e. pre-contact, life.
Where there is any suspicion that what was observed may
have been a consequence or artefact of recent pre- or post-
contact dynamics such evidence will be either qualified or
discarded.
Finally one other matter needs to be clarified - what is
meant by “Australia”. Australia as a modern political
unit includes not only mainland or continental Australia,
Tasmania and offshore islands but almost all the islands
in Torres Strait. The political boundary, in fact, comes
within a few kilometres of the coast of mainland Papua
New Guinea. A cline of intensification evident from the
Pre-Contact Period (before 1606) across Torres Strait has
previously been noted, including agricultural systems on
some of the more northerly islands through to limited
cultivation on the most southerly islands off the tip of Cape
York.44
By this definition of “Australia” agriculture was
indisputably practiced in Australia in the pre-colonial era.
But it would appear that various researchers, when they
refer to Australia, presuppose a geographical definition
that encompasses continental Australia, but which may
also include Tasmania and offshore islands. For simplicity
the term “Australia” will, henceforth, follow a geographic
definition incorporating continental Australia, Tasmania and
offshore islands, with the Torres Strait Islands being treated
as a separate geographic entity.
43
See Rowley (1972) and Clark (1998) for a more detailed exposition of
this aspect of Australian history and the nature of the impacts.
44
Harris 1979; Moore 1979; Barham and Harris 1985:247-8; Barham
2000:224.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-19-320.jpg)
![Chapter 2.
People, Islands and Deserts
Approximately 55,000 years ago, with global climate
cooling and sea levels falling, a land bridge existed between
Australia and the lands to the north, now known as New
Guinea. The latest hominin, Homo sapiens, had by then
found their way out of Africa and established themselves
in south west Asia. At some time after this they made
their way into Australia, the first Australians, and also
began to enter an icy Europe. But it was probably not
until about 15,000 years ago that the first humans set foot
in the Americas. Remarkably, once there, in a relatively
short space of time, the first Native Americans populated
the length and breadth of the two continents, developed
agriculture and other forms of food production, generated
chiefdoms, states and empires, and built some of the
greatest cities on Earth, boasting architectural wonders
the equal of any elsewhere. In both Eurasia and the
Americas, preceding the advent of agriculture, other forms
of specialised food procurement, and settled life, there
was a period in which virtually all remaining vacant or
sparsely populated ecozones were occupied, populations
increased relatively rapidly, population densities increased,
and people started to inhabit smaller and more sharply
defined territories (increasing circumscription), or became
more sedentary. Furthermore, “logistical” procurement
became more pronounced, a wider range of food sources
were exploited (the “broad-spectrum revolution”), more
elaborate procurement and food processing technologies
were employed, and subsistence organisation, as well as
social and political structures, became more complex. In
effect more intensive and increasingly specialised forms of
subsistence evolved along with greater regional diversity
in many facets of the culture. This phenomenon is known
as “intensification”.
Such is the importance of this process in setting the stage
for “the great leap forward” it has been argued we ought
to be seeking to explain the origins of intensification rather
than the origins of agriculture.
Intensification, as a global
phenomenon, began in south west Asia around 15,000
BP [BP = Before Present], evolved into the Mesolithic or
Epipaleolithic period, and culminated in agriculture between
11,500 - 9000 BP.
A similar period in Meso-, North and
South America, leading into the Archaic, commenced
Fagan 1995:155-9; Williamson 1998:143; Flood 1999:248; Weiss et
al. 2004.
Bender 1978:204.
Price and Brown 1985:13; Unger-Hamilton 1989:101; Hillman and
Davies 1990: 195,208-9; Anderson 1992:180; Allen and O’Connell
around 10,000 BP, with early agriculture in the form of
maize (Zea mays) cultivation apparent by 6250 BP.
This
process was repeated in east Asia giving rise to rice and
then millet farming between 11,200 - 8500 BP, perhaps
earlier.
By and large the timing of intensification varied
from place to place, region to region, but nevertheless it
seems to have been “universal” in human populations.
Different economies developed, different plants came under
human control, but in every case the same pattern appears
to have emerged.
It has been argued that the process of intensification was also
evident in Australia.
However, according to the proponents
of this view, this transitional period in Australia did not
begin to clearly manifest itself until 7000 - 5000 BP at the
earliest.
It was still proceeding when British colonisation
(from 1788) during the Contact Period (1606 – 1956)
began to profoundly affect most traditional Indigenous
societies. Parallels have been drawn between developments
in Australia during this transitional period, known as the
Australian Recent [the mid Holocene to the Contact Period],
with the Mesolithic of south west Asia and Europe, the
American Archaic, and the Japanese Jomon period.
One
specific development, the seed-gathering economy of the
Paakantyi,10
has been labelled as “incipient agriculture”.11
Nevertheless the disparity in the timing of intensification
in Australia relative to other parts of the world, especially
1995:vii; Fagan 1995:151-73; Anderson 1998:148-50,152; Willcox
1999:493; Bar-Yosef 2003; Bellwood 2005.
There is considerable debate about definitional and dating issues which
will be discussed in subsequent chapters.
de Tapia 1992:157; Fritz 1995:5; Smith 1997:932; Sherratt 1997: 275;
Benz and Long 2000:460; Piperno and Flannery 2001; Matsuoka et al.
2002.
See n63 of Chapter 6 for further discussion of the dating.
Zhimin 1989:646-7; Crawford 1992:9,13-15; Smith 1995a:127,130,
133-4,136; Underhill 1997:112-4,120,138; Higham and Lu 1998:870-
1; Lu 1998:902,907; Pei 1998; Zhang and Wang 1998; Zhao 1998:
886,895; Wang et al. 1999; Shelach 2000:367-8,379; Toyama 2003:164-
5; Yan 2003:152; Yasuda 2003a:134; C. Zhang 2003:189-90; Bellwood
2005:116.
See n44 of Chapter 6 for fuller discussion of dating and diagnostic
issues.
Price and Brown 1985:13; Allen and O’Connell 1995:vii; Sassaman
1992; Fagan 1995:155,157,159.
Allen and O’Connell 1995:ix.
Morwood 1981:42-3; 1984:343; Lourandos 1985:400-1; Smith 1986:
314; Lourandos and Ross 1994; Allen and O’Connell 1995:viii; Lourandos
1997:322-3.
Lourandos 1997:23,333.
10
Allen 1972,1974.
11
Mulvaney 1975:242](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-20-320.jpg)
![19
Chapter 3.
People and Plants in Australia
Planting and Cultivation in Australia
Deliberate planting on a systematic basis is a hallmark
of early agricultural endeavours, be it in south west Asia,
Mesoamerica, China, or wherever. By any normal criteria
it is an absolutely essential component because, without
planting, agriculture is not possible. Consequently,
comprehending the dynamics that were involved in such a
step, and the transition that evolved from it, is fundamental
to our understanding of the origins of agriculture. In regard
to Australia the 19th century theorist de Candolle, in his
work Origin of Cultivated Plants, emphatically declared
that:
“The lowest savages know the plants of their country ... but
the Australians and Patagonians ... do not entertain the
idea of cultivating them.”
This view, usually expressed in less pejorative terms,
became, and still remains for many, an accepted fact. But,
contrary to de Candolle’s pronouncement, planting by
Aboriginal peoples in various parts of Australia was by
no means uncommon, as will be documented below. And,
as will become apparent in later chapters, agriculture was
indeed practiced in parts of Australia by Aboriginal people
in a traditional context.
The first instance in which it was claimed Indigenous
Australians engaged in planting arose in March 1658 when
a shore party from a Dutch ship “Emeloordt”, searching
for 68 sailors stranded two years earlier on the central west
coast of Western Australia following the sinking of the
“Vergulde Draeck”, reported to the Captain:
“On land we found much low scrub and in some places also
seeding land which they burn off in some places, arable or
seeding land, but we saw no fruit but some herbs that had
a fragrant scent.”
This was in all likelihood an erroneous report. What the crew
members from the “Emeloordt” had probably encountered
was the practice of firing scrub and grasslands, a common
feature of Aboriginal subsistence strategies, often referred to
as “firestick farming”. In their naivety they had interpreted
this as land clearance in preparation for planting.
de Candolle 1884:2
Major 1859:83.
The earliest recorded example of planting by Indigenous
Australians in Australia was first observed in the 1850s,
by noted explorer and surveyor A. C. Gregory. According
to Gregory the Nhanda of the Victoria District, 300
kilometres further north on the central west coast of Western
Australia:
“never dug a yam without planting the crown in the same
hole so that no diminution of food supply should result.”
leading R. H. Maiden to comment in 1889 in Useful Native
Plants of Australia, that this yam:
“[Dioscorea hastifolia] ... is the only plant on which they
[Aboriginal people] bestow any kind of cultivation, crude
as it is.”
Was this just a peculiar, isolated occurrence? It would
appear not, for at least two other varieties of yam, Dioscorea
bulbifera [D. sativa] and D. bulbifera var. elongata
[D. elongata], were planted in Australia in traditional
circumstances, on Cape York and its adjacent islands in
Queensland. This has been documented on a number of
occasions in a variety of places - on east Cape York among
the Umpila;
at Lockhart River and islands offshore;
and
among the Walmbaria and Mutumi of Flinders Island and the
adjacent mainland
- and west Cape York among the Wik-
Mungkan
and possibly the Tjungundji.
Similar activity
has also been noted on Groote Eylandt, off the Arnhem
Land coast, with “women digging up yams and replacing
part of the stem in the hole,”10
as well as at Kalumburu
Gregory 1886:23
Gregory, who had carried out exploration and survey work in the area in
the late 1840s and early 1850s originally made the claim in 1882 (though
this was not published until 1887), specifically stating:
“The natives on the West Coast of Australia are in the habit amongst other
things of digging up yams as a portion of their means of subsistence; the
yams are called ‘ajuca’ in the north and ‘wirang’ in the south. In digging
up these yams they invariably re-insert the head of the yams so as to be
sure of a future crop, but beyond this they do absolutely nothing which
may be regarded as tentative in the direction of cultivating plants for their
use.” (Gregory 1887:131)
Maiden 1889:22
Hynes and Chase 1982:40.
Harris 1977b:437.
Hale and Tindale 1933-36:113; Tindale 1974:96; Tindale 1977:349.
McConnel 1957:2; Campbell 1965:208.
Campbell 1965:208.
10
Tindale 1974:96](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-34-320.jpg)
![Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture
20
in the very north of Western Australia.11
These examples
quite possibly arose through a diffusional dynamic given
their proximity to and/or contact with peoples such as the
Macassans and Torres Strait Islanders who already practiced
cultivation. The fact that all sites on Cape York lie within an
area designated as being subject to [Torres Strait] “Island
Cultural Traits” supports this inference.12
The same explanation may also apply to a further two,
possibly three, species that were reportedly planted within
the region subject to Melanesian influence. Hynes and
Chase report the Pama Malnkana planted coconuts (Cocos
nucifera), each tree being owned by the planter,13
while the
Uradhi, according to Crowley, cultivated the sweet potato
(Ipomoea batatas) prior to contact with Europeans.14
The
Wik-Mungkan also reputedly planted another, unidentified,
tuber named as “Koothai”.15
But what of practices beyond the areas subject to the
aforementioned outside influences? Again a variety of
sources indicate that other Australian groups may have been
undertaking planting in their traditional context. Following
Gregory’s account of the planting of yams on the west
coast, a further claim was made in 1906 that Aboriginal
people had been undertaking planting. N. W. Thomas, in a
largely derivative work on Australia, made the extraordinary
statement that:
“The cultivation of purslane (Portulaca) seems to be a
well-established fact. It is grown like melons on slightly
raised mounds; before the seed vessels are ripe, the plant
is cut, turned upside down and dried in the sun; then the
seed vessels are plucked and rubbed down and the seed
collected. Many pounds weight can be collected in a day,
even when there is no cultivation.”16
Rather than being a well-established fact, Thomas’s assertion
is the only instance in which it has been claimed Portulaca
oleracea was cultivated in Australia.17
Commonly known
as munyeroo, it was certainly heavily utilised, a staple, in
11
Crawford 1982:31,44-5. In this instance the top of Dioscorea bulbifera
var. elongata [Ganmanggu] and var. rotunda [Gunu] was replanted.
12
Crowley 1983:306,Map 4.
13
Hynes and Chase 1982:40.
14
Crowley 1983:312.
15
Campbell 1965:208.
This term could not be found in the Dictionary and Source Book of the
Wik-Mungkan Language (Kilham et al. 1986) though it may be a misspelt
abbreviation of may kuthal, the bulbous root of “swamp grass” (Kilham
et al. 1986:79). Alternatively Harris (1977b:433) recorded kuthay as a
Dioscorea sp. At Lockhart River in east Cape York, so Kuthai may simply
be applied to any form of bulbous root (See Kilham et al. 1986:71,70).
16
Thomas 1906:113.
17
Thomas provided a very select bibliography (one page, 1906:251)
with a statement indicating that a comprehensive bibliography would be
published later (1906:xi-xii). Nothing in the select bibliography could
be found supporting Thomas’s claim and no trace could be found of a
comprehensive bibliography as a subsequent publication. The level of
details suggests that the information may come from a primary source,
perhaps a correspondent, but there is no confirmation of this. Consequently
the statement could not be verified and must be treated circumspectly.
People in Central Australia did, nevertheless, sometimes place “specially
constructed stone rings” to contain these plants (Latz 1995:250)
parts of Australia,18
as well as being cultivated in many
other parts of the world.19
Following Thomas’s suspect claim, however, instances
of planting by particular Aboriginal populations began to
appear more frequently. It was reported that Aboriginal
groups from south east Queensland germinated the very
large seed cones of the “bunya pine” (Araucaria bidwilli),
according to the informant they were “all sprouting”.
However the intention here appears to have been not to
grow these, but to eat them, by preserving them in swamps,
waterholes or creek beds for two or three months.20
The
bunya pines and their nutritious cones, found principally
in the territory of the Waka Waka and Gubbi Gubbi peoples
in the Blackall Ranges and Bunya Mountains of south
eastern Queensland, were the focus of gatherings of at
least 700 people from the local and adjacent regions, some
groups travelling over distances of up to 320 kilometres
or more.21
This normally occurred every third year, when
all the bunyas usually bore fruit synchronously.22
Small
groves of bunya pines were individually owned and
inherited and it has been suggested that the bunya seeds
were indeed planted.23
While there is some indication that
groups frequenting the area may have played some role in
the “pines” local distribution, perhaps through “sprouting”
leading to “incidental planting”,24
others have offered
the opinion that deliberate planting was unlikely as these
conifers took a lifetime or longer to reach maturity.25
Mary Gilmore, better known in Australia as the noted poet
Dame Mary Gilmore, was next to claim, in the 1930s, that
Aboriginal people, in this instance the Wiradjuri of central
New South Wales, had been engaging in planting and
husbandry. Recalling a number of incidents she allegedly
witnessed in her childhood in the early 1870s, either at
Wagga Wagga on the Murrumbidgee River or, more likely,
at Cowabbie Station, 65 kilometres northwest of there,
Gilmore recounted:
“It was here that I first saw more or less extensive planting
of seeds by the lubras [women]. This was done at the
direction of the chief, who, when the earth was cool enough
to walk upon [following firing], went first to one shrub and
then another, testing and examining the burnt capsules, and
where these had been destroyed directing the attention of
18
Allen 1974; Smith 1986:29.
19
It was also exploited in North America, among the Iroquois and
Hurons, as well as by peoples in the southwest U.S. and California, as
well as being cultivated in Europe and parts of Asia chiefly as a vegetable
(See USDA 1936:24;Byrne and McAndrews 1975; and http://www.fao.
org/docrep/t0646e/t0646e0t.htm:3.).
20
Petrie 1904:23; Daley 1931:20.
21
Meston 1895:82; Petrie 1904:11-13,15-16,23; French 1989:18-9.
Bunyas were also apparently found in the territory of the Dalla and
Jarowair people as well (French 1989:18).
There are claims of up to 20,000 people attending bunya feast (French
1989:19) but such claims are not generally accepted.
22
Mathew 1910:93-4.
23
Petrie 1904:16; Hyam 1940:117,
24
Walker 1977:13
25
Bennett 1930:13-14.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-35-320.jpg)
![People and Plants in Australia
21
the women to them. The women gathered fresh ones from
untouched shrubs, and planted them where the destroyed
ones stood. The use of ammonia was apparently known, for
when the seeds were in the scratched but still warm earth,
the little boys were requisitioned to damp them. Grass-seed
was gathered, a heavy kind, and I helped in this. When a
lot, still in ‘the ear’ had been collected it was rubbed by
hand, and then by a turn of the wrist the bark container
into which it was shaken tipped left and right, and the grain
lay clear at one end, with the husks in a little pile at the
other ........... The separated seed was sorted, the unsound
or small rejected and the best planted in the burnt area but
very lightly covered. It was not scattered, it was put in small
pinches so that if some failed there would still be enough
for a tussock. How I remember the grass planting so well
is that being a child I thought all seed was the kind wanted,
and gathered ripe and unripe, and chiefly the sort that rolls
on a sickle-shaped terminal. This, I was told, was not what
was required, that the wind would plant this; that it was
what did not run, and then catch in the earth, that had to
be planted by hand.
I had often seen the blacks set individual seeds as well as
replace, where the plant grew, those of what they ate. But
the former was usually done where they themselves first
made a small fire of twigs in order to prepare the earth by
heating it. Whenever they gave me the fruit of the ground-
berry, as we called it .................... I was invariably asked
for the seed, which was immediately planted beneath the
growth from which it came. I remember once I had an
exceptionally large berry, and without thinking spat the
seed out when the pulp was eaten from it. Because it was
a large seed the lubra I was with scolded me for waste,
hunting the grass till she found it, so that it could be put
back from where it originally came from and a strong
plant grow from it ............... Then there was their usage in
the matter of the quandong-tree [Santalum acuminatum].
They looked to see which of the stones or nuts were male
or female, and planted accordingly. When a grove was in
flower they brought branches from another grove to fertilize
the blossom.”26
Gilmore’s account includes some highly significant claims.
Not only does she insist that she witnessed the planting of
at least four different species of plant, only one of which
can be clearly identified, she proffers evidence of deliberate
fertilisation, pollination and seed selection. This last
mentioned behaviour, if true, is most remarkable in light
of the debates that have raged regarding intentionality in the
domestication of plants by early agricultural groups in other
parts of the world. Before continuing, however, the issue of
the accuracy and veracity of Gilmore’s recollections must
be considered.
While there is no direct corroboration of the planting and
26
Gilmore 1934:221-2
other activities mentioned by Gilmore,27
this is not unusual
as most accounts of planting in Australia rely upon a single
report. Despite the level of detail in her account, her lack
of specificity in terms of exact time and place nevertheless
make even indirect corroboration difficult. The only
specifics of this nature relate to the cross-pollination of
the quandong where, in contrast to the other parts of her
evidence, she later named two places where she had seen
this done, “Yarrengerry” and “near Bethungra”.28
Certainly
she was in the region during the period in question, her
family, particularly her father, were highly sympathetic
to local Aboriginal people,29
and there is evidence that
she played with Aboriginal children in their camp on
Houlaghans Creek near Wagga Wagga.30
She maintains
she had spent six weeks with the Wiradjuri on the banks of
the Murrumbidgee River in the charge of “the chief women
of the tribe”31
when recovering from poisoning by arsenic
“intended for them.”32
Although nothing is known of the
reputed poisoning, it is known she had two serious accidents
as a child, the second, when she was only six years old,
requiring an extended period of convalescence.33
This could
possibly be the period she alludes to when recounting the
episodes of planting. However the textual context points to
Cowabbie Station as it follows a discussion of Aboriginal
firing practices. Cowabbie is situated on the grasslands of
the open plains in contrast to the Murrumbidgee floodplain,
consisting of open woodland, with the traditional Aboriginal
economy having a strong riverine orientation.34
Views differ
as to Gilmore’s veracity, opinions ranging from there being,
“a generalized truth in her writings,”35
to, “one of those
fantasies that she invented, largely because they added
more colour and intensity to her narratives.”36
Gilmore’s
writings often provide a highly romanticised portrayal of
Aboriginal people,37
at times in terms that are not consistent
with established anthropological understandings, such as
frequent references to “chiefs”.38
Events she describes
elsewhere, such as massacres and atrocities committed
against Aboriginal people in the region, appear to relate to
27
The only corroboration offered by Gilmore is a claim (1935:v) that
she had received a letter which “endorsed” her observations regarding the
replanting of fire damaged plants.
28
Gilmore 1934:222
29
Read 1983; Wilde 1988
30
Cusack, Moore and Ovenden 1965:28.
31
Gilmore 1934:183
32
Gilmore 1935:173
33
Wilde 1988:46.
34
Flood 1988:274.
35
Read 1983:26.
36
Wilde 1988:289.
37
e.g. “The Waradgery Tribe” in 1932:172-3
38
Although she frequently uses this term, she shows an awareness that
they were not “chiefs” in the more conventional sense by acknowledging
they had “no autocratic power of life and death” (1935:227). She may
not have necessarily been misleading in this regard either, as George
Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of the Port Phillip Protectorate at the
time, appears to have encountered a man named “Wol.lut.but” in southern
New South Wales in the early-mid 1840s, who he described as “chief of
all the natives of this country, regulates their fights and disputes” (Clark
2000:184). And Howitt (1904:303) alludes to the existence of hereditary
headmen, called Bidja-bidja, in the southern Wiradjuri, the people from
the area Gilmore refers to.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-36-320.jpg)
![Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture
22
incidents that took place before she was born.39
It has been
suggested that, having heard of these events when young
from people directly conversant with them, she transposed
herself into the story.40
There is also evidence that her
father, perhaps others, may have been the real source of
at least some of her information on Aboriginal matters.41
Although I am inclined to this view, Gilmore’s evidence
must, unfortunately, be treated with great caution, if not
rejected outright.
Following the suggestion that an isolated grove of cabbage
palms (Livistona australis?) at Orbost in Victoria may have
been planted,42
there were no further reports of planting
by Aboriginal people for over thirty years. Then a spate of
reports appeared in the 1970s and 80s, many by professional
anthropologists and archaeologists, beginning with the
sowing of kurumi near Lake Darlot in the Western Desert of
central Western Australia. According to Dix and Lofgren’s
informants traditionally kurumi “seeds were carefully
scattered in the cracks of the clay pan to ensure that after
heavy rains a bountiful crop would be produced.”43
The
planting of kurumi, tentatively identified as Tecticornia
arborea,44
appears to have only been undertaken at only
one particular claypan associated with a sacred stone
arrangement.45
Two years later, in 1976, Kimber reported
having observed two men in Central Australia undertake
planting of no less than four different species, “native
fig” [Ficus sp.], yella [“bush potato”, Ipomoea costata],
moolyardi [Acacia dictyophleba - for spears] and finally
Sturt’s Desert Pea [Clianthus formosus], an adornment
signifying a successful hunter.46
These examples may,
however, have been an adaptation to modern circumstances
as the two individuals involved lived in fixed settlements
outside their country, and all the plants involved had, apart
from their functional and symbolic qualities, strong spiritual
associations with their traditional lands.
While there may be doubt that the episodic planting observed
by Kimber was a traditional practice, this is not the case
with the broadcast seeding of “bush tomatoes” (yalijarra -
39
Read 1983:26.
40
Read 1983:27.
41
A note in Gilmore’s handwriting and signed “M G” appears at the
bottom of p.170 of Copy No.7 of Under the Wilgas (Gilmore 1932)
indicating the Aboriginal legend “The Willi-wa Man No.2” originally
came from her father, that there had been some confusion, and that it may
not have been an Aboriginal legend at all. At various points she nominates
her father (1932:168; 1934: 163-4) and refers others in general terms
(1934:160). She also cites her uncles as a source for inordinately large
gatherings (5,000+)at the Brewarrina fish traps (1934:192).
42
Hyam 1940:17.
It would appear that this was actually first suggested in 1907 (Le Souef
1907:80).
It is more likely this grove was a remnant from a period when the
climate in this part of Australia was warmer and wetter as they also appear
in eastern New South Wales.
43
Dix and Lofgren 1974:74
44
In all likelihood it was Tecticornia arborea as Tindale (1974:145)
reports this species being collected and stored for months in kangaroo
skin bags in that area, though he called it buli buli. A related species,
Tecticornia verrucosa, was a staple in central Australia (Smith 1986:29).
45
Dix and Lofgren 1974/1090
46
Kimber 1976:146-7,149.
Solanum diversiflorum), first noted by ethnobotantist Fiona
Walsh in the same period. In this instance the Mardu of the
central north of the Western Desert, in the north western
region of Australia, traditionally broadcast the seeds over
burnt ground near their camp prior to the rains.47
A short time later yet another example of planting in Central
Australia, in this instance Nicotiana sp., was observed by
another ethnobotanist Peter Latz, who, like Kimber, was
uncertain whether this was a traditional practice or a “recent
innovation”.48
Certainly the dried leaves of Nicotiana spp.
were traditionally widely consumed in Central Australia,
there being at least four Nicotiana species known to have
been ingested by Australians for their nicotine content.49
It
is worth noting here that Nicotiana tabacum, the species
used in modern tobacco, was originally widely grown and
domesticated by Native Americans,50
and it has been argued
that psychoactive plants, “intoxicants”, may be among the
first to be grown extensively and domesticated.51
Although
the planting of Nicotiana in Central Australia is the only
documented instance of this, the practice could possibly
have been a traditional one and more widespread than Latz’s
evidence suggests. For example, when exploring the upper
Lyons River in the central west of Western Australia, F. T.
Gregory, brother of A. C. Gregory, recorded in 1858:
“... we halted for the night in latitude 230
59’39”. Tobacco
here grew to sufficient size for manufacture, occupying
many hundreds of acres of the best land.”52
Shortly after Latz’s observations were originally published
another example of sowing, involving two species and
apparently undertaken by a wide range of groups, came
to light in inland Australia. In this case ngardu (Marsilea
drummondii) and grass seeds, most likely Panicum
decompositum or one of its relatives, was propagated by
broadcast seeding, reportedly a traditional activity. This
used to happen, according to Kimber’s informant (Walter
Smith), at a “good camp ... or might be a good soak or
something, good sandhill ...”53
These were seeds that were
heavily utilised in the interior of Australia, playing a major
part in the subsistence economies of a broad region that
will be discussed later.
Finally, in terms of such accounts, D. E. Yen reported the
planting of two Ipomoea species, I. costata and I. polpha,
in an unspecified part of the desert region of Australia.54
The cultivation of the first of these, I. costata, the “bush
potato”, was noted earlier.55
47
Walsh 1990:34. See also Tonkinson 1991:53.
48
Watson 1983:40; Latz 1995:63.
49
Gerritsen 1994a:195-6; Latz 1995:62-64,230-36.
50
Keeley 1995:265.
51
Hayden 1995a:282,294.
52
Gregory 1884a:46 (31 May 1858).
This was the first documented British colonial exploration of this region.
53
Kimber 1984:16-17.
54
Yen 1989:60.
55
Kimber 1976](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-37-320.jpg)
![People and Plants in Australia
23
Summarising, it can be seen that there is direct
observational or ethnographic evidence detailed here of at
least seventeen distinct plant species that were probably
planted by Aboriginal Australians.56
In fact there are
more, as will become apparent. Although some of these
accounts, particularly Gilmore’s, may be suspect, the
evidence of planting would appear to be incontrovertible.
Certainly a proportion of these examples may have arisen
as a consequence of influences from peoples to the north
of Australia, Dutch pre-colonial interaction or modern
circumstances. But there is good evidence that planting of at
least six, perhaps seven, of these species was the outcome of
purely indigenous developments.57
Furthermore, there may
have been other situations in which planting was practiced
but not recorded. The brevity of small-scale planting means
that it could easily have been missed and this was quite
likely in relation to the 19th century, where much of our
information for large parts of southern Australia depends
upon the observational powers of amateur ethnographers
from that era. The stereotype, typified by de Candolle’s
pronouncement at the beginning of this section, that
Australia’s Aboriginal people didn’t engage in planting,
cultivation or agriculture may also have compromised the
observational acuity of these 19th century ethnographers.
It is noteworthy in this context that all the valid examples
recorded in the 20th century occurred in areas where
traditional or quasi-traditional societies were still persisting
(i.e. in northern Australia, central Australia and the Western
Desert). Another interesting observation relates to the
distribution of occurrences. All seven plantings identified
as purely indigenous developments occur in the arid and
semi-arid zones of central Australia, although this may
simply be an observational artefact. While not included
in the enumeration, the Gilmore examples are, however,
consistent with this category to some degree, coming from a
semi-arid zone. A similar pattern of seed planting occurring
predominantly in arid and semi-arid regions has also been
56
Dioscorea hastifolia,
Dioscorea bulbifera,
Cocos nucifera,
Ipomoea batatas,
Ipomoea costata,
Ipomoea polpha,
Tecticornia arborea,
Acacia dictyophleba,
Solanum sp.
Nicotiana sp.,
Marsilea quadrifolia/drummondii,
Santalum acuminatum,
Clianthus formosus,
“native fig” (Ficus sp.),
Unidentified shrub,
Unidentified grass (probably P. decompositum or other Panicum
sp.)
Unidentified “ground-berry”.
“Koothai” (possibly a Dioscorea sp. or “swamp grass”) is not included
as it cannot be identified with certainty as a separate and distinct species
from those already listed. The Thomas evidence on P. oleracea, as well as
the claims the bunya and the cabbage palm were planted, are not included
either as they are either not certain or based on eyewitness accounts.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
57
Ipomoea costata, Ipomoea polpha, Tecticornia arborea, Solanum sp.,
Nicotiana sp., Marsilea drummondii and Panicum decompositum or other
similar Panicum spp.
observed in California in relation to traditional Native
American practices.58
Other Forms of Interaction With Plants
Studies of Aboriginal interactions with plants and the
environment in Australia were hampered for a considerable
period by an inability to appropriately conceptualise the
relationship, until Hynes and Chase developed the notion
of “domiculture”.59
This characterised the interaction as a
form of whole or total environment management leading
to a “domesticated environment” and has great validity.60
The people involved controlled, to an extent, the total
environment through manipulation of segments, niches or
elements of it, producing in Hynes and Chase’s view, “the
conditions for plant domestication.”61
One of the principal tools in this approach was the extensive
use of fire, often called “firestick farming”, involving
controlled burning of selected areas. Firing, which required
a detailed knowledge of the environment, allowed easier
capture of small game, encouraged new growth, created more
diverse plant and animal communities, and also facilitated
movement through the country.62
Natural productivity was
increased to some extent by this practice, perhaps by as
much as 500-900%.63
This has led some to deem it to be
a form of cultivation.64
Aboriginal peoples, however, saw
their role in this not as cultivators, however, but as curators
of the natural environment.65
With the cessation of their
direct involvement in their country, and the firing of it, a
traditional custodian observed that it “[be]come wild now.
No-one look after him,”66
a point supported by numerous
instances in Australia of grasslands reverting to dense bush
and scrub following dispossession.67
Numerous other practices can be alluded to in keeping with
the domicultural approach. For example, temporary dams
were constructed in channels flowing out of jungle wetlands
around the Roper River in the Northern Territory ofAustralia
58
Keeley 1995:265.
59
Hynes and Chase 1982
60
Hynes and Chase 1982:38.
This concept highlights one of the difficulties of using “domestication”
as a diagnostic criteria for agriculture. Human intervention along the
lines described, particularly firing, probably results not only in changes
to the form and distribution of plant communities but also probably in the
morphogenetic structure of the species. Consequently some species may
be “domesticated” prior to planting and cultivation, such as described by
Ladizinsky (1987) with pulses (Lens sp.) in south west Asia, and then
undergo further morphogenetic changes when systematically planted and
harvested.
61
Hynes and Chase 1982:49.
62
Yen 1989:58; Jones 1969:226-7.
The extent of these practices has been called in to question by Horton and
others (Horton 1982; 2000:70-101; Collins 2006:329- 48). Horton has
argued that the impact of firing was “unique local effect” (1982:256), and
I am inclined to share this view, that it only had local or at most regional
impacts, and was not a generalised phenomenon as is often assumed.
63
Mellars and Reinhardt 1978:261; O’Connell, Latz and Barnett 1983:
99.
64
O’Connell, Latz and Barnett 1983:99.
65
Jones 1990:32.
66
Hynes and Chase 1982:41.
67
Jones 1969:228.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-38-320.jpg)
![Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture
24
at the end of the rainy, “wet”, season to maintain water levels
and thus encourage preferred bird and plant life.68
Activities
directed toward enhancing productivity by manipulation of
plant communities, as well as animals, insects, grubs and
worms can also be considered to fall within the domicultural
paradigm. Burning of cycad palms (Cycas sp.) to increase
nut production,69
similar treatment of the trailers of the
“bush potato” by the Kukatja of the northern part of the
Western Desert to promote tuber production,70
and again
with rushes (“flag” - Typha augustifolia?) in southern
Western Australia, to “improve it,”71
are further instances.
Other interesting examples include the stimulant “pituri”
(pitjuri - Duboisia hopwoodii) from southwest Queensland
and the “yam-daisy” (Microseris lanceolata) formerly found
extensively in western Victoria.
Pitjuri, a plant containing nicotine and nicotine related
compounds, when prepared, was extensively traded over
large areas of central Australia, reaching into southern
Australia.72
Such was the demand for pitjuri that Aboriginal
consumers reportedly would “give everything they possess
for it,”73
a significant observation in light of earlier
comments that intoxicant plants may have been the earliest
cultivars. While pitjuri was not planted, as far as is known,
the older branches were certainly burned to encourage
growth of more potent new shoots. The second exemplar,
the prolific yam-daisy, was a very important component of
subsistence in south eastern Australia, especially in Victoria.
Known as murnong, explorer Major Thomas Livingstone
Mitchell noted in south west Victoria 1836 that, “in many
places the ground was quite yellow with the flowers,”74
and Chief Protector Robinson reported on one area of
central northern Victoria where there had been “millions of
murnong or yam, all over the plain”75
in the early colonial
period (1840). Digging to obtain murnong loosened the soil,
a condition encouraging further propagation, leading one
researcher to describe it as a form of “natural cultivation”.76
Alas, soil compaction and grazing resulting from the
introduction of sheep and cattle by the colonial invaders
has made the yam-daisy a rarity these days.77
Activities intended to enhance the productivity of individual
plant species were not limited to manipulation of the
plants themselves but could also include their preferred
environments. The Iliaura and Wanji of the eastern
Northern Territory, for instance, blocked up of small
creeks and channels so that they overflowed and flooded
68
Campbell 1965:206.
Similarly the Owen Valley Paiute in eastern California built dams and
irrigation ditches up to 6 kilometres long in wetlands to promote the
growth of wild hyacinth, nut grass and spike rush (Harlan 1995:13; Pringle
1998:1447).
69
Lourandos 1997:48
70
Cane 1984:88.
71
Grey 1841a:2:294.
72
Watson 1983; Berndt, Berndt and Stanton 1993:116.
73
Bancroft 1879:7
74
Mitchell 1839:2:272.
75
Clark 1998-2000:1:135.
76
Gott 1982:65; 1987:45.
77
Gott 1983:12-13;1987:40,45.
the surrounding plains, promoting the growth of grasses
such as P. decompositum.78
Similarly a dam 330 ft. [100m]
long and 6 ft. [1.8m] high, first reported in 1969, had been
constructed at some time on the shallow Bulloo floodplain
in the arid northwest of New South Wales, ostensibly
to promote the growth of grass and seed plants such as
Panicum sp., Portulaca oleracea and Echinochloa sp.79
A similar intervention carried out on Cape York entailed
simply clearing the ground around favoured species
springing up near camp sites and erecting small barriers to
protect them from playing children.80
Beyond this generalised approach, more specific
interventions were also undertaken, including some of the
examples of planting discussed earlier, as well as “selective
propagation”, an interaction which results in the propagation
of the plant, without actual planting. Illustrating this is the
careful harvesting of yams by breaking off the tuber, leaving
the top and trailer behind, resulting in regrowth. This was
a deliberate action, with the harvesters quite conscious of
the consequences of the method,81
and was first noted in
the late 1850s in the Watjandi, a northern Nhanda group.82
The Watjandi, unlike their southern neighbours, did not
engage in utilisation of D. hastifolia to such a significant
extent, their country being much drier and containing only
isolated patches of alluvial soils. Traditionally the Anbarra
Gidjingali of Arnhem Land, Northern Territory also
harvested yams [manbandi - D. transversa] in this manner,
as did the Pama Malnkana of east Cape York [probably D.
bulbifera].83
One other form of behaviour resulting in the propagation of
plants is what is known as “incidental dispersal”, “incidental
planting” or “incidental domestication”84
, the bunya pine
cones discussed earlier being a possible example. A number
of other occurrences have been noticed in Australia, typified
by the proliferation of “wild tomatoes” and yukidjirri
berries over a wide area as a result of the Walbiri of the
Western Desert transporting “dampers” made with these.85
A consistent association, one the Anbarra Gidjingali
in Arnhem Land were quite conscious of, between old
camp sites and endemic fruit trees, particularly Eugenia
suborbicularis, is also thought to be the result of incidental
dispersal. More recently watermelons, a modern addition
to the Anbarra Gidjingali diet, have also started appearing
around camp sites.86
Lastly, the frequent appearance of a
78
Tindale 1974:102; 1977:347.
79
Rowlands and Rowlands 1969; Jones 1979:143.
Such dams may well have had other additional functions, as will be
discussed in Chapter 5.
80
Hynes and Chase 1982:41
81
Jones 1975:23.
82
Oldfield 1865:277
83
Jones 1975:23; Hynes and Chase 1982:40.
84
Rindos 1984:156.
85
Kimber 1976:145.
In recent times the Alyawara introduced S. chippendalei south of its normal
range through the discard of the seeds of this fruit when bought back to
camp in cars (Peterson 1979:173).
“Dampers” are flat, unleavened bread-like food in Australia.
86
Jones 1975:24.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-39-320.jpg)
![People and Plants in Australia
25
plant, “dillines” [dilanj – Nitraria billardieri], on and around
the occupation mounds found in western Victoria and on
the Murray River is strongly suspected to be the result of
incidental planting. Bearing large berries containing a stone,
“the natives,” according to Beveridge, “are extremely fond
of these berries, and to this fondness may be attributed the
fact of their prevalence on the cooking mounds.”87
Human-Plant Interactions
Avariety ofAustralian examples of human-plant interactions
have been presented in the preceding sections. While not
necessarily typical of Aboriginal cultures in Australia they
do represent a range of such interactions. Similar interactions
have, of course, been observed in other supposedly incipient
and early agricultural economies. The point has been made
elsewhere that planting should not be separated “from the
antecedent activities of intervention,”88
as indicated by plant
remains in the archaeological sequence in eastern North
America showing a gradualistic, incremental development
toward agriculture.89
Having arrived at a similar conclusion,
Jarman et al. had previously attempted to characterise
the process by developing a typology of intensification
reflecting the growing concentration on particular plants,
with subsistence becoming increasingly oriented toward
those plants and the control of them.90
Their classification
included:
Casual gathering: “resources exploited simply
because they are in the vicinity”
Systematic Gathering: “particular plants or groups
of plants become the focus of regular and systematic
economic activities” with “some husbanding of
resources”
Limited Cultivation: “productivity is encouraged
and regulated ... by transplanting, tillage, weeding,
irrigation and so on.”
Developed Cultivation: “propagation of crops under
human control”
While this classification has value in terms of identifying
some sub-types of subsistence economies it is probably too
general to account for the Australian evidence. It also offers
little insight into how people might shift from one category
to another through intensification, particularly how the shift
from Systematic Gathering to Limited Cultivation might
be achieved. Casual Gathering is also probably based on a
misconception, as the Australian evidence indicates there
was usually an underlying resource conservation strategy,
to avoid over-exploitation, in the selection of areas and
specific plant communities to be exploited, particularly
in women’s gathering activities. What might appear to
be casual gathering is often an informally programmed
87
Beveridge 1889:35. See also Gott and Conran (1991:34).
88
Smith 1995b:211.
89
Yarnell 1985:698-9.
90
Jarman, Bailey and Jarman 1982:53-4.
1)
2)
3)
4)
systematic exploitation of diverse resources.91
This is the
essence of the domicultural approach.
Considering their Systematic Gathering category, Higgs and
Jarman’s appear to assume that where there is intensive
exploitation of particular plant resources that these plants
would eventually be planted. But, apart from some examples
which will be discussed later, there is little evidence that
planted species prior to planting were necessarily gathered
any more systematically, or exploited more extensively,
than most other local resource.92
The dynamics that led
to plants being planted, and which ones assume economic
importance, I would suggest, are more complex than Higgs
and Jarman envisage. Moreover, certain Australian groups,
such as the Paakantyi of the Darling River valley, harvested
extensive stands of seed plants on a systematic basis,
perhaps husbanding them to some degree but, according to
current understandings, they never planted these.93
Hence it
is difficult to see what predictive power this categorisation
has.
Lastly, where there was “limited cultivation”, (i.e. planting)
no obvious cases of tilling, weeding or irrigation were noted,
a point that will be elaborated on a little later in relation to
such activities in the evolution of agriculture elsewhere.
Furthermore, the validity of including transplantation is
questionable, as the Australian evidence shows that it was
a feature in only two, perhaps three cases, where limited
planting was traditionally carried out, with the Umpila
and the Lockhart River people of Cape York, for example,
transplanting yams on offshore islands.94
An alternative classification of human-plant interactions,
from an evolutionary biology perspective, has been
promulgated by David Rindos, providing for three
categories of “domestication”95
:
(1) Incidental Domestication:
wild plant distribution “that appears to be the result
of human feeding behaviour”
“cultivated plants that have portions of their gene
pool incidentally dispersed or protected”
(2) Specialised Domestication: “intensification of certain
tendencies present in incidental domestication.”
91
Chase 1989; Yen 1989.
The main form of what I would consider to be Incidental Gathering was
undertaken by men out hunting and “snacking” on berries and other
“consumables” they passed by in the course of their activities. See for
example Oldfield (1865:271) and Hiatt (1968: 210) and fuller discussion
on p.88 of Chapter 6.
92
The nearest approach to Systematic Gathering in this regard was
with the planting and harvesting of yams on Flinders Island where it was
reported, “the yam is abundant, hundreds of these deep holes are evident
in a comparatively small area.” (Hale and Tindale 1933-6:113)
93
Allen 1972;1974
94
Hynes and Chase 1982:40; Harris 1977b:437.
The yams planted by the Walmbaria of Flinders Island were probably also
originally transplanted from the mainland. Evidence will also be presented
in the next chapter that the Nhanda transplanted their yams as well.
95
Rindos 1984:154-166.
a)
b)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-40-320.jpg)
![29
Chapter 4.
A Case of Indigenous Agriculture in Australia
Preamble
In 1606, when Europeans, as far as is known, first made
landfall in Australia and had contact with Indigenous
Australians for the first time,
the process of intensification
had been in progress in Australia for at least five millennia.
At about the same time as the Europeans became aware
of the existence of the Great South Land the Macassans
also began visiting parts of its north coast. Meanwhile,
significant Melanesian influences continued to impact on
Aboriginal cultures in north and north eastern Australia
through the Torres Strait corridor, although possibly
disrupted by the drowning of the Sahulian land bridge in the
mid-Holocene.
All these dynamics, be they endogenous or
exogenous, appear to have led to distinctive developments in
particular parts of Australia. The first of these to come under
consideration relates to the Nhanda and northern Amangu
groups of the central west coast of Western Australia.
As stated earlier, the received wisdom is that there was
no indigenous agriculture in Australia, a preconception
I will strongly dispute. But before deliberating on the
possibility of this indigenous agriculture in Australia a
digression is necessary in order to clarify what is meant
by “agriculture”. The characterisation and definition of
“agriculture”, describing what is, in effect, a complex array
of behaviours and relationships, is highly variable and at
times quite confused.
Agriculture, according to Reed is
“the totality of the human practices involving those living
energy traps which man plants, breeds, nurtures, grows,
guards, preserves, harvests, and prepares for his own use.”
When the “Duyfken”, under the command of Willem Janszoon mapped
about 300 kilometres of the western coastline of Cape York.
See Clarke 2003:183-86 for a listing of some the forms of influence.
There has been some difficulty over the years determining who
occupied what territories in the region, and this is still a matter of debate
(Blevins 2001:ix,1-7,146,154; Gerritsen 2004:85- 8). Here the area from
50 kilometre south of the Murchison River to central and western Shark
Bay is assigned to the Watjandi Nhanda group (Murchison River) and
an unnamed group at Shark Bay. In the Victoria District, Hutt River to
Irwin River, I assign the Nhandakorla Nhanda to the northern part and
the Amangu Nhanda (northern Amangu) to the southern part, although the
southern group is often considered on linguistic grounds to be a separate
group just called the Amangu. Unless specifically indicated otherwise
Nhanda will be used in a generic sense in application to the Victoria
District groups.
Scarry 1993:7; Harris 1996:3; Leach 1997:145-6.
An example of one end of the range of definitions is Pryor (1983:94), who
equates agriculture in its “widest sense” with “food production” but then
includes animal domestication in this as well as plant domestication.
Reed 1977:19.
Rindos treats agriculture as a form of plant colonisation of
a well-defined area created by human disturbance,
while
Yarnell describes agriculture as “intentional husbandry
practiced by humans.”
MacNeish sees it as the “planting of
multipropagators (i.e. seeds) or cultivars in relatively large
plots or fields,”
but according to Meadows it is simply the
“practice of growing crops ... Anyone who sows or harvests
domesticated plants is involved in agriculture.”
While
it would appear from this that there is little definitional
consensus, in behavioural terms the principal elements
appear to be, after Redman and Harris,10
propagation
(sowing, planting, usually of “domesticates”), husbandry
(soil preparation, maintenance of moisture and fertility,
exclusion of competitors, protection from predators),
harvesting and finally storage. The scale or areal extent
of these activities would also appear to be a significant
factor, though not always explicitly stated, as some of the
preceding examples show. This, in fact, is often one of
the criteria employed to distinguish between agriculture
and horticulture,11
as typified by MacNeish’s concept of
horticulture as “cultivation that emphasises the planting of
individual domesticates or cultivars in relatively limited
plots.”12
But, how ever one views it, clearly planting is
absolutely essential to any consideration of agriculture.
The common requirement that the planted cultivar be
“domesticated” is highly problematic, however.13
Certainly
many, but not all, cultivated food plants appear to undergo
morphological [phenotypic] changes and/or speciation,
some quite quickly, once they are systematically planted,
and in so doing may become human-dependent.14
Whether
a cultivated plant does become domesticated may depend,
Rindos 1984:161.
Yarnell 1985:698.
MacNeish 1992:11
Meadows 1996:392.
10
Redman 1978:91; Harris 1989:22.
11
Bronson 1977:25-6; Leach 1997:146.
12
MacNeish 1992:10
13
See Helbaek 1970:195; Higgs and Jarman 1972:7; Jarman 1972:15,
20,23; Wilke et al. 1972:204; Coursey 1976a:400n5; 1976b:72; Reed
1977:19; Redman 1978:92; Bailey 1981:2; Nishida 1983:306,310,318;
Sowunmi 1985:127; Yen 1985:323; Ladizinsky 1987; Harris 1989:19;
Shipek 1989:159; White 1989:157; Zohary 1989:369; Hillman and Davies
1990:156,166; Harlan 1992a:25; Ingold 1996:21-22; Rindos 1996:211;
Spriggs 1996:525; Sherratt 1997:275; Anderson 1998:145; Willcox
1999:487-492; Benz and Long 2000:460; Cauvin 2002:51-61; Asouti and
Fairbairn 2002:182.
14
It should be noted that even some species that are classically human
dependent, such as wheat, can still in fact survive in the wild without
human assistance (See Jarman 1972:23; Canadian Food Inspection](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-44-320.jpg)
![Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture
32
planted or sowed is an old one. It was indeed one of the
rationalisations employed to justify the expropriation of
Australia, often repeated in the ethnographic literature
of the 19th century.31
It is also a common preconception
or unquestioned assumption among modern scholars.
However, one confounding case in particular, which arose
as a consequence of an accident of history a little over 370
years ago, may warrant closer attention.
On the 16 November 1629 two Dutch mariners, 18 year-
old cabin-boy Jan Pelgrom de Bye and 24 year-old soldier
Wouter Loos, were deliberately marooned on the shores of
the west coast of Australia, at a place now believed to be
the mouth of the Hutt River,32
450 kilometres north of Perth,
Western Australia. These hapless seafarers were abandoned
on the orders of Captain Francisco Pelsaert for their part in
a bloody mutiny. Five months earlier, in the early hours of
4 June 1629, the Dutch ship “Batavia” had been wrecked
on Morning Reef in the Wallabi Group of the Abrolhos
Islands, 60 kilometres from the Western Australian coast.
All but about 40 of the 316 passengers and crew appear
to have eventually managed to make their way to nearby
islands, coral specks in most instances, by boat, swimming
or clinging to flotsam. However, water was in critically
short supply, so Captain Pelsaert and about 40 of the crew
sailed in the ship’s yawl to the continental mainland to
search, without success. Rather than return to the beleagued
survivors, Pelsaert next decided to head for the Dutch fort at
Batavia (modern-day Djakata) in Java for help. And so, in
an epic voyage, they sailed the open boat 2,400 kilometres
back to Indonesia, hoping to effect a rescue. In their absence
an horrific mutiny, the Batavia Mutiny, took place in which
125 men, women and children were murdered.
The mutineers had been secretly conspiring even before the
“Batavia” was wrecked. With Pelsaert gone, the mutineers,
led by Undermerchant Jeronimus Corneliszoon connived
to have body of Dutch and French soldiers abandoned on
one of the islands, West Wallabi Island, so as to remove
any source of opposition. They thought the soldiers would
die of thirst or hunger there, but in fact they prospered,
finding water and living on bird’s eggs, seals and tammar
wallabies. The soldiers were soon joined by some stragglers
who had escaped from the mutineers. They informed the
soldiers of the mutineers’ murderous rampage. Because
the mutineers planned to capture any rescue ship and
become pirates they decided it was necessary to eliminate
the soldiers and stragglers, known collectively as the
Defenders. Consequently the mutineers launched two
attacks against the Defenders, both quite ineffective. In
the course of the conflict the Defenders even managed to
capture Corneliszoon and so the mutineers elected a new
leader, Wouter Loos. Loos then launched another, much
more effective attack, on the Defenders. They were about
to overwhelm them when, on 17 September, Pelsaert
31
e.g. Lang in Eyre 1845:2:298; Curr 1886:1:36,78; Worsnop 1897:2.
32
Gerritsen 1994a:271-287; Playford 1996:237-42; Gerritsen, Slee and
Cramer 2005; Gerritsen 2007b,2008.
miraculously reappeared in the rescue ship, the “Sardam”.
The leader of the Defenders, Webbie Hayes, raced to warn
Pelsaert of the mutineers plot to seize his ship, and the
mutiny was immediately put down and the mutineers
rounded up. Following a series of inquisitions in which
judicial torture was freely used, 8 mutineers, including de
Bye, were sentenced to be hanged. Due to lack of evidence
Loos escaped that sentence. Pelsaert and the ship’s council
decided in the end to maroon Loos and de Bye (because
of his youth) on the Australian mainland.33
Pelsaert
subsequently issued the castaways, the first Europeans
known to inhabit Australia, with orders, which read (in
part):
“.... to put ashore there or here, to make themselves known
to the folk of this land by tokens of friendship. Whereto
are being given by the Commandeur [Pelsaert] some
Nurembergen [cheap wooden toys and trifles], as well as
knives, Beads, bells and small mirrors, of which shall give
to the Blacks only a few until they have grown familiar
with them.
Having become known to them, if they then take you into
their Villages to their chief men, have courage to go with
them willingly. Man’s luck is found in strange places;”34
In order to assist the reluctant “pioneers” Pelsaert provided
them not only with the aforementioned articles but also, on
the day they were put ashore, “... a Champan [flat-bottomed
boat] provided with everything [my emphasis]...”35
Exactly two centuries later (1829) the European colonisation
of Western Australia began in earnest when the British
established a permanent settlement, the Swan River Colony,
on the site of the present-day state capital, Perth. For a
decade the colony was largely restricted to an area within
a radius of 80 kilometres around Perth, during which time
the Indigenous populations were pushed aside and then
“pacified” when they began to resist. Tentative explorations
beyond this area took place during this period, but in 1839
an ambitious expedition was planned to examine the coastal
lands between Perth and Shark Bay, 880 kilometres to the
north. Led by Lt. George Grey (later Sir George Grey,
Governor of South Australia, New Zealand and then the
Cape Colony) the expedition soon foundered when, at Shark
Bay, they were caught in a terrible cyclone [hurricane] - the
33
At the time the continent was Terra Incognita to Europeans, unknown
apart from the shadowy outlines of parts of the north, south and west
coasts.
Numerous accounts of the Batavia Mutiny have been written, for
example:
Drake-Brockman, H. 1963/1982 Voyage to Disaster. London:
Angus Robertson.
Godard, P. 1993 The First and Last Voyage of the Batavia, Perth:
Abrolhos Publishing.
Gerritsen, R. 1994 And Their Ghosts May Be Heard. South
Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, pp.16-30,271-287.
Dash, M. 2002 Batavia’s Graveyard London: Weidenfeld and
Nicholson.
•
•
•
•
34
Pelsaert 1629:230
35
Pelsaert 1629:237](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-47-320.jpg)
![A Case of Indigenous Agriculture in Australia
33
“eye” passing directly over them. Having lost most of their
stores and equipment Grey decided to return immediately to
Perth in the two remaining boats. Continuing south for some
300 kilometres Grey attempted to put in at a place known as
Gantheaume Bay, the embouchure of the Murchison River
and Wittecarra Creek. Unfortunately a large and unexpected
surf close to shore swamped the two boats, leaving Grey
and his party 500 kilometres from “civilisation” with little
food and no water. The party resolved at that point to walk
overland back to Perth, experiencing great hardship, but
accomplished this remarkable feat with the loss of only
one life. In the course of his travails Grey kept a journal,
later published as part of A Journal of Two Expeditions
In North-West and Western Australia, 1837-39, in which
he recorded at length the events that took place and his
observations along the way. Several days after their mishap
at Gantheaume Bay, as the ragged band of explorers
approached the Hutt River, Grey began to make some
interesting observations. About 18 kilometres from the Hutt
River valley, in a valley leading into it, Grey recorded in
his journal:
“April 4 1839: we soon fell in with the native path we quitted
yesterday; but now became quite wide, well beaten and
differing altogether by its permanent character, from any I
had seen in the southern portion of this continent ... And as
we wound along the native path my wonder augmented; the
path increased in breadth and its beaten appearance, whilst
along the side of it we found frequent wells, some of which
were ten and twelve feet [3-4 m] deep, and were altogether
executed in a superior manner. We now crossed the dry bed
of a stream, and from that emerged upon a tract of light
fertile soil quite overrun with warran [original emphasis]
plants [the yam plant - Dioscorea hastifolia], the root of
which is a favourite article of food with the natives. This
was the first time we had seen this plant on our journey,
and now for three and a half consecutive miles [5.6 kms]
traversed a piece of land, literally perforated with holes the
natives made to dig this root; indeed we could with difficulty
walk across it on that account whilst the tract extended
east and west as far as we could see. It is now evident
that we had entered the most thickly-populated district of
Australia that I had yet observed, and ... more had been
done to secure a provision from the ground by hard manual
labour than I could believe it in the power of uncivilised
man to accomplish. After crossing a low limestone range
we came upon another equally fertile warran [original
emphasis] ground .....
The next day, as they reached Hutt River, Grey continued:
April 5 1839: ..... The estuary [actually a salt marsh, Hutt
Lagoon] became narrower here, and shortly after seeing
these natives, we came upon a river running into it from the
eastward [Hutt River]; its mouth was about forty yards [36
m] wide, the stream strong but the water brackish, and it
flowed through a very deep ravine, having steep limestone
hills on each side ... Being unable to ford the river here, we
followed it in a SE direction for two miles [3.2 kms], and
in this distance passed two native villages, or, as the men
termed them, towns - the huts of which they were composed
differed from those in the southern districts, in being built,
and very nicely plastered over the outside with clay, and
clods of turf, so that although now uninhabited they were
evidently intended for fixed places of residence.”36
Over the next 130 kilometres, as Grey and his party
traversed the Victoria District, they encountered a series
of small fertile river valleys (the Bowes, Chapman,
Greenough, Irwin and Arrowsmith Rivers) each conforming
to the pattern observed at Hutt River in terms of the
intensive utilisation of the warran plant (it was actually
known locally as ijjecka or adjukoh). Two further villages
were sighted, at the Bowes and Greenough Rivers. Grey
estimated the latter “contained at least a hundred and fifty
natives”37
. All the elements of Grey’s observations were
subsequently borne out over the following 12 years, as
exploration continued and British settlements became
established in the Victoria District [Hutt River to Irwin
River], by a variety of explorers, government officials
and pioneers including Lt. Helpman (Explorer), A. C. and
F. T. Gregory (Surveyors, Explorers), James Drummond
(Government Botanist, Pioneer), Mrs Brown (Pioneer),
Phillip Chauncy (Surveyor), John Septimus Roe (Surveyor-
General), William Burges (Government Resident), Edward
Cornally (Shepherd) and Dr Robert J. Foley (Pioneer). Lt.
Helpman, for example, provided a detailed description of
the type of huts referred to by Grey:
“We here met with the first native hut; it was well plastered
outside and the timber which formed it was about 6in.
[15cm] thickness, about 6ft. [1.8m] high inside and capable
of holding ten persons easily.”38
Captain Stokes and his party from the famous “Beagle”
(Darwin was not on this voyage) even slept in one during a
land reconnaissance in the Geraldton area in 1841:
“We noticed their winter habitations substantially
constructed and neatly plastered over with red clay ... Some
neighbouring wigwams of superior structure gave us snug
quarters for the night.”39
36
Grey 1841a:2:12,19
I believe I have identified the site of this first village, as well as some of
the others in the region, through field investigations (Gerritsen 2002).
The site of this first village appears to cover an estimated area of almost 4
hectares (Personal Observation 29/4/1998,21/5/1999) having an estimated
population of 290(Gerritsen 2002:12).
37
Grey 1841a:2:37
38
Helpman 1846:9
39
Stokes 1841:2-3.
How Stokes came to the conclusion these dwellings were only inhabited
in winter is a moot point as he was only in the area for about one and a
half days in early summer (1846:2:385-93). He probably just assumed
this was when they were usually occupied because of their substantial
construction. However winters here are quite mild (minimums never fall
below zero, av. maximum 18 deg.C) compared to further south where far
less substantial or protective shelters were constructed. Protection from rain](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-48-320.jpg)
![Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture
34
Perhaps of greater significance were other comments made
by some of the vanguard of the colonial invasion. William
Burges, the first representative of the Colonial government
in the district, reported in 1851 that:
“They [the Nhanda people] seem very little addicted to
hunting and very few of them are even expert at tracking a
Kangaroo. This may result from the great variety of edible
roots, particularly the A-jack-o or warang which grows
here in great abundance.”40
a view echoed by Helpman:
“They are a fine race of men but seem to depend entirely
[my emphasis] upon warran and gum, of which they
have great abundance. Very few, even of the women, had
kangaroo skins”41
Finally A. C. Gregory, as mentioned earlier, a noted
Australian explorer, provided the telling observation
mentioned in the last chapter regarding the Nhanda people
of the Victoria District:
“Agricultural science seemed to have made some progress,
as they never dug a yam without planting the crown in the
same hole so that no diminution of food supply should
result.”42
with the conclusion supported by Maiden in 1889 in Useful
Native Plants of Australia:
“[Dioscorea hastifolia] ... is the only plant on which they
[Aboriginal people] bestow any kind of cultivation, crude
as it is.”43
The significance of these passages lie in the references to the
warran, the yam plants growing “as far as we could see”, or,
“tracts of land several square miles in extent”44
[calculated
to cover an area of 15-16 sq. kms45
], evidence of their
propagation, the paths, the wells, the huts and the villages
- all bespeak an agricultural society exhibiting a high degree
also appears an unlikely explanation. This area receives about 463 mm
p.a., about half that of Perth, usually in winter from heavy falls lasting only
an hour or two. Curiously Stokes’ reference to “their winter habitations
substantially constructed” is omitted from the later account.
40
Burges 1851a:6
41
Helpman 1849:3.
42
Gregory 1886:23
It will be recalled that Gregory, who had been in the district at various
times between 1849 and 1854, originally made the claim in 1882 (though
not published until 1887), in which he specifically stated:
“The natives on the West Coast of Australia are in the habit amongst other
things of digging up yams as a portion of their means of subsistence; the
yams are called ‘ajuca’in the north and ‘wirang’in the south. In digging
up these yams they invariably re-insert the head of the yams so as to be
sure of a future crop, but beyond this they do absolutely nothing which
may be regarded as tentative in the direction of cultivating plants for their
use.” (Gregory 1887:131).
43
Maiden 1889:22.
44
Grey 1841a:1:292.
45
See Gerritsen 1994a:298n19.
of sedentism.46
Gregory’s information is unequivocal and
clearly indicates propagation was in evidence, while Grey
elsewhere observed “these circumstances all combined
to give the country an appearance of cultivation, and of
being densely inhabited, such as I had never before seen”.47
Other comments, particularly Helpman’s and Burges’,
regarding the degree of dependence on the yams, if read
in conjunction with Grey and others on the extent of the
yam grounds and the presence of villages, strongly suggests
that this propagation was carried out on a systematic basis,
to an extent where it provided a major proportion of local
subsistence.
Dr Foley, in 1851, referring to the Chapman River valley,
noted “You can see for miles, and it being dug for warrang
or agacs, as they call it here, you can see the nature of the
soil.”48
At nearby Wizard Peak, Bynoe, the surgeon from
the “Beagle”, had noticed during their reconnaissance a
decade earlier that “the native yam seemed to grow in great
abundance.”49
Again Grey, in describing the Arrowsmith
River valley reported, “the whole of this valley is an
extensive warran ground”.50
Grey’s remark, that the ground
at Hutt River was “literally perforated with holes the
natives made to dig this root”, was often repeated by other
observers, pointing to intensive harvesting.51
Unfortunately, apart from one minor study carried out in
1914,52
no published archaeological investigations have
ever been carried out in the Victoria District, necessitating
a reliance on historical ethnographic sources. These limited
sources do not contain any information on any husbandry
that may have been undertaken by the Nhanda of the
Victoria District. However it could be inferred that at Hutt
River at least the plants may have been watered. Grey, it
will be recalled, stated that, “we found frequent wells, some
of which were ten and twelve feet [3-4 m] deep, and were
altogether executed in a superior manner”. He described
them in another account as being “of a depth and size quite
unknown in the southern portions of the continent.”53
The
climate in this semi-arid region is of Mediterranean type,
with hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters, and an annual
46
See Gerritsen (2002) for an analysis of the sites, form of the structures,
size of the settlements, degree of sedentism and the settlement pattern.
Information has recently come to light which appears to confirm the
conclusion in that work that the dwellings were hemispherical in their
morphology (Vivienne 1901:337).
Furthermore Rev. John Wollaston (Burton and Henn 1954:144) recorded
in his diary (1 March 1853) that he had learnt from Government Botanist
James Drummond Snr. and his son John Drummond (policeman stationed
in the Victoria District) that in the Victoria District, “Their families are
more numerous and less wandering in their movements.”
47
Grey 1841b:44.
48
Foley 1851.
49
Bynoe in Stokes 1846:2:389.
50
Grey 1841a:2:54.
51
e.g. Helpman 1846:9-10; Roe 1847:26.
Rev. Wollaston (Burton and Henn 1954:144) also recorded in his diary (1
March 1853) that he had learnt from the Drummonds that in the Victoria
District “the ‘Warrang’, a kind of Yam, greatly abounds and grows to a
large size”.
52
Campbell 1914.
53
Grey 1841b:44.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-49-320.jpg)
![A Case of Indigenous Agriculture in Australia
35
rainfall of 463 mm [18.5 in]. Wells of the type described
by Grey normally only appear singly in the arid zone in
Australia, an adaptation to the “more marginal areas of
the desert lowlands.”54
Following an exhaustive search of
the ethnographic literature, historical and contemporary,
regarding the occurrence of a number of these type of
wells in close proximity, only two comparable cases could
be found. One was an account from northern Australia by
explorer Ludwig Leichhardt of “some large wells, ten or
twelve feet deep [3-4 m], and eight or ten feet [2.4-3 m]
in diameter, which the natives had dug near the Zamia
groves, but they were without the slightest indication of
moisture.”55
The other was from the Irwin River valley,
again in the Victoria District, where Lt. Helpman reported
“several wells of considerable size dug about 8 feet [2.4 m]
deep.”56
Given that there are dozens of permanent springs
in the Hutt region,57
Grey actually commenting on passing
springs “every few hundred yards” and a “chain of reedy
fresh water swamps” on 3 and 4 April, 1839,58
as well as
the presence of various watercourses (Hutt River and a
number of creeks), it is difficult to account for the wells.
The most likely explanation was that they were being used
54
Veth 1989:83;1993:106.
55
Leichhardt 1847b:403-4.
Martin (1865:281) reported another possible example, in this instance
“native wells” which may have been 3-4 m deep, spaced about a mile
apart inland from Roebuck and La Grange Bay in the south Kimberley
region of Western Australia.
56
Helpman 1846:13-14.
Grey (1841a:2:39-41) also reported two separate wells of “considerable
depth” and “great depth” in the Irwin River valley on 9 April 1839, even
though there was a spring in the vicinity. Mrs Brown (1851:3) also reported
a well (dimensions were not mentioned but it was deep enough for their
dogs to fall in) near Mt. Hill which lies between the Greenough and Irwin
Rivers.
57
Australian Topographic Survey Map 1741
58
Grey 1841a:2:10,13
to water the yam fields and this contention is supported by
their adjacency to the yam fields as well as by the similar
occurrence of grouped wells in the Irwin River valley.
The yam plant referred to earlier, the warran or ijjecka,
Dioscorea hastifolia, is a species of yam that is in fact one
member of the tropical genus Enantiophyllum, described
as “ ... the most tropical yams”.59
Yet in Western Australia
its distribution was almost exclusively encompassed by the
South-West Botanical Province,60
ranging from the wetter
Mediterranean climate just south of Perth, to the prolific
Victoria District, with isolated occurrences in the fringe of
the coastal desert region of southern Shark Bay, reportedly
“abounding” on Salutation Island [1.5 sq. kms] in that
locality when the British reconnoitred there in 1851.61
Around Perth the tuber grew to the thickness of a man’s
thumb,62
“to a very large size,”63
in the Victoria District and
the thickness of a man’s thigh at Shark Bay.64
The global
distribution of the Enantiophyllum genus, excluding the
cultivar Dioscorea alata, is illustrated in Figure 7 below:
It can readily be seen that there are two main areas of
distribution, in Africa and Asia/Oceania, separated by the
deserts of the Middle East, with an isolated outlier on the
central west coast of Western Australia. Australia, however,
was completely isolated from the Paleocene [65 Million
59
Alexander and Coursey 1969:410.
60
Beard 1984; Keighery 1990:64.
61
Helpman 1851:273; Roth 1903:48.
Isolated specimens have recently been reported from the “northern range
end” on North West Cape (Keighery and Gibson 1993:55,73).
62
Moore 1884:74
63
Burges 1851a:6
64
Oldfield 1865:277
Figure 7: Global Distribution of Enantiophyllum
(Courtesy of the Linnean Society of London)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-50-320.jpg)
![Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture
36
Years Ago] until the mid-Miocene [20 MYA],65
the period in
which the Dioscoreaceae were evolving, probably in south
east Asia or Africa,66
virtually ruling out the possibility that
Dioscorea hastifolia has evolved independently in Western
Australia. If this is the case then it can only have reached
its distribution in Western Australia by natural migration
from the north of Australia, or with human assistance. Some
have speculated that D. hastifolia, or its ancestral species,
could have migrated by coming directly across the Great
Sandy Desert,67
or by “extending progressively down the
coast” to reach the west coast and then “evolving into a
distinct species over … perhaps several million years”.68
Natural migration such as this is extremely improbable,
however. By the Paleocene Australia had broken away
from Antarctica and was heading north, before beginning
to collide with the Asia/Pacific region in the mid-Miocene.
In so doing it entered the desert belt now stretching across
the middle of the continent. Consequently for D. hastifolia
to reach the west coast of Western Australia it would have
had to cross this desert belt. Given the fact that the deserts
of the Middle East acted as an effective barrier dividing
the African and Asian distribution of Enantiophyllum yams
from the Pliocene [15 MYA] until after 2000 BP, when
sea-borne traders and immigrants began transporting them
around it,69
this seems highly unlikely. Moreover, the
present distribution of the genus east of Indonesia, including
northern Australia, reputedly has only arisen in the last two
to four millennia.70
. As the “barrier dunefields” of the Great
Sandy Desert have formed a biogeographic barrier for at
least 35,000 years,71
and a coastal route requires direct
carriage or diffusion through “one of the largest arid coastal
zones in the world,”72
incorporating at least 200 kilometres
of coastal desert on the upper west coast, migration from
northern Australia seems highly implausible. Furthermore,
if Enantiophyllum yams had only reach northern Australia
sometime in the preceding two millennia, then they could
not have evolved naturally “over … several million years”
into a distinct species in Western Australia as postulated
by Playford. The absence of D. hastifolia, or any other
species of yam, in any intervening areas, or in other parts
of southern, western and eastern Australia, would appear
to confirm this conclusion, that it did not migrate to the
west coast of Western Australia. Consequently it must have
arrived by some other means.
65
Briggs 1987:67,78
66
Coursey 1967:34;1972:217; 1976b:70.
67
Burkill 1958-61:Fig 5,330,334.
68
Playford 1996:227
69
Burkill 1958-61:334; Coursey 1967:16-17,33; 1972:226-7; 1976b:70-
1.
70
Alexander and Coursey 1969:417; Coursey 1976b:71.
This explains the presence of species such as D. bulbifera and D.
Transversa in the humid tropical and sub-tropical coastal regions of
northern and north eastern Australia.
71
Veth 1995.
72
Veth 1995:733.
The harsh barrier dunefield ecozone was only colonised and occupied by
Indigenous Australians in the last 5000 years, while the current climate
regime has been in effect for the last 7000 years. See Wyrwoll et al.
1986:208-10; Veth 1993:8-9,103-14.
It will be recalled that when Pelsaert marooned Loos and de
Bye in the aftermath of the Batavia Mutiny they were given
“... a Champan provided with everything,” and presumably
this included food. Pelsaert, it should also be noted, had
returned two months earlier on his rescue mission in the
“Sardam”, having come directly from Java, where the ship
had been requisitioned and provisioned before sailing. With
numerous species of yam from the Enantiophyllum genus
found in Java, and it being a common and extensive practice
to use yams in victualling ships in the 17th century because
of their keeping properties,73
it is quite probable that the
two mutineers were put ashore with a supply of yams. The
obvious inference from this is that they introduced the yam
to the Nhanda, along with the knowledge of its means of
propagation, and perhaps some other cultural innovations
such as the huts mentioned earlier. From that point on,
however, all further developments were essentially of
Indigenous provenance.
This proposition is supported by detailed arguments that
have been put forward contending that a significant foreign
influence was discernible in the Victoria District and the
surrounding region at the time of British “settlement” there
in 1849. This arose not only as a result of the impact of
the abandoned mutineers, but probably the presence of
at least part of a group of 68 Dutch castaways, marooned
as a result of the sinking of the Vergulde Draeck further
south in 1656.74
One manifestation of this was the physical
appearance of the Nhanda, A. C. Gregory, for example,
reported that when exploring in the Hutt River region in
1848 he came across a tribe whose “colour was neither
black nor copper, but that peculiar colour that prevails with
a mixture of European blood.”75
These people Gregory
wrote elsewhere had “light flaxen hair, the eyes approaching
the colour of the same,”76
and similar comments were made
by others on numerous occasions in succeeding years.77
Mythological evidence has also been interpreted as evidence
of the Dutch presence and incorporation into the traditional
societies of the Nhanda and other peoples in the region. One
example is the Kooranup concept, a set of beliefs based on
the idea that there existed a land over the sea, in this case
the Indian Ocean, where the spirits of the deceased went.78
As one colonist, E. R. Parker, recounted:
“there is the idea prevalent amongst the sea-coast tribes
in the vicinity that their ancestors originally came from
the west, and that their dead return thither, and that when
the first Whites [British colonists] came in their ships
73
Burkill 1966:827; Coursey 1967:16-18; 1972:227; 1976b:72; Hancock
1992:254; Hahn 1995:114.
74
It is conjectured that surviving members of a group of 68 sailors
stranded on the coast following the wreck of the “Vergulde Draeck” in
1656 also made their way into the region (Gerritsen 1994a:232-46).
75
Gregory 1886:23.
76
Gregory quoted in Bates n.d.f:31.
77
See Gerritsen 1994a:71-73 for other examples
78
Gerritsen 1994a:66,71,145-50,160-1,169,171.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-51-320.jpg)
![A Case of Indigenous Agriculture in Australia
37
English Nhanda* Dutch Notes
Bad Gooraa’ee (N) Goor, goorheid (Dutch – Nasty, nastiness)
Cold Koon’dhetha (A) Koudachting, koudheid (Dutch – coldish, coldness)
Coughing Oondoonda mok (A) Aandoen ademtocht (Dutch – gasping)
Hawk Kirkenjo (W) Kiekendief (Dutch – the hawk-like kite)
Many/plenty Boola (W) Boel (Dutch – a lot, a whole lot)
Wind Windhoo (A) Wind
Table 1.
English Nhanda* Dutch
Aged Oop’baija (A) Oop bejard
Bowl, wooden Bat.tje (W) (large oblong dish) Badje (small bath)
Clod of earth Turpa (W) Turfje, turf (peat, turf)
Digging stick Wippa (A,N,W) Wipje (short plank)
Old Man Wingja bardo Wijze baard (‘wise beard’)
Table 2
* Designated Nhanda dialects: A = Amangu; N = Nandakorla; W = Watjandi
they believed them to be their ancestors risen from the
dead.”79
For a time the initial wave of British colonists were in
fact known as the djanga, the dead, returned spirits, by
Aboriginal people in western coastal areas, and accorded
the respect normally extended to long lost relatives.80
A variant found in the Victoria District, known as the
Moondung Myth, gave the moon as the final resting place
for souls, who were later reincarnated as the spirits of
babies. According to well-known amateur ethnographer
Daisy Bates:
“The first half caste child whom Cornally [shepherd Edward
Cornally] remembers seeing in Champion Bay [Geraldton,
early 1860s] was also stated by the mother and mother [sic
– brother] to come from the moon and when asked why the
child was a different colour they stated that this was not
uncommon amongst them.”81
Nhanda social organisation was highly unusual as well, being
based on reciprocal localities and explicit consanguinity
rather than the sections or moieties which characterised
social organisation in most other parts of Australia.
Marriage partners had to come from groups associated with
different localities or places, and they were not allowed to
be any closer than wadjira, or cousins. This may have come
about, as I originally suggested, as a result of the cultural
influence of the castaways once they had been absorbed by
the Nhanda and other local groups.82
However, it could also
be a result of the increasing sedentism and circumscription,
79
Parker 1886:339.
80
See Gerritsen 1994a:163-168.
81
Bates n.d.g:65.
82
See Gerritsen 1994a:144-150 for a fuller discussion.
Note that the key in Fig. 3 on p.147 has been inadvertently reversed in
publication in most copies of the 1994 edition and all of 2002 edition.
as outlined earlier and in other research.83
This may have
led to the formation a new set of social conjugal relations
based on a new form of social organisation.
Another discernible influence was a linguistic one. An
example is the Moondung Myth, in which the spirits resided
in the moon, the suffix -ung means ‘belonging to’. In Dutch
the ‘moon’ is ‘maan’, which here is associated with the
explanation that their paler colour was a result of the paler
light of the moon.84
Many such linguistic coincidences and
close correspondences are apparent in historical records of
Nhanda and its dialects. For example see Table 1.
Other close correspondences are also apparent if one takes
account of sound transpositions as well. One example is
the Dutch ‘j’, which sounds as a ‘y’ to English speakers. It
was presumed that the Nhanda heard it that way as well,
so words of Dutch origin may have entered the language
modified by that or very a similar sound transposition.
An examination of Nhanda word lists recorded by British
colonists in the 19th
century indeed revealed other words
of Dutch origin if allowance was made for the Dutch ‘j’ to
‘y’ transposition. For example see Table 2.
A full analysis of the Nhanda dialects, based on a 937
word/600 item vocabulary built up from early historical
records, was been carried out, looking for direct
correspondences as well as those arising not only from the
‘j’ to ‘y’ transposition but a number of other hypothetical
regular sound transpositions. This analysis concluded that
83
Gerritsen 2002.
84
In the Gascoyne version (450 km north) of the Moondung Myth the
moondung are explicitly described as ‘being like white people’ (Bates
n.d.h:87)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-52-320.jpg)
![pealed from underneath the arches of Salisbury’s wondrous
cathedral.
Yet over all the music and the poems of this Church poet, and
over his life, a tender gloom lay constantly; the grave and death
were always in his eye—always in his best verses. And after some
half-dozen years of poetic battling with the great problems of life
and of death, and a further battling with the chills and fogs of
Wiltshire, that smote him sorely, he died.
He was buried at Bemerton, where a new church has been built in
his honor. It may be found on the high-road leading west from
Salisbury, and only a mile and a half away; and at Wilton—the carpet
town—which is only a fifteen minutes’ walk beyond, may be found
that gorgeous church, built not long ago by another son of the
Pembroke stock (the late Lord Herbert of Lea), who perhaps may
have had in mind the churchly honors due to his poetic kinsman;
and yet all the marbles which are lavished upon this Wilton shrine
are poorer, and will sooner fade than the mosaic of verse builded
into The Temple of George Herbert.
Robert Herrick.
I deal with a clergyman again; but there are clergymen—and
clergymen.
Robert Herrick[41] was the son of a London goldsmith, born on
Cheapside, not far away from that Mermaid Tavern of which mention
has been made; and it is very likely that the young Robert, as a boy,
may have stood before the Tavern windows on tiptoe, listening to
the drinking songs that came pealing forth when Ben Jonson and the
rest were in their first lusty manhood. He studied at Cambridge,
receiving, may be, some scant help from his rich uncle, Sir William
Herrick, who had won his title by giving good jewel bargains to King
James. He would seem to have made a long stay in Cambridge; and
only in 1620, when our Pilgrims were beating toward Plymouth
shores, do we hear of him domiciled in London—learning the town,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-56-320.jpg)
![showed around them the red lines begotten of strong potions of
Canary, and the whole set upon a massive neck which might have
been that of Heliogabalus.[42] It was such a figure as the artists
would make typical of a man who loves the grossest pleasures.
The poet kept a pet goose at the vicarage, and also a pet pig,
which he taught to drink beer out of his own tankard; and an old
parishioner, for whose story Anthony à Wood is sponsor, tells us that
on one occasion when his little Devon congregation would not listen
to him as he thought they ought to listen, he dashed his sermon on
the floor, and marched with tremendous stride out of church—home
to fondle his pet pig.
When Charles I. came to grief, and when the Puritans began to
sift the churches, this Royalist poet proved a clinker that was caught
in the meshes and thrown aside. This is not surprising. It was after
his enforced return to London, and in the year 1648 (one year
before Charles’ execution at Whitehall), that the first authoritative
publication was made of the Hesperides, or Works, both Humane
and Divine, of Robert Herrick, Esq.—his clerical title dropped.
There were those critics and admirers who saw in Herrick an
allegiance to the methods of Catullus; others who smacked in his
epigrams the verbal felicities of Martial; but surely there is no need,
in that fresh spontaneity of the Devon poet, to hunt for classic
parallels; nature made him one of her own singers, and by instincts
born with him he fashioned words and fancies into jewelled shapes.
The “more’s the pity” for those gross indelicacies which smirch so
many pages; things unreadable; things which should have been
unthinkable and unwritable by a clergyman of the Church of
England. To what period of his life belonged his looser verses it is
hard to say; perhaps to those early days when, fresh from
Cambridge, Ben Jonson patted him on the shoulder approvingly;
perhaps to those later years when, soured by his ejection from the
Church, he dropped his Reverend, and may have capped verses with
such as Davenant or Lovelace, and others, whose antagonism of
Puritanism provoked wantonness of speech.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-60-320.jpg)
![At the restoration of Charles II., Herrick was reinstated in his old
parish in Devonshire, and died there, among the meadows and the
daffodils, at the ripe age of eighty-four. And as we part with this
charming singer, we cannot forbear giving place to this bit of his
penitential verse:
“For these my unbaptizèd rhymes
Writ in my wild unhallowed times,
For every sentence, clause, and word
That’s not inlaid with thee, O Lord;
Forgive me, God, and blot each line
Out of my book, that is not thine!”
Revolutionary Times.
I have given the reader a great many names to remember to-day;
they are many, because we have found no engrossing one whose life
and genius have held us to a long story. But we should never enjoy
the great memories except they were set in the foil of lesser ones, to
emphasize their glories.
The writers of this particular period—some of whom I have named
—fairly typify and illustrate the drift of letters away from the
outspoken ardors and full-toned high exuberance of Elizabethan
days, to something more coy, more schooled, more reticent, more
measured, more tame.[43] The cunning of word arrangement comes
into the place of spontaneous, maybe vulgar wit; humor is saddled
with school-craftiness; melodious echoes take the place of fresh
bursts of sound. Poetry, that gurgled out by its own wilful laws of
progression, now runs more in channels that old laws have marked.
Words and language that had been used to tell straightforwardly
stories of love and passion and suffering are now put to uses of
pomp and decoration.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-61-320.jpg)
![Moreover, in Elizabethan times, when a great monarch and great
ministers held the reins of power undisturbed and with a knightly
hand, minstrelsy, wherever it might lift its voice, had the backing and
the fostering support of great tranquillity and great national pride. In
the days when the Armada was crushed, when British ships and
British navigators brought every year tales of gold, tales of
marvellous new shores, when princes of the proudest courts came
flocking to pay suit to England’s great Virgin Queen, what poet
should not sing at his loudest and his bravest? But in the times into
which we have now drifted, there is no tranquillity; the fever of
Puritans against Anglicans, of Independents against Monarchy Men,
is raging through all the land; pride in the kingship of such as James
I. had broken down; pride in the kingship of the decorous Charles I.
has broken down again. All intellectual ardors run into the channels
of the new strifes. Only through little rifts in the stormy sky do the
sunny gleams of poesy break in.
There are colonies, too, planted over seas, and growing apace in
these days, whither the eyes and thoughts of many of the bravest
and clearest thinkers are turning. Even George Herbert, warmest of
Anglicans, and of the noble house of Pembroke, was used to say,
“Religion[44] is going over seas.” They were earnest, hard workers,
to be sure, who went—keen-thoughted—far-seeing—most diligent—
not up to poems indeed, save some little occasional burst of
melodious thanksgiving. But they carried memories of the best and
of the strongest that belonged to the intellectual life of England. The
ponderous periods of Richard Hooker, and the harshly worded wise
things of John Selden,[45] found lodgement in souls that were
battling with the snows and pine-woods where Andover and Salem
and Newburyport were being planted. And over there, maybe, first
of all, would hope kindle and faith brighten at sound of that fair
young Puritan poet, who has just now, in Cambridge, sung his
“Hymn of the Nativity.”[46]
But the storm and the wreck were coming. There were
forewarnings of it in the air; forewarnings of it in the court and in](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-62-320.jpg)
![I
CHAPTER IV.
did not hold the reader’s attention long to the nightmare
tragedies of Webster and Ford, though they show shining
passages of amazing dramatic power. Marston was touched
upon, and that satiric vein of his, better known perhaps than his
more ambitious work. We spoke of Massinger, whose money-
monster, Giles Overreach, makes one think of the railway wreckers
of our time; then came the gracious and popular Beaumont and
Fletcher, twins in work and in friendship; the former dying in the
same year with Shakespeare, and Fletcher dying the same year with
King James (1625). I spoke of that Prince Harry who promised well,
but died young, and of Charles, whose sad story will come to ampler
mention in our present talk. We made record of the death of Ben
Jonson—of the hack-writing service of James Howell—of the
dilettante qualities of Sir Henry Wotton, and of the ever-delightful
work and enduring fame of the old angler, Izaak Walton. And last we
closed our talk with sketches of two poets: the one, George Herbert,
to whom his priestly work and his saintly verse were “all in all;” and
the other, Robert Herrick, born to a goldsmith’s craft, but making
verses that glittered more than all the jewels of Cheapside.
King Charles and his Friends.
We open this morning upon times when New-England towns were
being planted among the pine-woods, and the decorous, courtly,
unfortunate Charles I. had newly come to the throne. Had the King
been only plain Charles Stuart, he would doubtless have gone
through life with the reputation of an amiable, courteous gentleman,
not over-sturdy in his friendships[47]—a fond father and good
husband, with a pretty taste in art and in books, but strongly marked](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-64-320.jpg)
![with some obstinacies about the ways of wearing his rapier, or of
tying his cravat, or of overdrawing his bank account.
In the station that really fell to him those obstinacies took hold
upon matters which brought him to grief. The man who stood next
to Charles, and who virtually governed him, was that George Villiers,
Duke of Buckingham, who by his fine doublets, fine dancing, and
fine presence, had very early commended himself to the old King
James, and now lorded it with the son. He was that Steenie who in
Scott’s Fortunes of Nigel plays the braggadocio of the court: he had
attended Prince Charles upon that Quixotic errand of his, incognito,
across Europe, to play the wooer at the feet of the Infanta of Spain;
and when nothing came of all that show of gallantry and the
lavishment of jewels upon the dusky heiress of Castile, the same
Buckingham had negotiated the marriage with the French princess,
Henrietta. He was a brazen courtier, a shrewd man of the world; full
of all accomplishments; full of all profligacy. He made and unmade
bishops and judges, and bolstered the King in that antagonism to
the Commons of England which was rousing the dangerous
indignation of such men as Eliot and Hampden and Pym. Private
assassination, however, took him off before the coming of the great
day of wrath. You must not confound this Duke of Buckingham with
another George Villiers, also Duke of Buckingham, who was his son,
and who figured largely in the days of Charles II.—being even more
witty, and more graceful, and more profligate—if possible—than his
father; a literary man withal, and the author of a play[48] which had
great vogue.
Another striking figure about the court of Charles was a small,
red-faced man, keen-eyed, sanctimonious, who had risen from the
humble ranks (his father having been a clothier in a small town of
Berkshire) to the position of Archbishop of Canterbury. So starched
was he in his High-Church views that the Pope had offered him the
hat of a cardinal. He made the times hard for Non-conformists; your
ancestors and mine, if they emigrated in those days, may very likely
have been pushed over seas by the edicts of Archbishop Laud. His](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-65-320.jpg)
![monstrous intolerance was provoking, and intensifying that agitation
in the religious world of England which Buckingham had already
provoked in the political world; and the days of wrath were coming.
This Archbishop Laud is not only keen-sighted but he is bountiful
and helpful within the lines of his own policy. He endowed Oxford
with great, fine buildings. Some friend has told him that a young
preacher of wonderful attractions has made his appearance at St.
Paul’s—down on a visit from Cambridge—a young fellow, wonderfully
handsome, with curling locks and great eyes full of expression, and a
marvellous gift of language; and the Archbishop takes occasion to
see him or hear him; and finding that beneath such exterior there is
real vigor and learning, he makes place for him as Fellow at Oxford;
appoints him presently his own chaplain, and gives him a living
down in Rutland.
Jeremy Taylor.
This priest, of such eloquence and beauty, was Jeremy Taylor,[49]
who was the son of a barber at Cambridge, was entered at Caius
College as sizar, or charity scholar, just one year after Milton was
entered at Christ College, and from the door of his father’s shop may
have looked admiringly many a time upon the
“rosy cheeks
Angelical, keen eye, courageous look,
And conscious step of purity and pride,”
which belonged even then to the young Puritan poet. But Jeremy
Taylor was not a Puritan; never came to know Milton personally. One
became the great advocate and the purest illustration of the tenets
of Episcopacy in England; and the other—eventually—their most
effective and weighty opponent. In 1640, only one year after Jeremy
Taylor was established in his pleasant Rutland rectory, Archbishop](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-66-320.jpg)
![Laud went to the Tower, not to come forth till he should go to the
scaffold; and in the Civil War, breaking out presently, Jeremy Taylor
joined the Royalists, was made chaplain to the King, saw battle and
siege and wounds; but in the top of the strife he is known by his
silvery voice and his exuberant piety, and by the rare eloquence
which colors prayer and sermon with the bloody tinge of war and the
pure light of heaven. He is wounded (as I said), he is imprisoned,
and finally, by the chances of battle, he is stranded in a small
country town near to Caermarthen, in South Wales.
“In the great storm,” he says, “which dashed the
vessel of the Church all in pieces, I was cast on the
coast of Wales, and in a little boat thought to have
enjoyed that rest and quietness which in England I
could not hope for.”
The little boat he speaks of was the obscure mountain home
where he taught school, and where he received, some time, visits
from the famous John Evelyn,[50] who wrote charming books in
these days about woods and gardens, and who befriended the poor
stranded chaplain. Here, too, he wrote that monument of toleration,
The Liberty of Prophesying, a work which would be counted broad in
its teachings even now, and which alienated a great many of his
more starched fellows in the Church. A little fragment from the
closing pages of this book will show at once his method of
illustration and his extreme liberality:
“When Abraham sat at his tent door, waiting to
entertain strangers, he espied an old man stopping by
the way, leaning on his staff, weary with much travel,
and who was a hundred years of age.
“He received him kindly, provided supper, caused
him to sit down; but observing that the old man ate,
and prayed not, neither begged for a blessing on his
meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of
Heaven?](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-67-320.jpg)
![“The old man told him he had been used to worship
the sun only.
“Whereupon Abraham in anger thrust him from his
tent. When he was gone into the evils of the night,
God called to Abraham, and said, ‘I have suffered this
man, whom thou hast cast out, these hundred years,
and couldest thou not endure him one night, when he
gave thee no trouble?’ Upon this Abraham fetched the
man back and gave him entertainment: ‘Go thou and
do likewise,’ said the preacher, ‘and thy charity will be
rewarded by the God of Abraham.’”[51]
Jeremy Taylor did not learn this teaching from Archbishop Laud,
but from the droiture of his own conscience, and the kindness of his
own heart. He wrote much other and most delectable matter in his
years of Welsh retirement, when a royal chaplain was a bugbear in
England. He lost sons, too—who had gone to the bad under the
influences of that young Duke of Buckingham I mentioned; but at
last, when the restoration of Charles II. came, he was given a
bishopric in the wilds of Ireland, in a sour, gloomy country, with sour
and gloomy looks all around him, which together, broke him down at
the age of fifty-five. I have spoken thus much of him, because he is
a man to be remembered as the most eloquent, and the most kindly,
and the most tolerant of all the Church of England people in that
day; and because his treatises on Holy Living and Holy Dying will
doubtless give consolation to thousands of desponding souls, in the
years to come, as they have in the years that are past. He was
saturated through and through with learning and with piety; and
they gurgled from him together in a great tide of mellifluous
language. The ardors and fervors of Elizabethan days seem to have
lapped over upon him in that welter of the Commonwealth wars. He
has been called the Shakespeare of the pulpit; I should rather say
the Spenser—there is such unchecked, and uncheckable, affluence
of language and illustration; thought and speech struggling together](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-68-320.jpg)
![for precedence, and stretching on and on, in ever so sweet and
harmonious jangle of silvery sounds.
A Royalist and a Puritan.
Another Royalist of these times, of a different temper, was Sir
John Suckling:[52] a poet too, very rich, bred in luxury, a man of the
world, who had seen every court in Europe worth seeing, who
dashed off songlets and ballads between dinners and orgies; which
songlets often hobbled on their feet by reason of those multiplied
days of high living; but yet they had prettinesses in them which have
kept them steadily alive all down to these prosaic times. I give a
sample from his “Ballad upon a Wedding,” though it may be over-
well known:
“Her cheeks so rare a white was on
No daisy makes comparison
(Who sees them is undone):
For streaks of red were mingled there
Such as are on a Catharine pear,
The side that’s next the sun.
Her feet beneath her petticoat
Like little mice stole in and out
As if they feared the light.
But O, she dances such a way!
No sun upon an Easter day
Is half so fine a sight!”
He was a frequenter of a tavern which stood at the Southwark end
of London Bridge. Aubrey says he was one of the best bowlers of his
time. He played at cards, too, rarely well, and “did use to practise by
himself abed.” He was rich; he was liberal; he was accomplished—
almost an “Admirable Crichton.” His first military service was in](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-69-320.jpg)
![support of Gustavus Adolphus, in Germany. At the time of trouble
with the Scots (1639) he raised a troop for the King’s service that
bristled with gilded spurs and trappings; but he never did much
serious fighting on British soil; and in 1641—owing to what was
counted treasonable action in behalf of Strafford, he was compelled
to leave England.
He crossed over to the Continent, wandered into Spain, and
somehow became (as a current tradition reported) a victim of the
Inquisition there, and was put to cruel torture; a strange subject
surely to be put to the torture—in this life. He was said to be broken
by this experience, and strayed away, after his escape from those
priest-fangs, to Paris, where, not yet thirty-five, and with such
promise in him of better things, he came to his death in some
mysterious way: some said by a knife-blade which a renegade
servant had fastened in his boot; but most probably by suicide.
There is, however, great obscurity in regard to his life abroad.
He wrote some plays, which had more notice than they should
have had; possibly owing to a revival of dramatic interests very
strangely brought about in Charles I.’s time—a revival which was due
to the over-eagerness and exaggeration of attacks made upon it by
the Puritans: noticeable among these was that of William Prynne[53]
—“utter barrister” of Lincoln’s Inn. “Utter barrister” does not mean
æsthetic barrister, but one not yet come to full range of privilege.
This Prynne was a man of dreadful insistence and severities; he
would have made a terrific schoolmaster. He was the author, in the
course of his life, of no less than one hundred and eighty distinct
works; many of them, it is true, were pamphlets, but others terribly
bulky—an inextinguishable man; that onslaught on the drama and
dramatic people, and play-goers, including people of the Court,
called Histriomastix, was a foul-mouthed, close-printed, big quarto of
a thousand pages. One would think such a book could do little harm;
but he was tried for it, was heavily fined, and sentenced to stand in
the pillory and lose his ears. He pleaded strongly against the
sentence, and for its remission upon “divers passages [as he says in](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-70-320.jpg)
![his petition] fallen inconsiderately from my pen in a book called
Histriomastix.”
But he pleaded in vain; there was no sympathy for him. Ought
there to be for a man who writes a book of a thousand quarto pages
—on any subject? The violence of this diatribe made a reaction in
favor of the theatre; his fellow-barristers of Lincoln’s Inn hustled him
out of their companionship, and got up straightway a gay masque to
demonstrate their scorn of his reproof.
They say he bore his punishment sturdily, though the fumes of his
book, which was burned just below his nose, came near to suffocate
him. Later still, he underwent another sentence for offences growing
out of his unrelenting and imperious Puritanism—this time in
company with one Burton (not Robert Burton,[54] of the Anatomy of
Melancholy), who was a favorite with the people and had flowers
strown before him as he walked to the pillory. But Prynne had no
flowers, and his ears having been once cropt, the hangman had a
rough time (a very rough time for Prynne) in getting at his task.
Thereafter he was sent to prison in the isle of Jersey; but he kept
writing, ears or no ears, and we may hear his strident voice again—
hear it in Parliament, too.
Cowley and Waller.
Two other poets of these times I name, because of the great
reputation they once had; a reputation far greater than they
maintain now. These are Abraham Cowley and Edmund Waller.[55]
The former of these (Cowley) was the son of a London grocer,
whose shop was not far from the home of Izaak Walton; he was
taught at Westminster School, and at Cambridge, and blazed up
precociously at the age of fifteen in shining verses.[56] Indeed his
aptitude, his ingenuities, his scholarship, kept him in the first rank of
men of letters all through his day, and gave him burial between
Spenser and Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. He would take a
humbler place if he were disentombed now; yet, in Cromwell’s time,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-71-320.jpg)
![“Go, lovely Rose,
Tell her, that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows
When I resemble her to thee
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that’s young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have, uncommended, died.”
But neither this, nor a hundred others, brought the Lady Dorothy
to terms: she married—like a wise woman—somebody else. And he?
He went on singing as chirpingly as ever—sang till he was over
eighty.
John Milton.
And now we come to a poet of a larger build—a weightier music—
and of a more indomitable spirit; a poet who wooed the world with
his songs; and the world has never said him “Nay.” I mean John
Milton.[57]
He is the first great poet we have encountered, in respect to
whom we can find in contemporary records full details of family,
lodgement, and birth. A great many of these details have been
swooped together in Dr. Masson’s recently completed Life and Times
of Milton, which I would more earnestly commend to your reading
were it not so utterly long—six fat volumes of big octavo—in the
which the pith and kernel about Milton, the man, floats around like
force meat-balls in a great sea of historic soup. Our poet was born in
Bread Street, just out of Cheapside, in London, in the year 1608.
In Cheapside—it may be well to recall—stood the Mermaid Tavern;
and it stood not more than half a block away from the corner where](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-75-320.jpg)
![In reading such verse we do not know where to stop—at least, I
do not. He writes, too, in that country quietude, within sight of
Windsor forest, his charming “Lycidas,” one of the loveliest of
memorial poems, and the “Comus,” which alone of all the masques
of that time, and preceding times, has gone in its entirety into the
body of living English literature.
In 1638, then thirty years old, equipped in all needed languages
and scholarship, he goes for further study and observation to the
Continent; he carries letters from Sir Henry Wotton; he sees the
great Hugo Grotius at Paris; sees the sunny country of olives in
Provence; sees the superb front of Genoa piling out from the blue
waters of the Mediterranean; sees Galileo at Florence—the old
philosopher too blind to study the face of the studious young
Englishman that has come so far to greet him. He sees, too, what is
best and bravest at Rome; among the rest St. Peter’s, just then
brought to completion, and in the first freshness of its great tufa
masonry. He is fêted by studious young Italians; has the freedom of
the Accademia della Crusca; blazes out in love sonnets to some
dark-eyed signorina of Bologna; returns by Venice, and by Geneva
where he hobnobs with the Diodati friends of his old school-fellow,
Charles Diodati; and comes home to England to find changes
brewing—the Scotch marching over the border with battle-drums—
the Long Parliament portending—Strafford and Laud in way of
impeachment—his old father drawing near to his end—and bloody
war tainting all the air.
The father’s fortune, never large, is found crippled at his death;
and Milton, now thirty-two, must look out for his own earnings. He
takes a house; first in Fleet Street, then near Aldersgate, with
garden attached, where he has three or four pupils; his nephew
Phillips[58] among them.
Milton’s Marriage.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-79-320.jpg)
![It was while living there that he brought back, one day, a bride—
Mary Powell; she was a young maiden in her teens, daughter of a
well-established loyalist family near to Oxford. The young bride is at
the quiet student’s house in Aldersgate a month, perhaps two, when
she goes down for a visit to her mother; she is to come back at
Michaelmas; but Michaelmas comes, and she stays; Milton writes,
and she stays; Milton writes again, and she stays; he sends a
messenger—and she stays.
What is up, then, in this new household? Milton, the scholar and
poet, is up, straightway, to a treatise on divorce, whereby he would
make it easy to undo yokes where parties are unevenly yoked. There
is much scriptural support and much shrewd reasoning brought by
his acuteness to the overthrow of those rulings which the common-
sense of mankind has established; even now those who contend for
easy divorce get their best weapons out of this old Miltonian armory.
Meantime the poet went on teaching, I suspect rapping his boys
over the knuckles in these days for slight cause. But what does it all
mean? It means incongruity; not the first case, nor will it be the last.
He—abstracted, austere, bookish, with his head in the clouds; she—
with her head in ribbons, and possibly loving orderly housewifery:
[59] intellectual affinities and sympathies are certainly missing.
Fancy the poet just launched into the moulding of such verse as
this:
“Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth and youth, and warm desire!
Woods and groves are of thy dressing——”
when a servant gives sharp rat-tat at the door, “Please, sir, missus
says, ‘Dinner’s waiting!’” But the poet sweeps on—](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-80-320.jpg)
![Mary, who was his amanuensis and reader most times, and Deborah,
the youngest, who came to perform similar offices for him afterward.
Meantime the Royalist cause had suffered everywhere. The
Powells (his wife’s family having come to disaster) did—with more or
less children—go to live with Milton. Whether the presence of the
mother-in-law mended the poet’s domesticity I doubt; doubt,
indeed, if ever there was absolute harmony there.
On the year of the battle of Naseby appeared Milton’s first
unpretending booklet of poems,[60] containing with others, those
already named, and not before printed. Earlier, however, in the
lifetime of the poet had begun the issue of those thunderbolts of
pamphlets which he wrote on church discipline, education, on the
liberty of unlicensed printing, and many another topic—cumbrous
with great trails of intricate sentences, wondrous word-heaps,
sparkling with learning, flaming with anger—with convolutions like a
serpent’s, and as biting as serpents.
A show is kept up of his school-keeping, but with doubtful
success; for in 1647 we learn that “he left his great house in
Barbican, and betook himself to a smaller in High Holborn, among
those that open back into Lincoln’s Inn Fields;” but there is no
poem-making of importance (save one or two wondrous Sonnets)
now, or again, until he is virtually an old man.
The Royal Tragedy.
Meantime the tide of war is flowing back and forth over England
and engrossing all hopes and fears. The poor King is one while a
captive of the Scots, and again a captive of the Parliamentary forces,
and is hustled from palace to castle. What shall be done with the
royal prisoner? There are thousands who have fought against him
who would have been most glad of his escape; but there are others
—weary of his doublings—who have vowed that this son of Baal
shall go to his doom and bite the dust.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-82-320.jpg)
![Finally, and quickly too (for events move with railroad speed), his
trial comes—the trial of a King. A strange event for these English,
who have venerated and feared and idolized so many kings and
queens of so many royal lines. How the Royalist verse-makers must
have fumed and raved! Milton, then just turned of forty, was, as I
have said, living near High Holborn; the King was eight years his
senior—was in custody at St. James’s, a short way above Piccadilly.
He brought to the trial all his kingly dignity, and wore it unflinchingly
—refusing to recognize the jurisdiction of the Parliament, cuddling
always obstinately that poor figment of the divine right of kings—
which even then Milton, down in his Holborn garden, was sharpening
his pen to undermine and destroy.
The sentence was death—a sentence that gave pause to many.
Fairfax, and others such, would have declared against it; even crop-
eared Prynne, who had suffered so much for his truculent
Puritanism, protested against it; two-thirds of the population of
England would have done the same; but London and England and
the army were all in the grip of an iron man whose name was
Cromwell. Time sped; the King had only two days to live; his son
Charles was over seas, never believing such catastrophe could
happen; only two royal children—a princess of thirteen and a boy of
eight—came to say adieu to the royal prisoner. “He sat with them
some time at the window, taking them on his knees, and kissing
them, and talking with them of their duty to their mother, and to
their elder brother, the Prince of Wales.” He carried his habitual
dignity and calmness with him on the very morning, going between
files of soldiers through St. James’s Park—pointing out a tree which
his brother Henry had planted—and on, across to Whitehall, where
had come off many a gay, rollicking masque of Ben Jonson’s, in
presence of his father, James I. He was led through the window of
the banqueting-hall—the guides show it now—where he had danced
many a night, and so to the scaffold, just without the window,
whence he could see up and down the vast court of Whitehall, from
gate to gate,[61] paved with a great throng of heads. Even then and
there rested on him the same kingly composure; the fine oval face,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-83-320.jpg)
![pale but unmoved; the peaked beard carefully trimmed, as you see
it in the well-known pictures by Vandyke, at Windsor or at Blenheim.
He has a word with old Bishop Juxon, who totters beside him; a
few words for others who are within hearing; examines the block,
the axe; gives some brief cautions to the executioner; then, laying
down his head, lifts his own hand for signal, and with a crunching
thud of sound it is over.
And poet Milton—has he shown any relenting? Not one whit; he is
austere among the most austere; in this very week he is engaged
upon his defence of regicide, with its stinging, biting sentences. He
is a friend and party to the new Commonwealth; two months only
after the execution of the King, he is appointed Secretary to the
State Council, and under it is conducting the Latin correspondence.
He demolishes, by order of the same Council, the Eikon Basilike
(supposed in that day to be the king’s work) with his fierce
onslaught of the Eikonoklastes. His words are bitter as gall; he even
alludes, in no amiable tone—with acrid emphasis, indeed—to the
absurd rumor, current with some, that the King, through his
confidential instrument, Buckingham, had poisoned his own father.
He is further appointed to the answering of Salmasius,[62] an
answer with which all Europe presently rings. It was in these days,
and with such work crowding him, that his vision fails; and to these
days, doubtless belongs that noble sonnet on his blindness, which is
worth our staying for, here and now:](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/24997011-250519064614-c8d0123b/85/Australia-And-The-Origins-Of-Agriculture-Rupert-Gerritsen-84-320.jpg)
Australia And The Origins Of Agriculture Rupert Gerritsen
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- 5. Australia and the Origins of Agriculture Rupert Gerritsen BAR International Series 1874 2008 BAR S1874 2008 GERRITSEN AUSTRALIA AND THE ORIGINS OF AGRICULTURE Gerritsen 1874 cover.indd 1 13/11/2008 14:53:11 B A R
- 6. Australia and the Origins of Agriculture Rupert Gerritsen BAR International Series 1874 2008
- 7. BAR P U B L I S H I N G ISBN 9781407303543 paperback ISBN 9781407333816 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407303543 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
- 8. Dedicated to the memory of Eleanora (Nora) Gerritsen 1921 - 2008
- 10. “the history of cultivated plants is allied to the most important problems of the general history of organized beings” Alphonse de Candolle, 1884:viii
- 12. Preface In writing this work I have been conscious that I follow a great tradition, one that harks back to Herodotus, Polybius, Tacitus, Suetonius, Bede, Gregory of Tours, Gibbon and many others. It is certainly a project that I believe is consistent with that cultural tradition. At an individual level I am a product of my culture, and although this book is largely about another cultural tradition, that of Indigenous Australians, it really reflects some of the more significant concerns and interests that derive from my cultural heritage. In terms of those concern and interests, I hope it will be seen to be making a meaningful contribution to the attendant debates and questions that it endeavours to address. One of the enduring and perhaps most important undercurrents in historiography is the issue of how one represents events from the past. While some have taken the position in recent times that historical writing is just one form of personal narrative it appears to me more than that, it is a distinctive type of writing that is anchored by real actions and events, by realities in the past. Accordingly, if one stops and reflects for but a moment, it is obvious that there is an almost overwhelming flood of sensory input from the world around us, second by second. Should we wish to convey that experience to another we normally, and probably unavoidably, resort to a ‘shorthand’ reality. We don’t relate the detail of our perceptions of a room for example, we simply state we are in a room and any of the salient features of the room. To deal with the complexity of reality at even the most basic level the mind has many devices, such as the ability to categorise and to make behavioural generalisations, to enable us to process and communicate information. Another dimension or layer is then added to this, connecting to our inner being, our emotions and cognitions, when we try to interpret and give meaning to the features, regularities, and patterns of events that take place around us. This necessitates a “theory of mind”, the ability to read, predict and interpret the motivations, reactions and intent of others, an innate and well-developed capacity in humans. Consequently we do not describe reality as such, be it past or present, we are simply modelling reality, formulating the model in words and then transmitting it using language. In dealing with the broad sweep of history as I have attempted here, and in this context I include prehistory, another level of abstraction is introduced. Various paradigms characterising and interpreting changes in societies, or segments of societies, and the factors that influence those changes, have arisen over time. They are in fact still evolving, so that our understanding of the past not only reflects the concerns and perspectives of the present, but also the tools we currently have at our disposal to achieve that. Which of those tools provides the ‘best’ understanding of trends in history of course depends on which facet of history we may be seeking to understand. Within that framework some explanatory systems have greater resonance and are perceived as being more credible than others. This does not mean those explanatory systems are intrinsically or objectively superior as they still remain a subjective assessment, albeit one with the concurrence of a broad cross-section of those who have an interest in the subject matter. Another test of systems of explanation borrows from the ideal of the scientific paradigm, that they are able to accommodate and explain all data, or in this case the broadest range of information. Sometimes a Kuhnian type of paradigmatic revolution may occur, in which a whole range of unexplained or barely understood phenomena becomes explicable. Hopefully the material presented here may meet those tests, and our understandings may indeed move forward a little. In motivational terms my interest in this topic is part of a broader project, a desire to push back the boundaries of knowledge. It is an ideal I have pursued in most of the research I have undertaken, driven by my intellectual curiosity, and the sense of achievement I experience when I am able to do that. Of course not all research need be of that nature, functional research for example has its place. From a personal perspective, however, it saddens me to see that many whose remit it is to pursue the goal of revealing new knowledge and understandings, lose sight of that and become bogged down in prosaic concerns and trivial matters. Perhaps I am being too idealistic in this regard. This work challenges the stereotype that Indigenous Australians prior to the British colonisation of Australia were all nomadic hunter-gatherers. It also questions current mainstream explanations for the development of agriculture. Because of this it is likely to invite controversy. I accept that, it is a position I have willingly and knowingly placed myself in. I, in fact, hope there will be reasoned criticism and some degree of controversy as that is a healthy sign, a necessary part of the discourse that may lead to a deeper understanding of the issues I raise. All that I ask is that those who see fit to criticise ensure they have read and understood the content of this book. Finally, I cannot conclude without thanking and acknowledging the many individuals from various walks of
- 13. ii life who have helped me bring this work to its completion. Their assistance should not of course be construed in any way as an endorsement of the arguments I have put forward. The individuals concerned include: The library staff of the National Library of Australia, particularly the staff of the Petherick Reading Room and the Map Room, Emeritus Professor John Mulvaney, Professor Peter Veth, Professor Rolf Gerritsen, Professor Helen James, Professor John Parker, Dr Mary O’Dowd, Dr Nonja Peters, Dr Ian Keen, Dr Helen Lette, Dr Annie Clarke, Dr Michael Pickering, Dr Fiona Walsh, Judith Scurfield, Allen Mawer, Katharine West, Jamon Moon, Anita Jaroslawski, Margaret Saville, Jenny Ward, Rodrigo Aguilera, Lesley Hyndal, Bill and William Mallard, Ron Gerritsen, W. C. (Bill) Gerritsen [deceased], Eleanora (Nora) Gerritsen [deceased], the staff of the W.A. Department of Indigenous Affairs Library, Lyn Jones, Janet Buick, Shirley Fletcher, Bryce Moore, Patti Steele, Lado Shay, Jim Croft, Murray Fagg, Max Cramer, Lloyd Browne, Arienne Alphenaar of the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and Arts Central Library, Peter Reynders and Rohan Reynders. I trust that I have not overlooked anyone, and hope that you the reader will get the same enjoyment and intellectual exhilaration from this book that I experienced in creating it. Rupert Gerritsen 31 May 2008
- 14. iii Table of Contents Chapter 1. Considering the Origins of Agriculture 1 Chapter 2. People, Islands and Deserts 5 Chapter 3. People and Plants in Australia 19 Chapter 4. A Case of Indigenous Agriculture in Australia 29 Chapter 5. Sowing the Seeds 39 Chapter 6. An ‘Australian Early Neolithic’? 71 Chapter 7. Big Men and Wannabe Chiefs – Part 1 95 Chapter 8. Big Men and Wannabe Chiefs – Part 2 121 Chapter 9. Food to Trade 131 Chapter 10. On the Origins of Agriculture 141 Chapter 11. On Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 159 References 167
- 16. Chapter 1. Considering the Origins of Agriculture Introduction The origins of agriculture are a matter of profound interest, not only in academic circles, but to many lay people. This is because the advent of agriculture as a particular form of food production, along with animal domestication, appears to have marked an unparalleled transformation in human affairs, the consequences of which are still being played out in the present day. Over time extensive investigations in a range of disciplines have been conducted in an endeavour to understand the phenomenon, investigations which have attempted to answer such basic questions as: what happened?; where did it happen and when?; how did it happen?; and perhaps most importantly, why did it happen at all? More recently it has been realised that developments in hunter-gather societies were more varied and complex than originally portrayed, and that different pathways and forms of “food production” were conceivable. Accordingly other patterns of development have come to be recognised, one in particular involving the formation of distinctive, complex, socioeconomic and sociopolitical structures. Societies exhibiting such characteristics are often labelled as “Complex Hunter-Gatherers”. But this recognition has also made the question far more perplexing. Consequently, any broad explanatory framework must now account for more than just the development of agriculture. Part of the project has now become a struggle to find appropriate paradigms, identify common ground and promulgate sound explanations embracing all these diverse circumstances. Research into the location and timing of the “agricultural revolution” over the last one hundred years or so has resulted in the determination, in at least proximate terms, of when and where such developments took place. In the process it has become apparent that it was not a discrete event but a circumstance that occurred in a number of different places, to some, virtually contemporaneously. Some degree of consensus would also appear to have been reached in characterising what happened - that certain groups managed to accomplish, unaided, the transition from hunting and gathering to farming (pristine development), apparently in the space of only a few centuries. The characterisation of that transition does depend, however, on the paradigmatic viewpoint. Usually such explanations are framed in anthropological or economic terms but the process can also be described, as Rindos has done, within a biological evolutionary framework. In Rindos’ view a period of coevolution resulted in humans entering into a mutualistic relationship with plants. Questions as to how and why agriculture arose are more problematic. Numerous common factors, pathways and theories have been proposed in this regard, seeking to explain how agriculture arose, usually employing some form of process description or model. These, by and large, involve environmental and/or demographic factors, the botanical characteristics of particular plants and their interaction with humans, their integration into the human economy and the social dynamics that resulted when those plants became the economic base, the principal sources of sustenance, in the early agricultural societies. Often such discussions also seek to address the related issues of the domestication of plants and animals and the apparent synchronous development of domestication-based economies in different parts of the world. Debates in regard to domestication revolve around its significance, and the role of intentionality, while those encompassing synchronous development usually attempt to identify global or common factors that may have influenced local pathways. It is within this context a number of researchers have drawn attention to the apparent absence of agriculture in Australia, and the need to explain what I will call the “Australian Problem”. In any initial consideration of the “Australian Problem”, however, it is necessary to recognise that there are actually two supposed problems, one being the “failure” of agriculture to develop indigenously and the other, its “failure” to diffuse into Australia, despite contact with Indonesian (Macassan) agriculturalists or New Guinean horticulturalists. Although not always explicitly stated or recognised, significant differences probably exist in the factors and dynamics that led to the pristine development of agriculture, as opposed to agriculture that arose as a result of outside influences, as a result of cultural transfers. Consequently these two issues will be treated separately. In addition, a further question will be raised relating to the concept of Complex Hunter-Gatherers. While some, Lourandos, Williams, and Builth in particular, have put forward extensive evidence and arguments in making a case Rindos 1984. e.g. White 1971:184-5; Harris 1977a:209; Rindos 1984:161-2; Williams 1987: 320; Price and Gebauer 1995:9; Hayden 1995a:297. Lourandos 1983,1985:404-8,1988:153-4, 1993:72,75,78-80. Williams 1987,1988. Builth 2000a,b; 2002:302-6.
- 17. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture for the presence of Complex Hunter-Gatherers in Australia, their claims need to be more thoroughly tested, and this will be done in due course. With these matters in mind, it is also my intention to employ the Australian situation to examine and test the validity of some of the frameworks, key arguments, and critical evidence, that have been put forward concerning the development of agriculture, animal husbandry and Complex Hunter-Gatherer economies. Such an undertaking is predicated upon the necessary assumptions that all humans have the same innate capacities, and that some developments in Australia would probably have eventually paralleled those in other parts of the world, had Indigenous societies not been shattered by British colonisation. A corollary of these assumptions is the recognition that particular geographic, environmental, climatic, demographic and cultural factors, either singly or in concert, must have affected development in this continent. An exploration of these factors is, in fact, what constitutes the examination of the “Australian Problem” in both its forms. While Indigenous Australians in their traditional circumstances were certainly not “fossil” versions of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, there are strong structural similarities, or functional equivalences, principally in their subsistence economies, to other pre-agricultural societies known through the archaeological record. As will become apparent in the arguments presented in forthcoming pages, developments in a number of “traditional societies” in a number of regions in Australia were indeed following a trajectory leading to recognisable agricultural or supposed Complex Hunter-Gatherer economies. Consequently, if these arguments prove to be well founded, a valuable opportunity exists, given the availability of much recent ethnographic information and observations, to examine the relevant issues at a time when such developments were actually taking place, rather than as a post facto analysis relying exclusively upon archaeological evidence. From this, it is hoped, a sounder understanding of the origins of agriculture may well be obtained. Arguments and Evidence In attempting to address some of the issues raised thus far, the approach I intend to take will be based on the assumption made earlier, that all humans have the same innate capacities. By extension I would claim developing hunter-gatherer and early “food production” societies have more in common with contemporary agricultural, industrial and post-industrial peoples than is often realised. This statement is not as banal as it might first appear and Murray 1988:5-8. Davidson 1989:75; Lourandos 1997:332-3,335. By “traditional” I mean around the time of first contact with people from other lands and before the culture and economy was substantially altered by exogenous influences. others have made similar observations. Its significance lies in the inference that some of the difficulties that have been encountered to date may really be the result of a surreptitious assumption that hunter-gatherers really are somehow “different”.10 As a consequence limited, specious or inappropriate paradigms may have been applied on occasion to explain evolving behavioural patterns in hunter-gatherer societies, whilst well-developed and more appropriate ones have been overlooked.11 Furthermore, as has been pointed out by Barnard and Woodburn, problems may arise in analysing hunter-gatherer societies because our culturally conditioned conceptual categories are not necessarily the same as those of the peoples being studied, and this may confound our efforts.12 These views should not, however, be construed as a reworking of the issues of cultural relativism and power relationships in ethnography, typified by deconstructionism and post-modernism, which have coloured debates to a considerable extent in recent times, in a number of disciplines.13 Those approaches are, of course, quite valid, and so are embraced in the philosophical underpinnings, “consensual reality” and “cognitive consensus”, of this work.14 Hence, maintaining awareness of cultural divergence must be considered as essential, but ultimately studies of this nature should not deny or obscure the universality of many human behaviours and qualities.15 It is for these reasons, and because we are dealing with issues relating to changes in peoples’ modes of subsistence and production, that I will rely, at least in part, on the language of economics in my deliberations.16 In essence the problem, in my view, involves the conditions, causes, dynamics and consequences of economic development in a “paleolithic” context. This position is similar to that advocated by Higgs and Jarman,17 and Cook,18 some time ago. Determining the role of environmental and demographic factors, social and political dynamics, or other circumstance, in the developmental process is, however, a critical consideration. Innumerable researchers have advocated local or global climatic changes as the trigger for the appearance of more complex paleoeconomies, be they based on agriculture, animal husbandry or some other form of intensified e.g. Barnard and Woodburn 1988:5; Plattner 1989:5; Butlin 1993:52- 3,66. 10 See for example White 1993:207-9. 11 Garber 1987:356; Cashdan 1989:33; Hayden 1994:223; Isaac 1996:4; Kelly 1998. 12 Barnard and Woodburn 1988:10-11. 13 Murray 1988:9. 14 Gerritsen 2007a. 15 Barnard and Woodburn 1988:5. This is what Plattner (1989:5) has termed “the psychic unity of humankind”. 16 Notwithstanding the Formalist/Substantivist debate of the 1960s and 1970s (Polanyi 1968; Plattner 1989:13-15; Isaac 1993) which in my view set up a false dichotomy that simply “obfuscates” (Trigger 1985:193). While “embeddedness” may preclude a formal economic analysis, economic functions are still discernable and operate in pre-capitalist economies. Granovetter (1985) argues that “embeddedness” is found in modern economies and that pre-capitalist economies are not much different in this regard, and the problem is more one of perceptions. 17 Higgs and Jarman 1969:40. 18 Cook 1968:209.
- 18. Considering the Origins of Agriculture subsistence. Similarly, population pressure has often been posited as the cause for such developments, Cohen’s The Food Crisis in Prehistory being a classic exposition of this position. Alternatively many other scholars, such as Bender,19 Lourandos,20 and Hayden,21 have argued that socioeconomic or sociopolitical dynamics provide the initial stimulus for economic development rather than a condition allowing or fostering further development. The challenge here is to determine which factor, or factors, model or schema is the most plausible, coherent and congruent with the data.22 To achieve this, some means of discrimination is required to determine which of these complex and highly interpretative explanations has the greatest validity. The arguments and evidence for each theory will of course be discussed, but the ultimate intention will be to examine, as a critical test, the ability of each to “predict” or explain the geographical location and timing of early complex food producing sedentary economies where they have appeared in various parts of the globe in prehistory. Such a superficially simple evaluative technique is, I believe, in actuality a powerful tool for examining the coherence and cogency of these, or any other, relevant set of hypotheses. Naturally, further elaboration and a fuller exposition of this proposition will be entertained in the ensuing discourse, before any definitive conclusion is possibly reached. Before concluding, some further clarification of the methodology and the nature of the evidence that will be exploited is necessary. I propose to employ an analytical framework which will involve investigations of a wide range of key exemplars, critical factors, notable developments and diagnostic situations, spread over many centuries and a number of continents. Informing this approach is the Annales framework, typified by Braudel and the concept of longue duree.23 It is my intention, furthermore, to rely primarily upon historical ethnographic evidence in the arguments that will be advanced, producing an “historical ethnography”.24 When judiciously blended with archaeological evidence this becomes “reconstructive ethnography”.25 Each of these evidentiary domains, archaeological, historical and ethnographic, has its own limitations, of course, and this represents part of the challenge. Apart from preservational biases, for example, the element of chance in archaeological research may give quite erroneous or distorted impressions.26 19 Bender 1978,1981. 20 Lourandos 1985. 21 Hayden 1990. 22 Murray 1988:11. 23 Braudel 1980; Knapp 1992:xv-xvi. 24 By “historical ethnography” I mean the synchronic reconstruction of the ethnography of a particular group at a certain point in time, in the context of Australian Indigenous studies, usually at time of contact. I see this as being distinct from the type of ethnohistory which constructs the history of a particular group over a period of time, usually in post- contact scenarios in Australia, this being couched in historical rather than ethnographic terms. See Gerritsen (2007a) for a fuller exposition of this methodology. 25 See Gerritsen 2007a. 26 This has been demonstrated in a number of studies, for example in regard to the likely archaeological consequences of Hadza hunting (O’Connell, Hawkes and Jones 1988). See also Tainter (1978:128) and Meehan (1988). Archaeological evidence may even be ignored or overlooked where it does not fit with preconceived notions.27 It has also been pointed out on a number of occasions that archaeological finds are effectively meaningless unless they are interpreted in the context of some form of behavioural paradigm, usually based on ethnographic analogy.28 By the same token, historical ethnographic evidence also has its limitations, such as those common to any work based on historical sources. Ethnography, moreover, effectively only represents in most instances a temporal “snapshot” of a particular group, and often misses private acts, uncommon or unspectacular but significant activities (such as women’s gathering), and broader regional processes and diachronic trends.29 In the employment of ethnography, unfounded assumptions may also be made that hunter-gatherers are “living fossils,”30 that their societies are in stasis,31 or that the ethnographic present can be projected far into the past, “naive historicism” as Ames terms it.32 Failure to take account of these potential biases has led, on occasion, to the inappropriate employment of ethnographic data in attempts to reconstruct past hunter-gatherer communities.33 In addition, Shipman has cogently argued that with the degree of variation in even the most basic traits in hunter-gatherer societies, there are significant dangers in extrapolating from any particular cultural circumstance.34 Compounding this, the effects of outside influences on hunter-gatherer societies have, in some studies, either been ignored, not been recognised, or not given due weight, providing further scope for distortion.35 Contact with state societies, commercial markets and mechanised transport have often been identified as major sources of such influences.36 All these issues are relevant to any consideration of the “Australian Problem”, particularly the latter. In specific application to Australia it should be noted that relevant archaeological evidence is quite limited, especially in some of the regions that will come under consideration. Consequently, there will be a marked reliance on historical ethnography, keeping in mind the preceding qualifications. While Australia is often characterised as having been isolated from developments in other parts of the world this is not completely accurate.37 In the first instance there has been a narrow corridor of communication with the rest of the world through New Guinea via Torres Strait and Cape York, open for much of the time since first human settlement 27 Gerritsen 2001a. 28 Koyama and Thomas 1981:5; Flannery 1986:4; O’Connell, Hawkes and Jones 1988:114. See also Allen (1996:138) for consideration of issues regarding ethnographic analogy with specific reference to the Australian context. 29 Wobst 1978:303-6; Yesner 1980:727. 30 Jones and Meehan 1989:131. 31 Yesner 1980:727; Blumler 1996:36; Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999:4. 32 Ames 1991:937. See also Hiscock 1999:101. 33 Kabo 1985:605. 34 Shipman 1983:31-2,43-4. 35 Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999:4; Schrire 1984:1-2; Plattner 1989:5-6; Widlock 2005:18-20. 36 O’Connell, Hawkes and Jones 1988:114. 37 e.g. Deetz 1968:283; Blumler 1996:36.
- 19. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture of Australia, about 46,000 or more years ago.38 Other more powerful influences began to manifest themselves from the beginning of the 17th century with the arrival of Europeans (principally the Dutch followed by the British) and Indonesians (Macassans). These incursions had impacts well beyond their points of contact.39 The Macassans, for example, appear to have stimulated the ceremonial exchange cycle in Arnhem Land in north Australia, hundreds of kilometres beyond their immediate sphere of influence.40 Similarly we find valued European goods such as glass and axes up to 200 kilometres or more beyond the bounds of British colonisation, preceding the “frontier” by thirty years.41 As in North America, smallpox epidemics also preceded the “frontier”, devastating many populations, the extent of its demographic, social and economic impacts still the subject of considerable academic debate in Australia.42 Whatever the specifics, it is nevertheless beyond question that there has been a progressive and profound alteration of Indigenous societies in Australia as external influences have increased. From an evidentiary point of view, where relevant, such influences and the changes that have arisen need to be recognised and taken into account. In treating particular cases, areas, groups or regions it further needs to be recognised that the impact of exogenous influences was highly variable. Some may not have been affected by influences preceding the frontier, others dramatically so. When Aboriginal people first experienced contact with non-Aboriginal people, usually British explorers, “pioneers” and government officials, they were often afraid and uncertain, but at the same time curious about the strangers. Significant conflict usually followed once it became apparent the colonists intended to usurp their lands, resistance developed, and finally, in the face of defeat, attempts were made to adjust to the encroachments of the colonists and maintain some semblance of traditional lifestyles. In many cases this was succeeded by a process of disintegration, depopulation and near complete destruction of traditional life. The rapidity with which this happened was influenced largely by the degree of intrusion. Where intensive settlement by colonial intruders occurred the destruction of traditional life has been almost total and 38 Johnson 2006:57-61. 39 See for example Reynolds 1978. 40 Thomson 1949:5-6; Clarke 2000:328-333. 41 Morgan 1852:192; Hepburn 1853:62; An Old Hand [Hamilton] 1880:20; Curr 1886:1:78;2:375-6; Sharp 1952:69; Clark 1987:29-30. 42 Ames 1991:937-8; See for example Butlin 1983,1993; Lourandos 1997:35-8. Aboriginal people have struggled, and still struggle, to maintain some semblance of their culture. Conversely, that process was much slower, much later or less intense in large parts of the arid and semi-arid zones and the tropical north of Australia. In some of these areas the land was perceived by the colonists to be of little economic value, resulting in minimal economic impact and low non-Aboriginal population densities. In some cases, such as in Arnhem Land in the north eastern part of the Northern Territory, deliberate decisions were made to restrict access by non- Aboriginal people and traditional culture has adapted and continues in a rich but modified form.43 Consequently, in considering ethnographic evidence the interplay of all these factors and forces need to be weighed in determining the degree any specific item of evidence accurately reflects particular features of traditional, i.e. pre-contact, life. Where there is any suspicion that what was observed may have been a consequence or artefact of recent pre- or post- contact dynamics such evidence will be either qualified or discarded. Finally one other matter needs to be clarified - what is meant by “Australia”. Australia as a modern political unit includes not only mainland or continental Australia, Tasmania and offshore islands but almost all the islands in Torres Strait. The political boundary, in fact, comes within a few kilometres of the coast of mainland Papua New Guinea. A cline of intensification evident from the Pre-Contact Period (before 1606) across Torres Strait has previously been noted, including agricultural systems on some of the more northerly islands through to limited cultivation on the most southerly islands off the tip of Cape York.44 By this definition of “Australia” agriculture was indisputably practiced in Australia in the pre-colonial era. But it would appear that various researchers, when they refer to Australia, presuppose a geographical definition that encompasses continental Australia, but which may also include Tasmania and offshore islands. For simplicity the term “Australia” will, henceforth, follow a geographic definition incorporating continental Australia, Tasmania and offshore islands, with the Torres Strait Islands being treated as a separate geographic entity. 43 See Rowley (1972) and Clark (1998) for a more detailed exposition of this aspect of Australian history and the nature of the impacts. 44 Harris 1979; Moore 1979; Barham and Harris 1985:247-8; Barham 2000:224.
- 20. Chapter 2. People, Islands and Deserts Approximately 55,000 years ago, with global climate cooling and sea levels falling, a land bridge existed between Australia and the lands to the north, now known as New Guinea. The latest hominin, Homo sapiens, had by then found their way out of Africa and established themselves in south west Asia. At some time after this they made their way into Australia, the first Australians, and also began to enter an icy Europe. But it was probably not until about 15,000 years ago that the first humans set foot in the Americas. Remarkably, once there, in a relatively short space of time, the first Native Americans populated the length and breadth of the two continents, developed agriculture and other forms of food production, generated chiefdoms, states and empires, and built some of the greatest cities on Earth, boasting architectural wonders the equal of any elsewhere. In both Eurasia and the Americas, preceding the advent of agriculture, other forms of specialised food procurement, and settled life, there was a period in which virtually all remaining vacant or sparsely populated ecozones were occupied, populations increased relatively rapidly, population densities increased, and people started to inhabit smaller and more sharply defined territories (increasing circumscription), or became more sedentary. Furthermore, “logistical” procurement became more pronounced, a wider range of food sources were exploited (the “broad-spectrum revolution”), more elaborate procurement and food processing technologies were employed, and subsistence organisation, as well as social and political structures, became more complex. In effect more intensive and increasingly specialised forms of subsistence evolved along with greater regional diversity in many facets of the culture. This phenomenon is known as “intensification”. Such is the importance of this process in setting the stage for “the great leap forward” it has been argued we ought to be seeking to explain the origins of intensification rather than the origins of agriculture. Intensification, as a global phenomenon, began in south west Asia around 15,000 BP [BP = Before Present], evolved into the Mesolithic or Epipaleolithic period, and culminated in agriculture between 11,500 - 9000 BP. A similar period in Meso-, North and South America, leading into the Archaic, commenced Fagan 1995:155-9; Williamson 1998:143; Flood 1999:248; Weiss et al. 2004. Bender 1978:204. Price and Brown 1985:13; Unger-Hamilton 1989:101; Hillman and Davies 1990: 195,208-9; Anderson 1992:180; Allen and O’Connell around 10,000 BP, with early agriculture in the form of maize (Zea mays) cultivation apparent by 6250 BP. This process was repeated in east Asia giving rise to rice and then millet farming between 11,200 - 8500 BP, perhaps earlier. By and large the timing of intensification varied from place to place, region to region, but nevertheless it seems to have been “universal” in human populations. Different economies developed, different plants came under human control, but in every case the same pattern appears to have emerged. It has been argued that the process of intensification was also evident in Australia. However, according to the proponents of this view, this transitional period in Australia did not begin to clearly manifest itself until 7000 - 5000 BP at the earliest. It was still proceeding when British colonisation (from 1788) during the Contact Period (1606 – 1956) began to profoundly affect most traditional Indigenous societies. Parallels have been drawn between developments in Australia during this transitional period, known as the Australian Recent [the mid Holocene to the Contact Period], with the Mesolithic of south west Asia and Europe, the American Archaic, and the Japanese Jomon period. One specific development, the seed-gathering economy of the Paakantyi,10 has been labelled as “incipient agriculture”.11 Nevertheless the disparity in the timing of intensification in Australia relative to other parts of the world, especially 1995:vii; Fagan 1995:151-73; Anderson 1998:148-50,152; Willcox 1999:493; Bar-Yosef 2003; Bellwood 2005. There is considerable debate about definitional and dating issues which will be discussed in subsequent chapters. de Tapia 1992:157; Fritz 1995:5; Smith 1997:932; Sherratt 1997: 275; Benz and Long 2000:460; Piperno and Flannery 2001; Matsuoka et al. 2002. See n63 of Chapter 6 for further discussion of the dating. Zhimin 1989:646-7; Crawford 1992:9,13-15; Smith 1995a:127,130, 133-4,136; Underhill 1997:112-4,120,138; Higham and Lu 1998:870- 1; Lu 1998:902,907; Pei 1998; Zhang and Wang 1998; Zhao 1998: 886,895; Wang et al. 1999; Shelach 2000:367-8,379; Toyama 2003:164- 5; Yan 2003:152; Yasuda 2003a:134; C. Zhang 2003:189-90; Bellwood 2005:116. See n44 of Chapter 6 for fuller discussion of dating and diagnostic issues. Price and Brown 1985:13; Allen and O’Connell 1995:vii; Sassaman 1992; Fagan 1995:155,157,159. Allen and O’Connell 1995:ix. Morwood 1981:42-3; 1984:343; Lourandos 1985:400-1; Smith 1986: 314; Lourandos and Ross 1994; Allen and O’Connell 1995:viii; Lourandos 1997:322-3. Lourandos 1997:23,333. 10 Allen 1972,1974. 11 Mulvaney 1975:242
- 21. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture the Americas,12 requires some explanation. In some senses it is yet another facet of the “Australian Problem”. Intensification is a process that is not easy to precisely characterise or specifically define and will undoubtedly continue to provide a fertile field for academic speculation and debate. Its validity, in particular the necessity for “broad-spectrum procurement” to precede specialised modes of food production, has been challenged, particularly by Henry in regard to the antecedent Neolithic culture, the Natufian, of south west Asia.13 Other controversies centre on appropriate archaeological methodologies for detecting patterns of intensification as well as, inevitably, its causes.14 But before making any attempt to pass judgements on some of these issues a review of some of the Australian evidence may be instructive. As noted earlier, some of the features of intensification included occupation of remaining ecozones, population increasing more rapidly and population densities also increasing. Often these trends were underwritten by the development and embrace of new subsistence strategies. In Australia the advent of the “Small Tool Tradition”, the introduction of the dingo, exploitation of new plant foods, and the appearance of fish hooks, as well as the development of other, more elaborate, fishing techniques, have been singled out as some of the more conspicuous indicators of intensification through the adoption of new, increasingly specialised, subsistence regimes.15 Determining prehistoric population and population densities, as a means of demonstrating more generally that intensification was under way, is a more problematic exercise. The Pre-Contact Period population of Australia, for example, has been a matter of debate for almost eighty years, with estimates varying by a factor of six. Attempting to ascertain population trends over millennia is even more difficult. One method involves analysis of the number and size of 12 Allen and O’Connell 1995:viii. 13 Henry 1989:17-18. 14 Lourandos and Ross 1994:58; Williamson 1998:144-5. 15 Luebbers 1978:ix-x,219,245-6; Lourandos 1985:401; Nicholson and Cane 1994; Holdaway and Stern:330,374-5; Lourandos 1997:22; Lourandos and David 1998:110; Williamson 1998:143,145; Flood 1999:248-9; Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999:44-7,230,316-7; Barker 2004. See Hiscock (1986) and Freslov and Frankel (1999) for a contrary view, and Ulm (2002) contesting the validity of the evidence from south east Queensland. archaeological sites, and the frequency with which those sites were utilised. The results of a study of this type in south eastern Australia shows slow population growth initially (i.e. 50,000 BP to 10,000 BP), with a small spurt during the climate-optimum of the mid-Holocene, before increasing exponentially during the Australian Recent.16 The most recent Australia-wide survey of the number of occupied rock-shelters (Figure 1) shows almost exponential growth from 8000 BP. Although the site data in these types of study could be interpreted as an artefact of the research methodology, or the result of local populations becoming more concentrated,17 the consistency of the phenomenon in a variety of ecozones with different subsistence bases suggests otherwise.18 Paralleling this Australia-wide increase in populations and population densities was the permanent exploitation and occupation of almost all “marginal” ecozones, such as the most inhospitable desert areas, rainforests, wetlands and offshore islands. Previously these ecozones had either not been utilised or only utilised on a temporary basis when conditions were more benign. Using islands as an example, during the early Holocene many were created around the Australian coastline as a result of rising sea levels, which peaked at just above the present level around 8000 BP. Concomitantly local populations were either cut off, as in Tasmania, or retreated to mainland areas. On Kangaroo Island, a large island off the central south coast, the people of the “Kartan” culture became isolated and appear to have been unable to sustain themselves, dying out after several thousand years as the local climate deteriorated.19 But on High Cliffy Island, part of the Montgomery Group, just 10 kilometres off the north west Kimberley coast, despite its small area (0.3 sq. km), exploitation was either continuous 16 Lourandos 1997:224-5,Fig. 6.17. 17 Bird and Frankel 1991:10; Johnson 2006:136-7. 18 e.g. Luebbers 1978; Sullivan 1982; Hughes and Lampert 1982; Ross 1985; Lourandos and Ross 1994:58-9; Beaton 1995; Dortch 1997:19, 24,27,29,31; Allen 1998; Bowen 1998; McNiven 1998:78-9,87-8; Dortch 1999; Hall 1999; O’Connor 1999a,b; Morse 1999; Smith 1999; McNiven 2000:30; Lamb and Barker 2001; Ross 2001; David 2002:121- 2,136,150. David (2002:123,150) suggests the drop off in late Holocene sites are the result or a reluctance to date those sites. The likelihood of late Holocene sites, being nearer the surface, suffering destruction may be another reason for the apparent drop off. 19 Lampert 1981; Bowdler 1995:945-6; Flood 1999:141-2; Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999:334-6 Figure 1: Number of Rock Shelters Occupied Over Time in Australia (After Johnson 2006: Figure 8.1)
- 22. People, Islands and Deserts or commenced shortly after its separation from the mainland (6700 BP). The island had become permanently incorporated in the Yawijibaya subsistence pattern by 3000 BP and was being intensively exploited by 650 BP.20 Permanent habitations, low stone huts or shelters, evolved as a manifestation of this increasing intensity of exploitation (Figure 2). Yet other islands on the west and south west coasts of the continent, Barrow, Garden, Rottnest Islands and the Recherche Archipelago for example, were never visited following their abandonment, despite being within easy reach in some cases.21 Elsewhere, along the south coast of Australia west of Port Phillip Bay, although lacking in coastal watercraft, at least some of the islands within swimming distance appear to have been visited occasionally.22 Even so, Griffiths Island, only 100 m off- shore, was seemingly never visited.23 This contrasts with North Keppel Island off the central Queensland coast which, although not visited for a couple of thousand years (4000 BP) following its separation from the mainland, 20 O’Connor 1987:34; 1994:102; 1999b. Although High Cliffy Island was only a small island it had a very large exploitation zone, with the Montgomery Reef covered an area of 300 sq. kms 21 Nicholson and Cane 1994; Bowdler 1995:949. 22 Bates 1985:252; Bowdler 1995:947,949 23 Gaughwin and Fullagar 1995:43. nevertheless became regularly or permanently occupied within the last 1000 years.24 Another apparently disparate example of island use was to be found around Tasmania. As shown in Figure 3, drawn principally from historical ethnographic data, virtually all islands around the coast were exploited on a permanent or seasonal basis, except those off the north east coast. The islands that were exploited were visited by means of a distinctive type of Tasmanian “canoe” consisting of bundles of grass or bark lashed together, or simply by swimming. In the latter case it was usually women who tackled distances of up to 2.5 kilometres through vicious tidal rips.25 It is thought the distances involved and the strength of the current was reason the north east Tasmanian islands were not visited.26 While the Tasmanians were swimming and canoeing short distances other Aboriginal groups had managed to reach the Percy Islands 85 kilometres off the Queensland coast. This involved oceanic voyages of up to 27 kilometres.27 To put this and the other evidence of island exploitation in perspective, consider firstly the number of 24 Wyndham 1889:41; O’Connor 1992:50; Rowland 2002:68-9. 25 Jones 1976:236. 26 Jones 1976:256 27 Rowland 1984. Capt. Cook also reported “houses” on Lizard Island, approximately 30 kilometres from the mainland in far NE Queensland in 1770 (Cook 1893:321). Figure 2: Stone House Structure, High Cliffy Island˝North West Kimberley, Western Australia (After O’Connor 1999a: Figure 6.14)
- 23. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture islands being visited, regularly exploited, or permanently occupied over time, particularly in the last 3000 years,28 as shown below in Figure 4. In this instance the numerical increase in island usage can be treated as a primary manifestation of intensification. But how does one explain the disparate and highly variable pattern of island exploitation around Australia? Theoretical studies of islands globally identify distance, size and configuration (of islands as isolates, in groups or chains) 28 Barker 1996:35-7; Border 1999:136; Lamb and Barker 2001. as factors in the global pattern of island colonisation,29 all applicable to Australia. To effect this sustained exploitation of islands, especially more distant ones, a number of innovations are required. Particular types of equipment employed in the exploitation of marine resources, such as canoes, fish hooks and bone tipped fish spears have been identified as the key elements in this process. These were in use in Australia, but not uniformly, other factors were clearly operating. For example, the average dating of the 29 Keegan and Diamond 1987. Very few Australian studies have considered these factors. Bowdler (1995) is an exception. Figure 3: Exploited Islands Around Tasmania (After Jones 1976: Figure 7)
- 24. People, Islands and Deserts commencement of exploitation in the Holocene of nine islands north of the Queensland border, where a crossing of more than 3 kilometres was required (beyond normal swimming distance), was 2853 BP. This contrasts with the archaeological evidence indicating only three islands where a similar crossing was required were visited south of Queensland, along the south east, south, west and lower north west coasts of Australia, and then not until 1467 BP on average.30 Apart from Tasmania, the only islands permanently occupied were those off the north and north east coasts of Australia.31 So a number of questions arise – what led to these differences; was the means developed specifically for the purpose of getting to and exploiting islands or was this just an extension of traditional subsistence activities; was it the product of the incremental adaptations or more efficient technology characteristic of intensification? - was it the result of increasing population pressure on the adjacent mainland areas? 30 Bowdler 1995:947,949; Gaughwin and Fullagar 1995:43. Eighty Mile Beach was the limit on the north west coast. Historical ethnographic evidence does, however, indicate that some of the southern and western Australian islands beyond 3 kilometres were being visited. For example see Bates n.d.a: Notebook 24 - Informant T. Carter. Recent research has established that Hook Island off the central Queensland coast appears to have been continuously occupied throughout the Holocene (Lamb and Barker 2001). 31 Jones 1976:260; Campbell 1982:96; Rowland 1986:77,83; Bowdler 1995:954; Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999:320-2; O’Connor 1999a:1,116; Lamb and Barker 2001. One scenario, “resource pull” in the form of rich fishing grounds around islands, has been suggested as an incentive to develop fishing technology, such as fish hooks, and watercraft capable of reaching islands.32 But this has been challenged on the basis that islands in some cases were exploited without the adoption of new technologies, or that fishing was often not a major subsistence activity on the adjacent mainland areas.33 Some have tried to argue that climatic change, manifested in coastal regions as changes in sea level, had an important bearing on the development of coastal marine economies. According to this view sea levels rose considerably at the end of the Last Ice Age before stabilising about 8000 years ago. Only then, once new habitats and niches had evolved, did local populations adapt to take advantage of the opportunities offered, new techniques and technologies emerged, and the coastal marine economies became established, extending to coastal islands.34 Apart from the contested proposition that marine resources were initially depleted and then built up again following stabilisation of sea levels,35 this scenario is difficult to test as most of the evidence for preceding subsistence activities lies beneath the waves. Islands may 32 Jones 1976; Sullivan 1982:15-16. 33 O’Connor 1992; Gaughwin and Fullagar 1995:47. 34 Binford 1968; Lampert and Hughes 1974; Yesner 1980; Beaton 1995: 801. 35 Ulm and Hall 1996:55; Attenbrow 1999; Barker 1999:125; 2004:12- 15. Figure 4: Number of Islands in Use Over Time (Bowdler 1995: Figure 6)
- 25. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 10 Figure 5a: Distribution of Watercraft Around Australia
- 26. People, Islands and Deserts 11 Figure 5a. notes While very extensive research has been carried out to determine this and the other distributions, the research cannot be considered exhaustive. Where the occurrence is well documented only limited or representative examples are used. Where there is questionable, contradictory or inconsistent evidence data has not been included on the distributional map unless there is some form of strong corroboration or overriding evidence. These distributions are based as far as possible on observations and information collected from the time of historical European contact until the early part of the British occupation of each particular area, archaeological and ethnographic evidence, and oral traditions. The maps are indicative of the distributions as they stood around the time of British occupation. It needs to be recognised, however, that parts of the distributions appear to have changed (particularly in regard to watercraft in the Kimberley region) in the period between first European contact and British occupation. In some instances there are words for canoes, fish hooks and fishing lines in local vocabularies, but these are not taken as being certain that these were in use traditionally unless there is some corroboration, as it may simply indicate knowledge of them or recent adoption (particularly fish hooks), not actual or traditional usage. In some cases watercraft were not in common use, only being made intermittently or contingently for particular circumstances or occasions (such as when the rivers were running or there were floods). In these instances such watercraft were used simply as a means of transportation and they did not serve any other integrated economic or subsistence function. Consequently they have not been included in the distribution. Some references are included as indicative of an absence of watercraft, fishtraps and so forth. Nets used in hunting are not included in the net distribution. Bates n.d.a: Notebook 24 – Informant T. Carter; Carstensz 1623: 39,41; Dampier:1697:464,468; Swaardecroon, Chasselijn and Craine 1705:170,172; Witsen 1705:175; de Haan 1756:92,94,97; Banks 1768- 71: 2:52-4,73-4,91,93,134; Cook 1768-71:304- 6,308-9,312,339,396-7; Parkinson 1773:135,141,147; Flinders 1814:2:137,154,198; Oxley 1820:323,346; Pamphlett and Uniacke 1825:101,103-5,110,112,116, 118,121,124,126; King 1826:1:38,40,43-4,67,101;2:66-7,69,87-90, 137,200-12; Lockyer 1826-7:28/12/1826; Dawson 1830:79,247; Sturt 1833:2:201; Bennett 1834:1:115,242; Irwin 1835:23; Imlay 1838:232-3; Oakden 1838: 289; Strangways 1838:29; Mitchell 1839:1:283 et seq.; Perry 1839:40; Stephens 1839:75; Grey 1841:2: 65- 264; Eyre 1845:2:263-4,310,314; Russell 1845:314; Stokes 1846: 1:79,80,112-3,173-5;2:15-16; Angas 1847:1:90; 2:230-1; 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Leichhardt 1847a:375; Austin 1851:7; Helpman 1851:268; Macgillivray 1852:45- 9; Henderson 1854:2:137,153; Austin 1855:xi; Phillips 1856; Brierly 1862a; Jukes 1862; Cooper 1862; Brierly 1862b; Capt. Jarman 1863:57; Stuart 1864:77; Martin 1865:265,286,288; Bennett 1867:552; Lord and Baines 1876:142; Smyth 1878:1:lviii-lix,407- 22;2:298; Wyatt 1879:169; Davies 1881:143; Gregory 1884a:41; 1884b:56; Jung 1884:119; Curr 1886:1:255,269,273,291,293,295, 335,356-7; 2:27,29,3 1,33,41,43,107,126,131,138,147,151,161,183, 200,225,289,3 09,313,334,339,391-5,415,418,421,423,425-7,429,431, 445- 9,453,481,483,487-91; 3:7,22,33,35,41,43,48,51,53,57,63,75, 77,81,83,89,93,99,101,105-9,125,128,133,135,137,141,143-4,149, 151,197,211,215,221,227,229,233-7,241-2,247,261,267,277,28 8,291, 299,309,311,319,331,333,337,341,351,357,359,371,37 5,379- 81,383-5, 389,393,395-401,407-11,415,419,423-7,431- 3,445,449-59,465,475-83, 487-95,501-15,519,529-35,548,551- 63,583,587-9,639; Basset-Smith 1894:331; Lockyer 1888:590; Beveridge 1889:19,35,64-5,82,85-8,91; Lumholtz 1889:316; Wyndham 1889:40-1; Mann 1893:1:98-9; Stretton 1893:228; Boyd 1896:48,50-2,59; Willshire 1896:49; Saville-Kent 1897:8; Worsnop 1897:118-22; Fawcett 1898:153; Parker 1898:102; Roth 1899:152-9; Durlacher 1900:90; Hawker 1901:2:18; Brockman 1902:11-2,17-8; Hey and Roth 1903:11; Peggs 1903:361; Roth 1903: 65; Cary 1904:32,34-6; Spencer and Gillen 1904:680-2; Thomas 1905; Thomas 1906:83-6; Le Souef 1907:247; Thomas 1907; Eylmann 1908:379-80; Mathews 1908:66,68,72,75-81; Roth 1908; Roth 1910a; Spencer and Gillen 1912:2:483-4,348-51; Welsby 1913:38-40; Basedow 1914:303-5; Fitzpatrick 1914:50; Brown 1916; Love 1917: 32-3; Basedow 1918:189,193-4,219; Stuart 1923:22-3,60; Teichelmann and Schuermann 1923:162; Basedow 1925:161-2; McConnel 1930-1:104; Piddington 1932:344; Thomson 1934:226-7, 229; Davidson 1935; Kaberry 1935:412-3; Love 1936:8; Thomson 1936:71; Blount 1937:33,35; Anon. 1938:560; Davidson 1938:73; Thomson 1939a:121-3; 1939b:212,214; Hornell 1940:116-7; Berndt 1941:23-4,27-8; Bryant 1943:7; Black 1947:352-4,357-61; Thomson 1949:52,58- 9; Thomson 1952; Warner 1958:458-60; Duncan-Kemp 1961: 7; Crawford 1965:7; Curr 1965:48,50-1,79; Duncan-Kemp 1968:124; Sharp 1968:351-2; Macknight 1972:304,309; Edwards 1973:9,10- 14,18,26,30,39,65,68-70; Tindale 1974: 37,57,72,75,94,114,145, 147,175-6,182,199,240-3,249,252,254,257,261-2,282; Akerman 1975; Dargin 1976:31; Macknight 1976:27,36; Craze 1977:22; Rowland 1980:3; Doran 1981:76,78-9; Lampert 1981:174; Ryan 1981:32-47; Gillespie 1984:4,6,31; McKellar 1984:13,47; Bates 1985:253,257-8, 284; Rowland 1986; Rowland 1987:40; Trigger 1987:80-1; Baker 1988:179-80; French 1989:31; Turbet 1989:51-5; Rathe 1990:48-9; Gott and Conran 1991:61; Nicholson and Cane 1991; Berndt, Berndt and Stanton 1993:14,83,85-6,118; Gerritsen 1994a:313n13; Bowdler 1995:955; Mitchell 1996:181,183; Clark 1998- 2000:4:49,50-1,53-54, 78,98; O’Connor 1999a:116; Barham 2000:228-9,239,241,243-5,248-9; Gerritsen 2001a:20-1,24-5; Barker 2004:32,38-42. well have been previously exploited, only to be drowned, necessitating adjustment or re-establishment of the subsistence pattern as sea levels stabilised.36 Furthermore, it fails to provide a cogent explanation for the pattern of island exploitation seen around Australia, and probably elsewhere. Similarly, arguments based on population pressure do not account for the pattern of island exploitation either and simply beg the question - what was it that led to the population pressure? 36 Barker 1991:106; Morse 1993; Nicholson and Cane 1994:115; O’Connor 1999a:123. Perhaps this issue and the phenomenon of intensification can be more readily understood in terms of diffusion, endogenous development and greater economic specialisation. Consider, for example, the distribution of traditional watercraft, fish traps and weirs, net fishing and fish hooks in Australia where these elements of were recorded in the Contact Period, 1606 – 1956.37 37 It should be noted that these distributions were not static during the Contact Period and changes are discernible from different reports arising during separate contacts early in the Contact Period. In such cases the later reports, if still pertaining to the use of traditional materials in a traditional context, are used.
- 27. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 12 Figure 5b: Distribution of Fish Traps and Weirs Around Australia
- 28. People, Islands and Deserts 13 Figure 5b. notes Bates n.d.b:101; Dampier 1697:465; Dampier 1703:149; Vancouver 1798:1:38; King 1826:1:16,31; 2;96; Lockyer 1826-7:3; Nind 1832: 32-3; Sturt 1833:1:41,72; Anon. 1834:332; Armstrong 1836:793; d’Urville 1839:2:276,Pl.35,fig.3; Mitchell 1839:1:93; Robinson 1844a; Eyre 1845:2:253,301; Neill 1845:1:425; Angas 1847:1:112, 155,174; Mitchell 1848:103,113,121; Sturt 1849:1:105; Henderson 1854:2:136-7; Browne 1856:492; McKinlay 1861:69; Wills 1861:17; Wright 1861-2:85; Krefft 1862-5:368; Davis 1863:290; Stuart 1864: 252-3; Lang 1865:19- 20; Lewis 1875b:13,26; Smyth 1878:1:202,234; Forrest 1880:29; Curr 1886:1:65,343;2:378;3:306; Douglas 1886:83; Beveridge 1889:81-2; Fraser 1892 :52; Stretton 1893:241; Kirby 1894:35- 6; Stow 1894:12; Boyd 1896:57; Roth 1897:95; Worsnop 1897:100-2; Hall 1898:219; Mathews 1900-1:78; Roth 1901:23; Jackson 1902:14; Mathews 1903; Cary 1904:34; Petrie 1904:73- 4; Anon. 1905:226-7; Parker 1905:109-10; Basedow 1907:23; Norton 1907:102; Banfield 1909:53-4; Kenyon 1912:110; White 1914:143; North 1916-17:126,128; Horne and Aiston 1924:64; Basedow 1925: 129; Ilbery 1927:25; Bunbury 1930:69,87; McConnel 1930-1:101; Daley 1931:25; Piddington and Piddington 1932:345; Hammond 1933: 46; Enright 1935; Love 1936:137-8; Thomson 1936:73; Anon. 1938: 560; Thomson 1938; Mountford 1939; Thomson 1939b:214,220; Mitchell 1949:149; Thomson 1949:19,27; Flecker 1951; Duncan-Kemp 1952:105,142,186,237; Thomson 1954:118; Durack 1959:94,96; Tindale 1962:302,304; Massola 1963:255; Crawford 1965:7; Curr 1965:79; Crawford 1968:56-7; Duncan-Kemp 1968:124,274-5; Massola 1968; Massola 1969:101-2; Gill 1970:30; McCarthy 1970:59; Allen 1972:51; Campbell 1973:9; Baudin 1974:178,487; Tindale 1974:18, 23,61-2,111,147,243,254,Col. Pl. 34; Stockton 1975; Akerman 1976; Dargin 1976:45; Dix and Meagher 1976; Dortch and Gardiner 1976: 265,274-7; Lourandos 1976:183-7; Northern Territory Museum Site Files 1976-83; Coutts, Witter and Parsons 1977a:23-4; Happ 1977: 36-7,39,43-4,47,52; Pretty 1977:313; Campbell 1978:122-3; Coutts, Frank and Hughes 1978; Lourandos 1980a:251-4; Campbell 1982; Coleman 1982:8; Watson 1983:43; McKellar 1984:47,67; Bates 1985: 251,253-5,257,325; Walters 1985a; Walters 1985b:51-3; Rowland 1986:79; Trigger 1987:79- 80; Godwin 1988; McKelson 1989:37; Mulvaney 1989:19; Nicholson and Cane 1991; Mulvaney and Green 1992:347,376; Berndt, Berndt and Stanton 1993:96-7; Tacon 1993:224; Nicholson and Cane 1994:113; Attenbrow and Steele 1995; Lourandos 1997:47; Bowen 1998; Clark 1998-2000:2:145,161-3,178, 306; 3:48,55; 4:185,300; Border 1999:133; Dortch 1999:25,32; Flood 1999:200-1,254; Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999:34-5; O’Connor 1999a:13; Clarke 2002:154-6; Dortch 2002:13; Peron 2003:119- 20. Based almost exclusively on ethnographic reports, these distributions reflect to some extent the degree of specialisation in the exploitation of aquatic or marine resources. Each of these types of structure or forms of technology requires some level of labour investment. This investment is directly related to not only the size but the complexity of the structure or technology involved, the greater the size and complexity the greater the investment, either in terms of labour or trade goods. Presumably, in those regions where a greater number of more complex aquatic or marine exploitation technologies or structures were used, a greater and more sustained portion of daily effort was dedicated to procurement of aquatic or marine resources. In effect a greater commitment was being made to one type of subsistence economy. Two of those regions where all four of the identified means of aquatic/marine/maritime exploitation appear, Arnhem Land and coastal Northern Territory, and Cape York and the east coast of north Queensland, are known to have been strongly influenced by “foreign” cultures. In the case of Arnhem Land and the Northern Territory, this is the accepted explanation for the appearance of dugouts with sails, these canoes initially being obtained in trade from the Macassans, seafarers from Sulawesi who had been visiting the area since around 1700, perhaps earlier.38 Similarly, the appearance of dugouts with single or double outriggers around the tip and down the east coast of Cape York is attributed to Melanesian influences transmitted through Torres Strait. Other innovations such as fish hooks in these 38 Thomson 1949:52,59; Macknight 1972; 1976:61-82,92,96-9,157-8,161; 1986:70; Mitchell 1996:186; Morwood and Hobbs 1997:198; Clarke 2000:325-332; Bulbeck and Rowley 2001:59-64; Gerritsen 2001b. regions are also attributed to exogenous influences.39 But at the other end of the scale and the continent were the Tasmanian “canoe rafts”. As Tasmania had been cut off from the mainland by rising sea levels some time after 12,500 BP, their watercraft were presumably a purely local development. The fact that Tasmanian islands, such as Hunter Island, requiring a crossing of 2.5 kilometres, and Maatsuyker Island, 6.5 kilometres from the nearest landfall, were not visited until 2500 BP and 570 BP respectively suggests the distinctive Tasmanian canoe rafts had developed only in the last few thousand years.40 The Murray-Darling basin, the south east coast of Australia, and the north east of the Lake Eyre Basin are three other areas where subsistence was strongly oriented around aquatic or marine resources - fish traps, nets, fish hooks and watercraft forming part of the suite of exploitational hardware in those regions. They appear to have been separated to some extent from other regions where the full gamut of equipment was used by gaps of hundreds of kilometres. Although there is evidence of some use of watercraft around Moreton Bay (see Figure 5a) it has been argued that fish hooks and watercraft diffused down the east coast and that this gap in the distribution on the central east coast arose because either the ecology was not suitable in that part of the coast, or that the local people rejected their use for cultural reasons.41 Both reasons are suspect however, Moreton Bay (Brisbane) for instance, where subsistence was based on intensive exploitation of marine resources using spears, fish traps and nets, was eminently suited to 39 Davidson 1935:69-70; Rowland 1987; Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999: 263,322; Barham 2000:241-249. 40 Bowdler 1995:946,949; Flood 1999:207. 41 Bowdler 1976; White and O’Connell 1982:151; Walters 1988:106-9; Nicholson and Cane 1994:113.
- 29. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 14 Figure 5c: Distribution of Net Fishing Around Australia
- 30. People, Islands and Deserts 15 Figure 5c. notes Bates n.d.c:70; Bates n.d.d:53; Bates n.d.e:3; Dampier 1697:465; Swaardecroon, Chasselijn and Craine 1705:170; Pamphlett and Uniacke 1825:100,107,113-4,119,122; Sturt 1833:1:89-90,93,106; Imlay 1838:232; Mitchell 1839:1:100,287,305; 2:128-9; Perry 1839 :40; Eyre 1845:2:251-3,261,311-12; Angas 1847:1:101; Mitchell 1848:113,119,367; Sturt 1849:1:106-7,261,270; 2:62,68; Henderson 1851:2:122,136; Phillips 1856:270; Gregory 1858:4; Howitt 1861:11; King 1861:4; McKinlay 1861:21,46; Brahe 1861-2:89; Landsborough 1862:101; Krefft 1862- 5:361,366,368; Davis 1863:113,203,219-20; Stuart 1864:62-3; Oldfield 1865:269,274,295; Gason 1874:34; Lewis 1875b:13- 14,26,42; Hic et Ubique 1877:13; Hodgkinson 1877:217, 521; Smyth 1878:1:142,234,389-90; 2:305; Andrews 1879:85; Bennett 1879:312; Meyer 1879:192-3; Schurmann 1879:219; Wyatt 1879: 177; Tolmer 1882:1:222; Sanger 1883:1224; Gregory 1884a:167; Gregory 1884b:58,71-3; Jung 1884:114; Palmer 1884a:284; Walcott 1884: 98; Curr 1886:1:251,270,288,291,299,330,343; 2:18,24,144,183,191, 201,331,341,377-8,401,418,432,465,471 ,497; 3:19,22-3,97,252,306, 335,342,354,365,544,548,570,580; Beveridge 1889:19,73,76,78-80, 83; Lumholtz 1889:331; Watkins 1890-1:44; Kirby 1894:34; Stow 1894:12; Wells 1894:518-9; Gason 1895: 169,172; Gregory 1896:44; H.P. 1897:81; Parker 1897:124; Roth 1897:94-5,127; Worsnop 1897:90-1; Coghlan 1898b; Fawcett 1898:153; Durlacher 1900:37-8, 95-6,111,160; Hawker 1901:2:18; McLellan 1901:258; Meston 1901: 63; Withnell 1901:21-2; Roth 1903:47,67; Clement 1903:3,7,16, fig.20; Petrie 1904:66-8,73-4; Parker 1905:107-10; Thomas 1906: 92-3,95; Basedow 1907:24; Gill 1907-8:228; Banfield 1908:165; Eylmann 1908:375,382; Banfield 1909:49; Spencer and Gillen 1912: 2:466; Fitzpatrick 1914:42; Hall 1917:24; Banfield 1918:184-5; Teichelmann and Shuermann 1923:154; Horne and Aiston 1924:33,62-3,176; Basedow 1925:129-30,fig.3; Bennett 1927a:410; Bunbury 1930:87; McConnel 1930-1:102; Davidson 1933; Duncan-Kemp 1934:112,121-2, 258; Kaberry 1935; Thomson 1939b:214,220; Harvey 1943:110-12; Johnston 1943:298; Thomson 1949:19,27; Lamond 1950; Williams 1950:7; Flecker 1951:2; Tindale 1951; Duncan-Kemp 1952:126,236-7; Morey 1952:40; Durack 1959:94,96; McArthur 1960: 109,113; McCarthy and McArthur 1960:152,158; Duncan-Kemp 1961: 41,118,231; Crawford 1965:6,8; Curr 1965:110,131,171; Cleland 1966:127; Duncan-Kemp 1968:3,124; Carmichael 1973:23; Tindale 1974:18,61-2; Bowdler 1976:249-50; Happ 1977:53- 4; Salvado 1977: 159; Moore 1979:150-1; Kerwin and Breen 1981:288-93; Reuther 1981:III,119/1700; Eyre 1984:156-7; Vanderwal and Horton 1984: 110-1; Bates 1985:250-1,256- 7; Jenkin 1985:14; Walters 1985b:50- 3; Rowland 1986:78; Satterthwait 1986:39; Colley and Jones 1987:70-1; Trigger 1987:78-9; Marchant 1988:150; French 1989: 35; Turbet 1989:49; Rathe 1990:47,56,73; Nicholson and Cane 1991; Berndt, Berndt and Stanton 1993:28,95-100,562-6,Pls.11,16; O’Connor 1993:227; Bulmer 1994:49; Nicholson and Cane 1994:113; Attenbrow and Steele 1995; Flood 1999:200; Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999:355; O’Connor 1999a:126; Clarke 2002:151-154,157,159; 2003: 150; Tolcher 2003:14. watercraft and fish hooks.42 Whereas there is no direct evidence to support the cultural explanation for the gap, it is apparent from the few dated examples of fish hooks that fish hooks were diffusing from the north while being independently invented in the south.43 Fish hooks appear in north Queensland on Keppel Island (1070 BP)44 and Whitsunday Island (800 BP)45 at about the same time as they appear at locations 2000 kilometres away on the south coast of New South Wales, such as Durras North (700 BP)46 , northward to Bass Point (570 BP)47 and Port Stephens (490 BP).48 The gap had simply not been “closed”. Another gap of hundreds of kilometres in the distribution of fish hooks and watercraft existed between the New South Wales/eastern Victorian region and the Murray-Darling Basin, suggesting that this too was a locus of independent invention. A similar conclusion could be reached in regard to the fishing infrastructure and technology found in the north east Lake Eyre Basin. The presence of dugout and log canoes as well as fish hooks (the only instance of fish hooks in the western part of Australia) and nets (for catching dugong and turtles) in a region centred on the northern Gascoyne coast of Western Australia might be considered 42 Hall 1982; Walters 1985a,b. It would seem bark canoes were in use to some extent in Moreton Bay and the rivers of the adjacent coastal region. See Pamphlett and Uniacke (1825:103-5,110) 43 Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999:263; Gerritsen 2001a:24-5. 44 Rowland 1980:13; 1981:67; 1983. 45 Barker 1991; Lourandos 1997:210; Barker 2004:42,145. 46 Lampert 1966:94; Lourandos 1997:210; Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999: 292. 47 Bowdler 1976:254; Hughes and Djohadze 1980:17. 48 Dyall 1982:55; Sullivan 1987:104. a further example of independent invention.49 However, certain lines of evidence suggest that these features might have arisen as a result of the impact of Dutch sailors marooned in the region in 1712.50 In summary it would seem foreign influences played a significant role, through technology transfers, in maritime intensification in northern Australia, and perhaps the Gascoyne-Shark Bay region, while in other parts of Australia parallel autochthonous developments were taking place. This processes involved what has been termed “niche shifting”, in coastal regions from “coastal economies” to “marine economies” for example.51 While it is assumed that this has happened across much of northern Australia, it is also evident in Tasmania.52 For much of the last few thousand years, the Tasmanians were pursuing predominantly terrestrial and coastal economies but then in certain areas they began to incorporate more islands and islands further from the coast in their subsistence round. Hunter Island, for example, became part of the pattern of exploitation about 2500 BP with Maatsuyker Island’s seals becoming an integral food source from 570 BP on.53 Effectively the Tasmanians were “niche shifting”, 49 Phillips 1856:270; Oldfield 1865:269,274,295; Rathe 1990:47,56, 73; Gerritsen 1994:176-180; 2001a:25. 50 Gerritsen 1994a:180-1,252-60. 51 As defined by Gaughwin and Fullagar 1995:39. Their characterisation is limited in my view and I would suggest 2 further distinctions - a maritime economy that exclusively exploits the coastal marine zone and adjacent islands, and a pelagic economy that is exclusively based on the exploitation of island marine zones and the open oceans. 52 Jones 1984; Vanderwal and Horton 1984. 53 Jones 1984; Vanderwal and Horton 1984; Nicholson and Cane 1994; Bowdler 1995:946,949.
- 31. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 16 Figure 5d: Distribution of Fish Hooks Around Australia Figure 5d. notes Fusiform bi-points, otherwise known as muduks or fish gorges, have not been included in the fish hook distribution. Dampier 1697:465; de Haan 1756:92; Banks 1768-71:2:131; Oxley 1820:176; King 1826:1:37,43,354; 2;14,67; Williams 1839:61; Grey 1841a:1:378; Schurmann 1844:73; Oldfield 1865:274; Ridley 1878:253; Meyer 1879:192; Schurmann 1879:219; Wyatt 1879:171; Jung 1884:114; Palmer 1884a:284; Curr 1886:1:299; 2:201,334,341, 378,418,426,432,443,471,494; 3:284,348,407,548; Beveridge 1889: 73,86,88,91; Bicknell 1895:143; Durlacher 1900:162; Roth 1901:20- 1; Roth 1903:47; Petrie 1904:57,73; Roth 1904:33-4; Spencer and Gillen 1904:677,figs 239,240- 2; Basedow 1907:25; Fountain 1907: 289; Banfield 1909:59; Fitzpatrick 1914:45; Teichelman and Schurmann 1923; Williams 1923:61; Basedow 1925:132; Kaberry 1935: 414; Love 1936:136; Thomson 1936:73-4,Plates IX,XI; Thomson 1939b:210; Lamond 1950:169; Massola 1956; McArthur 1960:113; McCarthy and McArthur 1960:184-5; Duncan-Kemp 1961:211-2; Duncan- Kemp 1968:124,275,319; Hardy 1969:12; Farwell 1971:67; Macknight 1972:305; Bowdler 1976; Dargin 1976:25; Happ 1977:58,67; Rowland 1980:4,13; Rowland 1981; Dyall 1982:55,59; Rowland 1983; Bates 1985:250-7; Trigger 1987:79; Marchant 1988:150; Walters 1988; Lawson 1989:57; McKelson 1989:37; Barker 1991; Nicholson and Cane 1991; Penney 1991:86; O’Connor 1993:227; Nicholson and Cane 1994:113; Lourandos 1997:210- 11; Attenbrow, Fullagar and Szpak 1998; Border 1999:133; Flood 1999:200; Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999:263,292; O’Connor 1999a:13,126; Gerritsen 2001a; Clarke 2002:150-1; Barker 2004:42,145.
- 32. People, Islands and Deserts 17 developing marine economies in some places. But this was not possible without the watercraft capable of journeying to islands such as Maatsuyker Island. Which again raises the question, was there deliberate development of the seafaring technology with the aim of exploiting the untapped seal colonies of islands such as Maatsuker Island, or was it an evolutionary process involving a series of small incremental developments allowing groups such as the Needwonne to discover the seal colonies? It would be premature to answer to such a question at this point, before giving further consideration to intensification. A significant manifestation of intensification, at the opposite end of the spectrum to the marine environment, is the move beyond the final frontier in the desert, the details of how and when also being a matter of much debate. Although humans had been present here for possibly up to 55,000 years, occupation of the desert areas, which cover two-thirds of Australia, probably did not, on current evidence, begin until about 26-34,000 years ago.54 When climatic conditions were at their most extreme during the Last Glacial Maximum (19,000 – 17,000 BP) some areas, such as parts of the Western Desert, which had only been sparsely inhabited, were probably completely abandoned for a time.55 It has also been argued that the harshest areas, the “Barrier Deserts” such as the Great Sandy and the Great Victoria Deserts, were not populated at all, or only sparsely, until the last 5000 years.56 How this came about is, as ever, subject to some debate, though there are areas of broad agreement as well. Seeds are a significant source of subsistence in the arid zone, having reputedly “underwritten” the occupation of such areas.57 Various types were collected and ground, it would appear, from the earliest times, as attested to by the discovery of 30,000 year old grindstones at Cuddie Springs in inland northern New South Wales.58 But these and other early grinding implements were generalised tools, used to grind various seeds, tubers and root foods. Only in the last 5000 years or so did specialised seed grinding implements evolve from the earlier multi-purpose grindstones.59 Other adaptations, such as maintenance of conservation areas to fall back on in hard seasons, deep wells, improved 54 Veth 1989,1993; Allen and O’Connell 1995:viii; Edwards and O’Connell 1995:774; Hughes and Hiscock 2005:10. Smith (1986,1989a) argues that all desert areas of Australia were occupied from the earliest times, albeit only thinly populated, while Hiscock and Wallis (2005) have recently proposed an alternative “desert transformation” model, whereby groups altered their subsistence base as the climate worsened so that episodic exploitation of the barrier desert, and human presence, continued. 55 O’Connor et al. 1998:20; Thorley 1998; Hiscock and Wallis 2005: 43-47. 56 Veth 1987,1989; Veth et al. 1990:48-9; Veth 1993:103-114; 2005. 57 Smith 1986,1989b; Edwards and O’Connell 1995; Allen 1998; Smith 1998:136. 58 Fullagar and Field 1997. 59 Smith 1986, 1989b; Edwards and O’Connell 1995:774. hafted woodworking tools and more open social networks, providing greater flexibility in a highly variable environment,60 also appear to have played a role in the colonisation and ongoing occupation of the arid zone. Accompanying these developments was the evolution of broad-spectrum procurement, although the timing of this is still an open question, and limited population growth, albeit at a very low rate.61 Explanations for the development of specialised seed grinding and the exploitation of remaining niches in the arid zone encompass climate change, population growth and sociopolitical dynamics. M. A. Smith, for example, originally proposed that this facet of intensification was triggered by a decline in precipitation 3-4000 years ago, following a more benign period during the mid-Holocene. In his view population rose in the arid zone during the wetter period, only to suffer considerable resource stress when conditions deteriorated, with specialised seed grinding an adaptive response to this situation.62 Population growth in the context of more complex social relations has been invoked by Jane Balme to explain arid zone intensification, climatic change not playing any significant role in this.63 As an alternative, or addition, to this Veth has also placed developments in the arid zone in the context of more complex social relations, in the form of extensions to social networks. But he points to a range of technical innovations beside seed grinding, such as deep well construction, as another important contributing factor.64 Finally, extension of social networks or alliances, is given overarching primacy by Lourandos and Ross, in their view this factor triggered economic demand and subsequent innovations.65 Unfortunately all these theories have been subject to rigorous scrutiny and, it has been argued, all have their shortcomings. None, according to Edwards and O’Connell, “account for the apparent mid-Holocene expansion in diet breadth anywhere in Australia.”66 So what is the explanation? Perhaps a new theory is required, but before this can even be contemplated other aspects of traditional life in Australia must be considered for the picture to be a little more complete. 60 Gilmore 1932:168; Strehlow 1965:143; Cane 1984; Veth 1987,1989; Veth et al. 1990; Veth 1993:105-6,113; Fisher 1997:20. 61 Edwards and O’Connell 1995:774-80; Fullagar and Field 1997. 62 Smith 1989b:314. 63 Balme 1991. 64 Veth 1987,1989; Veth et al. 1990. 65 Lourandos and Ross 1994:57. 66 Edwards and O’Connell 1995:779; Allen 1998.
- 34. 19 Chapter 3. People and Plants in Australia Planting and Cultivation in Australia Deliberate planting on a systematic basis is a hallmark of early agricultural endeavours, be it in south west Asia, Mesoamerica, China, or wherever. By any normal criteria it is an absolutely essential component because, without planting, agriculture is not possible. Consequently, comprehending the dynamics that were involved in such a step, and the transition that evolved from it, is fundamental to our understanding of the origins of agriculture. In regard to Australia the 19th century theorist de Candolle, in his work Origin of Cultivated Plants, emphatically declared that: “The lowest savages know the plants of their country ... but the Australians and Patagonians ... do not entertain the idea of cultivating them.” This view, usually expressed in less pejorative terms, became, and still remains for many, an accepted fact. But, contrary to de Candolle’s pronouncement, planting by Aboriginal peoples in various parts of Australia was by no means uncommon, as will be documented below. And, as will become apparent in later chapters, agriculture was indeed practiced in parts of Australia by Aboriginal people in a traditional context. The first instance in which it was claimed Indigenous Australians engaged in planting arose in March 1658 when a shore party from a Dutch ship “Emeloordt”, searching for 68 sailors stranded two years earlier on the central west coast of Western Australia following the sinking of the “Vergulde Draeck”, reported to the Captain: “On land we found much low scrub and in some places also seeding land which they burn off in some places, arable or seeding land, but we saw no fruit but some herbs that had a fragrant scent.” This was in all likelihood an erroneous report. What the crew members from the “Emeloordt” had probably encountered was the practice of firing scrub and grasslands, a common feature of Aboriginal subsistence strategies, often referred to as “firestick farming”. In their naivety they had interpreted this as land clearance in preparation for planting. de Candolle 1884:2 Major 1859:83. The earliest recorded example of planting by Indigenous Australians in Australia was first observed in the 1850s, by noted explorer and surveyor A. C. Gregory. According to Gregory the Nhanda of the Victoria District, 300 kilometres further north on the central west coast of Western Australia: “never dug a yam without planting the crown in the same hole so that no diminution of food supply should result.” leading R. H. Maiden to comment in 1889 in Useful Native Plants of Australia, that this yam: “[Dioscorea hastifolia] ... is the only plant on which they [Aboriginal people] bestow any kind of cultivation, crude as it is.” Was this just a peculiar, isolated occurrence? It would appear not, for at least two other varieties of yam, Dioscorea bulbifera [D. sativa] and D. bulbifera var. elongata [D. elongata], were planted in Australia in traditional circumstances, on Cape York and its adjacent islands in Queensland. This has been documented on a number of occasions in a variety of places - on east Cape York among the Umpila; at Lockhart River and islands offshore; and among the Walmbaria and Mutumi of Flinders Island and the adjacent mainland - and west Cape York among the Wik- Mungkan and possibly the Tjungundji. Similar activity has also been noted on Groote Eylandt, off the Arnhem Land coast, with “women digging up yams and replacing part of the stem in the hole,”10 as well as at Kalumburu Gregory 1886:23 Gregory, who had carried out exploration and survey work in the area in the late 1840s and early 1850s originally made the claim in 1882 (though this was not published until 1887), specifically stating: “The natives on the West Coast of Australia are in the habit amongst other things of digging up yams as a portion of their means of subsistence; the yams are called ‘ajuca’ in the north and ‘wirang’ in the south. In digging up these yams they invariably re-insert the head of the yams so as to be sure of a future crop, but beyond this they do absolutely nothing which may be regarded as tentative in the direction of cultivating plants for their use.” (Gregory 1887:131) Maiden 1889:22 Hynes and Chase 1982:40. Harris 1977b:437. Hale and Tindale 1933-36:113; Tindale 1974:96; Tindale 1977:349. McConnel 1957:2; Campbell 1965:208. Campbell 1965:208. 10 Tindale 1974:96
- 35. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 20 in the very north of Western Australia.11 These examples quite possibly arose through a diffusional dynamic given their proximity to and/or contact with peoples such as the Macassans and Torres Strait Islanders who already practiced cultivation. The fact that all sites on Cape York lie within an area designated as being subject to [Torres Strait] “Island Cultural Traits” supports this inference.12 The same explanation may also apply to a further two, possibly three, species that were reportedly planted within the region subject to Melanesian influence. Hynes and Chase report the Pama Malnkana planted coconuts (Cocos nucifera), each tree being owned by the planter,13 while the Uradhi, according to Crowley, cultivated the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) prior to contact with Europeans.14 The Wik-Mungkan also reputedly planted another, unidentified, tuber named as “Koothai”.15 But what of practices beyond the areas subject to the aforementioned outside influences? Again a variety of sources indicate that other Australian groups may have been undertaking planting in their traditional context. Following Gregory’s account of the planting of yams on the west coast, a further claim was made in 1906 that Aboriginal people had been undertaking planting. N. W. Thomas, in a largely derivative work on Australia, made the extraordinary statement that: “The cultivation of purslane (Portulaca) seems to be a well-established fact. It is grown like melons on slightly raised mounds; before the seed vessels are ripe, the plant is cut, turned upside down and dried in the sun; then the seed vessels are plucked and rubbed down and the seed collected. Many pounds weight can be collected in a day, even when there is no cultivation.”16 Rather than being a well-established fact, Thomas’s assertion is the only instance in which it has been claimed Portulaca oleracea was cultivated in Australia.17 Commonly known as munyeroo, it was certainly heavily utilised, a staple, in 11 Crawford 1982:31,44-5. In this instance the top of Dioscorea bulbifera var. elongata [Ganmanggu] and var. rotunda [Gunu] was replanted. 12 Crowley 1983:306,Map 4. 13 Hynes and Chase 1982:40. 14 Crowley 1983:312. 15 Campbell 1965:208. This term could not be found in the Dictionary and Source Book of the Wik-Mungkan Language (Kilham et al. 1986) though it may be a misspelt abbreviation of may kuthal, the bulbous root of “swamp grass” (Kilham et al. 1986:79). Alternatively Harris (1977b:433) recorded kuthay as a Dioscorea sp. At Lockhart River in east Cape York, so Kuthai may simply be applied to any form of bulbous root (See Kilham et al. 1986:71,70). 16 Thomas 1906:113. 17 Thomas provided a very select bibliography (one page, 1906:251) with a statement indicating that a comprehensive bibliography would be published later (1906:xi-xii). Nothing in the select bibliography could be found supporting Thomas’s claim and no trace could be found of a comprehensive bibliography as a subsequent publication. The level of details suggests that the information may come from a primary source, perhaps a correspondent, but there is no confirmation of this. Consequently the statement could not be verified and must be treated circumspectly. People in Central Australia did, nevertheless, sometimes place “specially constructed stone rings” to contain these plants (Latz 1995:250) parts of Australia,18 as well as being cultivated in many other parts of the world.19 Following Thomas’s suspect claim, however, instances of planting by particular Aboriginal populations began to appear more frequently. It was reported that Aboriginal groups from south east Queensland germinated the very large seed cones of the “bunya pine” (Araucaria bidwilli), according to the informant they were “all sprouting”. However the intention here appears to have been not to grow these, but to eat them, by preserving them in swamps, waterholes or creek beds for two or three months.20 The bunya pines and their nutritious cones, found principally in the territory of the Waka Waka and Gubbi Gubbi peoples in the Blackall Ranges and Bunya Mountains of south eastern Queensland, were the focus of gatherings of at least 700 people from the local and adjacent regions, some groups travelling over distances of up to 320 kilometres or more.21 This normally occurred every third year, when all the bunyas usually bore fruit synchronously.22 Small groves of bunya pines were individually owned and inherited and it has been suggested that the bunya seeds were indeed planted.23 While there is some indication that groups frequenting the area may have played some role in the “pines” local distribution, perhaps through “sprouting” leading to “incidental planting”,24 others have offered the opinion that deliberate planting was unlikely as these conifers took a lifetime or longer to reach maturity.25 Mary Gilmore, better known in Australia as the noted poet Dame Mary Gilmore, was next to claim, in the 1930s, that Aboriginal people, in this instance the Wiradjuri of central New South Wales, had been engaging in planting and husbandry. Recalling a number of incidents she allegedly witnessed in her childhood in the early 1870s, either at Wagga Wagga on the Murrumbidgee River or, more likely, at Cowabbie Station, 65 kilometres northwest of there, Gilmore recounted: “It was here that I first saw more or less extensive planting of seeds by the lubras [women]. This was done at the direction of the chief, who, when the earth was cool enough to walk upon [following firing], went first to one shrub and then another, testing and examining the burnt capsules, and where these had been destroyed directing the attention of 18 Allen 1974; Smith 1986:29. 19 It was also exploited in North America, among the Iroquois and Hurons, as well as by peoples in the southwest U.S. and California, as well as being cultivated in Europe and parts of Asia chiefly as a vegetable (See USDA 1936:24;Byrne and McAndrews 1975; and http://www.fao. org/docrep/t0646e/t0646e0t.htm:3.). 20 Petrie 1904:23; Daley 1931:20. 21 Meston 1895:82; Petrie 1904:11-13,15-16,23; French 1989:18-9. Bunyas were also apparently found in the territory of the Dalla and Jarowair people as well (French 1989:18). There are claims of up to 20,000 people attending bunya feast (French 1989:19) but such claims are not generally accepted. 22 Mathew 1910:93-4. 23 Petrie 1904:16; Hyam 1940:117, 24 Walker 1977:13 25 Bennett 1930:13-14.
- 36. People and Plants in Australia 21 the women to them. The women gathered fresh ones from untouched shrubs, and planted them where the destroyed ones stood. The use of ammonia was apparently known, for when the seeds were in the scratched but still warm earth, the little boys were requisitioned to damp them. Grass-seed was gathered, a heavy kind, and I helped in this. When a lot, still in ‘the ear’ had been collected it was rubbed by hand, and then by a turn of the wrist the bark container into which it was shaken tipped left and right, and the grain lay clear at one end, with the husks in a little pile at the other ........... The separated seed was sorted, the unsound or small rejected and the best planted in the burnt area but very lightly covered. It was not scattered, it was put in small pinches so that if some failed there would still be enough for a tussock. How I remember the grass planting so well is that being a child I thought all seed was the kind wanted, and gathered ripe and unripe, and chiefly the sort that rolls on a sickle-shaped terminal. This, I was told, was not what was required, that the wind would plant this; that it was what did not run, and then catch in the earth, that had to be planted by hand. I had often seen the blacks set individual seeds as well as replace, where the plant grew, those of what they ate. But the former was usually done where they themselves first made a small fire of twigs in order to prepare the earth by heating it. Whenever they gave me the fruit of the ground- berry, as we called it .................... I was invariably asked for the seed, which was immediately planted beneath the growth from which it came. I remember once I had an exceptionally large berry, and without thinking spat the seed out when the pulp was eaten from it. Because it was a large seed the lubra I was with scolded me for waste, hunting the grass till she found it, so that it could be put back from where it originally came from and a strong plant grow from it ............... Then there was their usage in the matter of the quandong-tree [Santalum acuminatum]. They looked to see which of the stones or nuts were male or female, and planted accordingly. When a grove was in flower they brought branches from another grove to fertilize the blossom.”26 Gilmore’s account includes some highly significant claims. Not only does she insist that she witnessed the planting of at least four different species of plant, only one of which can be clearly identified, she proffers evidence of deliberate fertilisation, pollination and seed selection. This last mentioned behaviour, if true, is most remarkable in light of the debates that have raged regarding intentionality in the domestication of plants by early agricultural groups in other parts of the world. Before continuing, however, the issue of the accuracy and veracity of Gilmore’s recollections must be considered. While there is no direct corroboration of the planting and 26 Gilmore 1934:221-2 other activities mentioned by Gilmore,27 this is not unusual as most accounts of planting in Australia rely upon a single report. Despite the level of detail in her account, her lack of specificity in terms of exact time and place nevertheless make even indirect corroboration difficult. The only specifics of this nature relate to the cross-pollination of the quandong where, in contrast to the other parts of her evidence, she later named two places where she had seen this done, “Yarrengerry” and “near Bethungra”.28 Certainly she was in the region during the period in question, her family, particularly her father, were highly sympathetic to local Aboriginal people,29 and there is evidence that she played with Aboriginal children in their camp on Houlaghans Creek near Wagga Wagga.30 She maintains she had spent six weeks with the Wiradjuri on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River in the charge of “the chief women of the tribe”31 when recovering from poisoning by arsenic “intended for them.”32 Although nothing is known of the reputed poisoning, it is known she had two serious accidents as a child, the second, when she was only six years old, requiring an extended period of convalescence.33 This could possibly be the period she alludes to when recounting the episodes of planting. However the textual context points to Cowabbie Station as it follows a discussion of Aboriginal firing practices. Cowabbie is situated on the grasslands of the open plains in contrast to the Murrumbidgee floodplain, consisting of open woodland, with the traditional Aboriginal economy having a strong riverine orientation.34 Views differ as to Gilmore’s veracity, opinions ranging from there being, “a generalized truth in her writings,”35 to, “one of those fantasies that she invented, largely because they added more colour and intensity to her narratives.”36 Gilmore’s writings often provide a highly romanticised portrayal of Aboriginal people,37 at times in terms that are not consistent with established anthropological understandings, such as frequent references to “chiefs”.38 Events she describes elsewhere, such as massacres and atrocities committed against Aboriginal people in the region, appear to relate to 27 The only corroboration offered by Gilmore is a claim (1935:v) that she had received a letter which “endorsed” her observations regarding the replanting of fire damaged plants. 28 Gilmore 1934:222 29 Read 1983; Wilde 1988 30 Cusack, Moore and Ovenden 1965:28. 31 Gilmore 1934:183 32 Gilmore 1935:173 33 Wilde 1988:46. 34 Flood 1988:274. 35 Read 1983:26. 36 Wilde 1988:289. 37 e.g. “The Waradgery Tribe” in 1932:172-3 38 Although she frequently uses this term, she shows an awareness that they were not “chiefs” in the more conventional sense by acknowledging they had “no autocratic power of life and death” (1935:227). She may not have necessarily been misleading in this regard either, as George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of the Port Phillip Protectorate at the time, appears to have encountered a man named “Wol.lut.but” in southern New South Wales in the early-mid 1840s, who he described as “chief of all the natives of this country, regulates their fights and disputes” (Clark 2000:184). And Howitt (1904:303) alludes to the existence of hereditary headmen, called Bidja-bidja, in the southern Wiradjuri, the people from the area Gilmore refers to.
- 37. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 22 incidents that took place before she was born.39 It has been suggested that, having heard of these events when young from people directly conversant with them, she transposed herself into the story.40 There is also evidence that her father, perhaps others, may have been the real source of at least some of her information on Aboriginal matters.41 Although I am inclined to this view, Gilmore’s evidence must, unfortunately, be treated with great caution, if not rejected outright. Following the suggestion that an isolated grove of cabbage palms (Livistona australis?) at Orbost in Victoria may have been planted,42 there were no further reports of planting by Aboriginal people for over thirty years. Then a spate of reports appeared in the 1970s and 80s, many by professional anthropologists and archaeologists, beginning with the sowing of kurumi near Lake Darlot in the Western Desert of central Western Australia. According to Dix and Lofgren’s informants traditionally kurumi “seeds were carefully scattered in the cracks of the clay pan to ensure that after heavy rains a bountiful crop would be produced.”43 The planting of kurumi, tentatively identified as Tecticornia arborea,44 appears to have only been undertaken at only one particular claypan associated with a sacred stone arrangement.45 Two years later, in 1976, Kimber reported having observed two men in Central Australia undertake planting of no less than four different species, “native fig” [Ficus sp.], yella [“bush potato”, Ipomoea costata], moolyardi [Acacia dictyophleba - for spears] and finally Sturt’s Desert Pea [Clianthus formosus], an adornment signifying a successful hunter.46 These examples may, however, have been an adaptation to modern circumstances as the two individuals involved lived in fixed settlements outside their country, and all the plants involved had, apart from their functional and symbolic qualities, strong spiritual associations with their traditional lands. While there may be doubt that the episodic planting observed by Kimber was a traditional practice, this is not the case with the broadcast seeding of “bush tomatoes” (yalijarra - 39 Read 1983:26. 40 Read 1983:27. 41 A note in Gilmore’s handwriting and signed “M G” appears at the bottom of p.170 of Copy No.7 of Under the Wilgas (Gilmore 1932) indicating the Aboriginal legend “The Willi-wa Man No.2” originally came from her father, that there had been some confusion, and that it may not have been an Aboriginal legend at all. At various points she nominates her father (1932:168; 1934: 163-4) and refers others in general terms (1934:160). She also cites her uncles as a source for inordinately large gatherings (5,000+)at the Brewarrina fish traps (1934:192). 42 Hyam 1940:17. It would appear that this was actually first suggested in 1907 (Le Souef 1907:80). It is more likely this grove was a remnant from a period when the climate in this part of Australia was warmer and wetter as they also appear in eastern New South Wales. 43 Dix and Lofgren 1974:74 44 In all likelihood it was Tecticornia arborea as Tindale (1974:145) reports this species being collected and stored for months in kangaroo skin bags in that area, though he called it buli buli. A related species, Tecticornia verrucosa, was a staple in central Australia (Smith 1986:29). 45 Dix and Lofgren 1974/1090 46 Kimber 1976:146-7,149. Solanum diversiflorum), first noted by ethnobotantist Fiona Walsh in the same period. In this instance the Mardu of the central north of the Western Desert, in the north western region of Australia, traditionally broadcast the seeds over burnt ground near their camp prior to the rains.47 A short time later yet another example of planting in Central Australia, in this instance Nicotiana sp., was observed by another ethnobotanist Peter Latz, who, like Kimber, was uncertain whether this was a traditional practice or a “recent innovation”.48 Certainly the dried leaves of Nicotiana spp. were traditionally widely consumed in Central Australia, there being at least four Nicotiana species known to have been ingested by Australians for their nicotine content.49 It is worth noting here that Nicotiana tabacum, the species used in modern tobacco, was originally widely grown and domesticated by Native Americans,50 and it has been argued that psychoactive plants, “intoxicants”, may be among the first to be grown extensively and domesticated.51 Although the planting of Nicotiana in Central Australia is the only documented instance of this, the practice could possibly have been a traditional one and more widespread than Latz’s evidence suggests. For example, when exploring the upper Lyons River in the central west of Western Australia, F. T. Gregory, brother of A. C. Gregory, recorded in 1858: “... we halted for the night in latitude 230 59’39”. Tobacco here grew to sufficient size for manufacture, occupying many hundreds of acres of the best land.”52 Shortly after Latz’s observations were originally published another example of sowing, involving two species and apparently undertaken by a wide range of groups, came to light in inland Australia. In this case ngardu (Marsilea drummondii) and grass seeds, most likely Panicum decompositum or one of its relatives, was propagated by broadcast seeding, reportedly a traditional activity. This used to happen, according to Kimber’s informant (Walter Smith), at a “good camp ... or might be a good soak or something, good sandhill ...”53 These were seeds that were heavily utilised in the interior of Australia, playing a major part in the subsistence economies of a broad region that will be discussed later. Finally, in terms of such accounts, D. E. Yen reported the planting of two Ipomoea species, I. costata and I. polpha, in an unspecified part of the desert region of Australia.54 The cultivation of the first of these, I. costata, the “bush potato”, was noted earlier.55 47 Walsh 1990:34. See also Tonkinson 1991:53. 48 Watson 1983:40; Latz 1995:63. 49 Gerritsen 1994a:195-6; Latz 1995:62-64,230-36. 50 Keeley 1995:265. 51 Hayden 1995a:282,294. 52 Gregory 1884a:46 (31 May 1858). This was the first documented British colonial exploration of this region. 53 Kimber 1984:16-17. 54 Yen 1989:60. 55 Kimber 1976
- 38. People and Plants in Australia 23 Summarising, it can be seen that there is direct observational or ethnographic evidence detailed here of at least seventeen distinct plant species that were probably planted by Aboriginal Australians.56 In fact there are more, as will become apparent. Although some of these accounts, particularly Gilmore’s, may be suspect, the evidence of planting would appear to be incontrovertible. Certainly a proportion of these examples may have arisen as a consequence of influences from peoples to the north of Australia, Dutch pre-colonial interaction or modern circumstances. But there is good evidence that planting of at least six, perhaps seven, of these species was the outcome of purely indigenous developments.57 Furthermore, there may have been other situations in which planting was practiced but not recorded. The brevity of small-scale planting means that it could easily have been missed and this was quite likely in relation to the 19th century, where much of our information for large parts of southern Australia depends upon the observational powers of amateur ethnographers from that era. The stereotype, typified by de Candolle’s pronouncement at the beginning of this section, that Australia’s Aboriginal people didn’t engage in planting, cultivation or agriculture may also have compromised the observational acuity of these 19th century ethnographers. It is noteworthy in this context that all the valid examples recorded in the 20th century occurred in areas where traditional or quasi-traditional societies were still persisting (i.e. in northern Australia, central Australia and the Western Desert). Another interesting observation relates to the distribution of occurrences. All seven plantings identified as purely indigenous developments occur in the arid and semi-arid zones of central Australia, although this may simply be an observational artefact. While not included in the enumeration, the Gilmore examples are, however, consistent with this category to some degree, coming from a semi-arid zone. A similar pattern of seed planting occurring predominantly in arid and semi-arid regions has also been 56 Dioscorea hastifolia, Dioscorea bulbifera, Cocos nucifera, Ipomoea batatas, Ipomoea costata, Ipomoea polpha, Tecticornia arborea, Acacia dictyophleba, Solanum sp. Nicotiana sp., Marsilea quadrifolia/drummondii, Santalum acuminatum, Clianthus formosus, “native fig” (Ficus sp.), Unidentified shrub, Unidentified grass (probably P. decompositum or other Panicum sp.) Unidentified “ground-berry”. “Koothai” (possibly a Dioscorea sp. or “swamp grass”) is not included as it cannot be identified with certainty as a separate and distinct species from those already listed. The Thomas evidence on P. oleracea, as well as the claims the bunya and the cabbage palm were planted, are not included either as they are either not certain or based on eyewitness accounts. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 57 Ipomoea costata, Ipomoea polpha, Tecticornia arborea, Solanum sp., Nicotiana sp., Marsilea drummondii and Panicum decompositum or other similar Panicum spp. observed in California in relation to traditional Native American practices.58 Other Forms of Interaction With Plants Studies of Aboriginal interactions with plants and the environment in Australia were hampered for a considerable period by an inability to appropriately conceptualise the relationship, until Hynes and Chase developed the notion of “domiculture”.59 This characterised the interaction as a form of whole or total environment management leading to a “domesticated environment” and has great validity.60 The people involved controlled, to an extent, the total environment through manipulation of segments, niches or elements of it, producing in Hynes and Chase’s view, “the conditions for plant domestication.”61 One of the principal tools in this approach was the extensive use of fire, often called “firestick farming”, involving controlled burning of selected areas. Firing, which required a detailed knowledge of the environment, allowed easier capture of small game, encouraged new growth, created more diverse plant and animal communities, and also facilitated movement through the country.62 Natural productivity was increased to some extent by this practice, perhaps by as much as 500-900%.63 This has led some to deem it to be a form of cultivation.64 Aboriginal peoples, however, saw their role in this not as cultivators, however, but as curators of the natural environment.65 With the cessation of their direct involvement in their country, and the firing of it, a traditional custodian observed that it “[be]come wild now. No-one look after him,”66 a point supported by numerous instances in Australia of grasslands reverting to dense bush and scrub following dispossession.67 Numerous other practices can be alluded to in keeping with the domicultural approach. For example, temporary dams were constructed in channels flowing out of jungle wetlands around the Roper River in the Northern Territory ofAustralia 58 Keeley 1995:265. 59 Hynes and Chase 1982 60 Hynes and Chase 1982:38. This concept highlights one of the difficulties of using “domestication” as a diagnostic criteria for agriculture. Human intervention along the lines described, particularly firing, probably results not only in changes to the form and distribution of plant communities but also probably in the morphogenetic structure of the species. Consequently some species may be “domesticated” prior to planting and cultivation, such as described by Ladizinsky (1987) with pulses (Lens sp.) in south west Asia, and then undergo further morphogenetic changes when systematically planted and harvested. 61 Hynes and Chase 1982:49. 62 Yen 1989:58; Jones 1969:226-7. The extent of these practices has been called in to question by Horton and others (Horton 1982; 2000:70-101; Collins 2006:329- 48). Horton has argued that the impact of firing was “unique local effect” (1982:256), and I am inclined to share this view, that it only had local or at most regional impacts, and was not a generalised phenomenon as is often assumed. 63 Mellars and Reinhardt 1978:261; O’Connell, Latz and Barnett 1983: 99. 64 O’Connell, Latz and Barnett 1983:99. 65 Jones 1990:32. 66 Hynes and Chase 1982:41. 67 Jones 1969:228.
- 39. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 24 at the end of the rainy, “wet”, season to maintain water levels and thus encourage preferred bird and plant life.68 Activities directed toward enhancing productivity by manipulation of plant communities, as well as animals, insects, grubs and worms can also be considered to fall within the domicultural paradigm. Burning of cycad palms (Cycas sp.) to increase nut production,69 similar treatment of the trailers of the “bush potato” by the Kukatja of the northern part of the Western Desert to promote tuber production,70 and again with rushes (“flag” - Typha augustifolia?) in southern Western Australia, to “improve it,”71 are further instances. Other interesting examples include the stimulant “pituri” (pitjuri - Duboisia hopwoodii) from southwest Queensland and the “yam-daisy” (Microseris lanceolata) formerly found extensively in western Victoria. Pitjuri, a plant containing nicotine and nicotine related compounds, when prepared, was extensively traded over large areas of central Australia, reaching into southern Australia.72 Such was the demand for pitjuri that Aboriginal consumers reportedly would “give everything they possess for it,”73 a significant observation in light of earlier comments that intoxicant plants may have been the earliest cultivars. While pitjuri was not planted, as far as is known, the older branches were certainly burned to encourage growth of more potent new shoots. The second exemplar, the prolific yam-daisy, was a very important component of subsistence in south eastern Australia, especially in Victoria. Known as murnong, explorer Major Thomas Livingstone Mitchell noted in south west Victoria 1836 that, “in many places the ground was quite yellow with the flowers,”74 and Chief Protector Robinson reported on one area of central northern Victoria where there had been “millions of murnong or yam, all over the plain”75 in the early colonial period (1840). Digging to obtain murnong loosened the soil, a condition encouraging further propagation, leading one researcher to describe it as a form of “natural cultivation”.76 Alas, soil compaction and grazing resulting from the introduction of sheep and cattle by the colonial invaders has made the yam-daisy a rarity these days.77 Activities intended to enhance the productivity of individual plant species were not limited to manipulation of the plants themselves but could also include their preferred environments. The Iliaura and Wanji of the eastern Northern Territory, for instance, blocked up of small creeks and channels so that they overflowed and flooded 68 Campbell 1965:206. Similarly the Owen Valley Paiute in eastern California built dams and irrigation ditches up to 6 kilometres long in wetlands to promote the growth of wild hyacinth, nut grass and spike rush (Harlan 1995:13; Pringle 1998:1447). 69 Lourandos 1997:48 70 Cane 1984:88. 71 Grey 1841a:2:294. 72 Watson 1983; Berndt, Berndt and Stanton 1993:116. 73 Bancroft 1879:7 74 Mitchell 1839:2:272. 75 Clark 1998-2000:1:135. 76 Gott 1982:65; 1987:45. 77 Gott 1983:12-13;1987:40,45. the surrounding plains, promoting the growth of grasses such as P. decompositum.78 Similarly a dam 330 ft. [100m] long and 6 ft. [1.8m] high, first reported in 1969, had been constructed at some time on the shallow Bulloo floodplain in the arid northwest of New South Wales, ostensibly to promote the growth of grass and seed plants such as Panicum sp., Portulaca oleracea and Echinochloa sp.79 A similar intervention carried out on Cape York entailed simply clearing the ground around favoured species springing up near camp sites and erecting small barriers to protect them from playing children.80 Beyond this generalised approach, more specific interventions were also undertaken, including some of the examples of planting discussed earlier, as well as “selective propagation”, an interaction which results in the propagation of the plant, without actual planting. Illustrating this is the careful harvesting of yams by breaking off the tuber, leaving the top and trailer behind, resulting in regrowth. This was a deliberate action, with the harvesters quite conscious of the consequences of the method,81 and was first noted in the late 1850s in the Watjandi, a northern Nhanda group.82 The Watjandi, unlike their southern neighbours, did not engage in utilisation of D. hastifolia to such a significant extent, their country being much drier and containing only isolated patches of alluvial soils. Traditionally the Anbarra Gidjingali of Arnhem Land, Northern Territory also harvested yams [manbandi - D. transversa] in this manner, as did the Pama Malnkana of east Cape York [probably D. bulbifera].83 One other form of behaviour resulting in the propagation of plants is what is known as “incidental dispersal”, “incidental planting” or “incidental domestication”84 , the bunya pine cones discussed earlier being a possible example. A number of other occurrences have been noticed in Australia, typified by the proliferation of “wild tomatoes” and yukidjirri berries over a wide area as a result of the Walbiri of the Western Desert transporting “dampers” made with these.85 A consistent association, one the Anbarra Gidjingali in Arnhem Land were quite conscious of, between old camp sites and endemic fruit trees, particularly Eugenia suborbicularis, is also thought to be the result of incidental dispersal. More recently watermelons, a modern addition to the Anbarra Gidjingali diet, have also started appearing around camp sites.86 Lastly, the frequent appearance of a 78 Tindale 1974:102; 1977:347. 79 Rowlands and Rowlands 1969; Jones 1979:143. Such dams may well have had other additional functions, as will be discussed in Chapter 5. 80 Hynes and Chase 1982:41 81 Jones 1975:23. 82 Oldfield 1865:277 83 Jones 1975:23; Hynes and Chase 1982:40. 84 Rindos 1984:156. 85 Kimber 1976:145. In recent times the Alyawara introduced S. chippendalei south of its normal range through the discard of the seeds of this fruit when bought back to camp in cars (Peterson 1979:173). “Dampers” are flat, unleavened bread-like food in Australia. 86 Jones 1975:24.
- 40. People and Plants in Australia 25 plant, “dillines” [dilanj – Nitraria billardieri], on and around the occupation mounds found in western Victoria and on the Murray River is strongly suspected to be the result of incidental planting. Bearing large berries containing a stone, “the natives,” according to Beveridge, “are extremely fond of these berries, and to this fondness may be attributed the fact of their prevalence on the cooking mounds.”87 Human-Plant Interactions Avariety ofAustralian examples of human-plant interactions have been presented in the preceding sections. While not necessarily typical of Aboriginal cultures in Australia they do represent a range of such interactions. Similar interactions have, of course, been observed in other supposedly incipient and early agricultural economies. The point has been made elsewhere that planting should not be separated “from the antecedent activities of intervention,”88 as indicated by plant remains in the archaeological sequence in eastern North America showing a gradualistic, incremental development toward agriculture.89 Having arrived at a similar conclusion, Jarman et al. had previously attempted to characterise the process by developing a typology of intensification reflecting the growing concentration on particular plants, with subsistence becoming increasingly oriented toward those plants and the control of them.90 Their classification included: Casual gathering: “resources exploited simply because they are in the vicinity” Systematic Gathering: “particular plants or groups of plants become the focus of regular and systematic economic activities” with “some husbanding of resources” Limited Cultivation: “productivity is encouraged and regulated ... by transplanting, tillage, weeding, irrigation and so on.” Developed Cultivation: “propagation of crops under human control” While this classification has value in terms of identifying some sub-types of subsistence economies it is probably too general to account for the Australian evidence. It also offers little insight into how people might shift from one category to another through intensification, particularly how the shift from Systematic Gathering to Limited Cultivation might be achieved. Casual Gathering is also probably based on a misconception, as the Australian evidence indicates there was usually an underlying resource conservation strategy, to avoid over-exploitation, in the selection of areas and specific plant communities to be exploited, particularly in women’s gathering activities. What might appear to be casual gathering is often an informally programmed 87 Beveridge 1889:35. See also Gott and Conran (1991:34). 88 Smith 1995b:211. 89 Yarnell 1985:698-9. 90 Jarman, Bailey and Jarman 1982:53-4. 1) 2) 3) 4) systematic exploitation of diverse resources.91 This is the essence of the domicultural approach. Considering their Systematic Gathering category, Higgs and Jarman’s appear to assume that where there is intensive exploitation of particular plant resources that these plants would eventually be planted. But, apart from some examples which will be discussed later, there is little evidence that planted species prior to planting were necessarily gathered any more systematically, or exploited more extensively, than most other local resource.92 The dynamics that led to plants being planted, and which ones assume economic importance, I would suggest, are more complex than Higgs and Jarman envisage. Moreover, certain Australian groups, such as the Paakantyi of the Darling River valley, harvested extensive stands of seed plants on a systematic basis, perhaps husbanding them to some degree but, according to current understandings, they never planted these.93 Hence it is difficult to see what predictive power this categorisation has. Lastly, where there was “limited cultivation”, (i.e. planting) no obvious cases of tilling, weeding or irrigation were noted, a point that will be elaborated on a little later in relation to such activities in the evolution of agriculture elsewhere. Furthermore, the validity of including transplantation is questionable, as the Australian evidence shows that it was a feature in only two, perhaps three cases, where limited planting was traditionally carried out, with the Umpila and the Lockhart River people of Cape York, for example, transplanting yams on offshore islands.94 An alternative classification of human-plant interactions, from an evolutionary biology perspective, has been promulgated by David Rindos, providing for three categories of “domestication”95 : (1) Incidental Domestication: wild plant distribution “that appears to be the result of human feeding behaviour” “cultivated plants that have portions of their gene pool incidentally dispersed or protected” (2) Specialised Domestication: “intensification of certain tendencies present in incidental domestication.” 91 Chase 1989; Yen 1989. The main form of what I would consider to be Incidental Gathering was undertaken by men out hunting and “snacking” on berries and other “consumables” they passed by in the course of their activities. See for example Oldfield (1865:271) and Hiatt (1968: 210) and fuller discussion on p.88 of Chapter 6. 92 The nearest approach to Systematic Gathering in this regard was with the planting and harvesting of yams on Flinders Island where it was reported, “the yam is abundant, hundreds of these deep holes are evident in a comparatively small area.” (Hale and Tindale 1933-6:113) 93 Allen 1972;1974 94 Hynes and Chase 1982:40; Harris 1977b:437. The yams planted by the Walmbaria of Flinders Island were probably also originally transplanted from the mainland. Evidence will also be presented in the next chapter that the Nhanda transplanted their yams as well. 95 Rindos 1984:154-166. a) b)
- 41. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 26 (3) Agricultural Domestication: “establishment and refinement of the systems of agricultural production” Rindos also introduces the concept of “replacement planting”, the “maintenance of the plant species in a pre- existing niche,”96 which he contrasts with “agricultural planting”, defined as “colonisation by the plant of ... areas ... created by human disturbance of the existing ecology.”97 Many criticisms have arisen in regard to the Rindos model, his work being characterised by some as “biological determinism” or “biological reductionism”.98 By reducing the role of humans to “obligate dispersal agents,”99 some consider Rindos is attempting to eliminate the social or cultural element in the process of domestication and the development of agriculture,100 as well as possibly denying human intentionality in this.101 His employment of the term “coevolution” has also been challenged,102 while the appropriateness of the term “incidental domestication” for a phenomenon others consider to be simply incidental planting or dispersal is another problematic area.103 Basically Rindos, in endeavouring to provide an explanation for the domestication of plants, tried to identify processes leading to this domestication. Consequently he proposes that humans initially affect plant distribution through incidental dispersal, and the creation of the disturbed habitats favoured by “weedy” plants, around camp sites. This pattern of interaction is exemplified by occurrences such as native fruits trees around camp sites in Arnhem Land and of particular plants around camp sites, such as yukidjirra berries, where seeds have been dropped following harvesting, preparation or consumption. Following that, humans further aid the dispersal of plants by preferentially assisting or protecting them (e.g. the Iliaura blocking up creeks) as well as by planting them in other niches (initial agricultural planting). Further intensification of these processes finally leads to full-scale agriculture where people significantly alter the local ecology and facilitate the plants’ colonisation of these areas. Humans, in the course of this, move from being opportunistic to specialised feeders.104 But there appears to be limited explanatory value in Rindos’s schema. No account is taken of domicultural activities or selective propagation, there are few examples of incidental planting among the cases of planting in Australia, and none of the planted species appear to have been incidentally dispersed prior to their planting. 96 Rindos 1984:161. 97 Rindos 1984:161. 98 Rosenberg 1990:405; Flannery 1986:16. 99 Rindos 1984:159. 100 Chase 1989:47; Rosenberg 1990:400; Pearsall 1995:192. 101 Blumler and Byrne 1991:27; Riley 1991:44. 102 Blumler and Byrne 1991:26n8. It has been argued that as it is only plants that are evolving (i.e. changing genetically), and not the humans involved in the process, the application of the term “coevolution” is inappropriate (Blumler and Byrne 1991:26n8). The relationship can probably be more accurately described as a case of “predator-prey mutualism” (Pearsall 1995:159). 103 Price and Gebauer 1995:17. 104 Rindos 1984:158-9. A later attempt to classify the relationships between humans and plants in terms of an “evolutionary continuum of people-plant interaction”105 created a typology based on forms of “production” engaged in by hunter-gatherers and early farmers. Harris’s basic schema provides for: (1) Wild Plant Food Procurement: burning vegetation, gathering/collecting, (foraging) protective tending. (2) Wild Plant Food Production: replacement planting, ransplanting, weeding, (with minimal tillage) harvesting, storage, drainage/irrigation. (3a) Cultivation: land clearance, systematic soil tillage (with systematic tillage). (3b) Agriculture: cultivation of domesticated crops. Such an ordering, in my view, is flawed in certain respects. A major defect in this conception lies in the insistence that specific optimisation behaviours such as weeding, drainage and/or irrigation and tillage accompany particular types of plant interactions. The evidence pertaining to the activities of Indigenous Australians, as well as elsewhere, does not appear to bear this out. Furthermore there appears to be a lack of clarity in the distinctions made between categories. “Harvesting”, for example, is associated with the planting behaviours of Wild Plant Food Production but not Wild Plant Food Procurement where people are just “gathering/ collecting”. This begs the question of whether the Paakantyi of the Darling River were engaged in Wild Plant Food Production or Procurement? Including storage in the second category is also questionable as this is usually considered to be socioeconomic adaptation rather than a human-plant interaction. In a sense the problem lies in Harris’s approach which, like Higgs and Jarman’s, is really a classification of types of “productive economies” and not just of human- plant interaction. All the models that have just been outlined seek to describe and classify in some rational and consistent way a range of human-plant interactions in conjunction with optimisation behaviours that eventually become an integral part of any mature agricultural system. Part of the difficulty in the preceding examples lies in generalising in regard to optimisation behaviours - clearing, tilling, weeding, fertilising, watering, protecting and so forth - when there are no systematic studies to support those generalisations. As will be pointed out in the next chapter, the evidence indicates that at least some of these activities may well be quite late developments, refinements adopted when agriculture had already become the dominant means of food production. Compounding this difficulty are attempts to then correlate such activities with particular types of plant interactions, without a clear body of evidence demonstrating such correlations. Undoubtedly, in general terms, a continuum of increasingly close or intense human- plant interactions is perceptible, and at some point various optimisation behaviours are adopted. But these are not necessarily embraced synchronously or in conjunction 105 Harris 1989:17
- 42. People and Plants in Australia 27 with particular types of plant interactions and may simply be parallel processes driven by different dynamics. Consequently, it may be more productive to consider each process independently and initially focus exclusively on human-plant interactions. This consideration begins with the observation that human-plant interactions can be treated as a continuum in which human strategic behaviours range from generalist to specialist, reflecting an increasing involvement in, and manipulation of, the life cycle and reproduction of subject plants. In other words, a scale of intervention is discernible in human-plants interactions in which people can be seen to have increasingly specific and direct involvement with plants. Employing this principle a typology of human-plant interactions can be developed, as illustrated below: (1) General Selective Encouragement: Activities that enhance the productivity of particular ecosystems and/or plant communities e.g. firestick farming. (2) Specific Selective Encouragement: Activities that promote the productivity of individual plants or discrete communities of a particular species e.g. burning pitjuri bushes or rushes. (3) Incidental Propagation: Activities which do not necessarily involve any specific intervention but which result in the propagation of economically useful plants in frequented locations e.g. camp following fruit trees in Arnhem Land. (4) Selective Propagation: An intervention that results in the propagation of a species of plant without actual planting e.g. selective propagation of yams by the Gidjingali and Watjandi. (5) Replacement Planting: Deliberate planting to ensure a particular individual plant, or group of that species, being utilised is replaced e.g. replanting of yam tops by Wik- Mungkan, replanting of I. costata and I. polpha. (6) Translocational Planting: Carriage and planting of seeds or propagules to a new location (usually outside the normal habitat of that species) e.g. Umpilla transferring yams to offshore islands.106 (7) Productive Planting: Planting that increases the population, and often the density and/or the size of the niche, of the exploited plant species in a particular locale, up to a limit determined by the extent of the locale and human needs e.g. Nhanda yam planting practices. 106 Translocational planting has been noted at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) site of Mureybit and Abu Hureyra in SW Asia where einkorn was transferred from elsewhere, probably south east Turkey (Flannery 1986:15; Heun et al. 1997:1313), and the Kumeyaay of southern California (Smith 1995a:17). Translocational planting, of yams, in a non-agricultural context has also been noted among hunter-gatherers in Africa (Harris 1977a:213). In all the cases alluded to so far, and underlying the typology that has been outlined, it would appear the principal concern of the groups undertaking respective activities is the utility of the exploited plants. This applies whether it is a desire to have access to suitable spear trees, an assured supply of “native tobacco” or plentiful and reliable sources of food. As interventions become more specific there tends to be an increase in total output and productivity, especially with food plants. Genetic changes in plants may, and do, occur at any point on the continuum, the nature and extent of those changes being dependent on such things as the type of interaction, level of exploitation and the genetic and ecological characteristics of the plant in question. Domestication, in the sense of genetic changes in plants making them either partially or wholly dependent on humans for their reproduction, would appear to be more likely to arise as the degree of intervention increases. With so many variables involved, however, one cannot be rigidly prescriptive in this regard. Finally, it should be pointed out, the scale of human involvement in the life cycle and reproduction of plants does not cease with Productive Planting. Breeding is an additional level of interaction where the genetics of the subject plant are manipulated to produce new varieties or species with improved utility. In the last century or so this has become a more refined process as the underlying mechanism has become better understood. Further to that, another more interventionary strategy has recently arisen, the Genetic Modification of plants. Again this is carried out, by inserting a desirable genetic characteristic into the particular plant species, with a view to increasing its utility, in this instance by operating at a biomolecular level. Consequently these last two items should be added to the typology of human-plant interventions: (8) Breeding: Activities that intentionally manipulate the reproduction of exploitable plants, resulting in new varieties or species e.g. many current crops (9) Genetic Modification: Activities that manipulate the biochemistry and genetic structure of particular species resulting in the introduction of desired characteristics e.g. pest resistant cotton In conclusion it is important to stress the continuities involved. From this perspective I reiterate the point made earlier, that even the most traditional generalist hunter- gathers have much in common with “space-age” or “information revolution” societies. Stripped of sociocultural variation the approach is the same throughout, at least in regard to plants, it is just the inherent possibilities of the situation in which each finds themselves that is different.
- 44. 29 Chapter 4. A Case of Indigenous Agriculture in Australia Preamble In 1606, when Europeans, as far as is known, first made landfall in Australia and had contact with Indigenous Australians for the first time, the process of intensification had been in progress in Australia for at least five millennia. At about the same time as the Europeans became aware of the existence of the Great South Land the Macassans also began visiting parts of its north coast. Meanwhile, significant Melanesian influences continued to impact on Aboriginal cultures in north and north eastern Australia through the Torres Strait corridor, although possibly disrupted by the drowning of the Sahulian land bridge in the mid-Holocene. All these dynamics, be they endogenous or exogenous, appear to have led to distinctive developments in particular parts of Australia. The first of these to come under consideration relates to the Nhanda and northern Amangu groups of the central west coast of Western Australia. As stated earlier, the received wisdom is that there was no indigenous agriculture in Australia, a preconception I will strongly dispute. But before deliberating on the possibility of this indigenous agriculture in Australia a digression is necessary in order to clarify what is meant by “agriculture”. The characterisation and definition of “agriculture”, describing what is, in effect, a complex array of behaviours and relationships, is highly variable and at times quite confused. Agriculture, according to Reed is “the totality of the human practices involving those living energy traps which man plants, breeds, nurtures, grows, guards, preserves, harvests, and prepares for his own use.” When the “Duyfken”, under the command of Willem Janszoon mapped about 300 kilometres of the western coastline of Cape York. See Clarke 2003:183-86 for a listing of some the forms of influence. There has been some difficulty over the years determining who occupied what territories in the region, and this is still a matter of debate (Blevins 2001:ix,1-7,146,154; Gerritsen 2004:85- 8). Here the area from 50 kilometre south of the Murchison River to central and western Shark Bay is assigned to the Watjandi Nhanda group (Murchison River) and an unnamed group at Shark Bay. In the Victoria District, Hutt River to Irwin River, I assign the Nhandakorla Nhanda to the northern part and the Amangu Nhanda (northern Amangu) to the southern part, although the southern group is often considered on linguistic grounds to be a separate group just called the Amangu. Unless specifically indicated otherwise Nhanda will be used in a generic sense in application to the Victoria District groups. Scarry 1993:7; Harris 1996:3; Leach 1997:145-6. An example of one end of the range of definitions is Pryor (1983:94), who equates agriculture in its “widest sense” with “food production” but then includes animal domestication in this as well as plant domestication. Reed 1977:19. Rindos treats agriculture as a form of plant colonisation of a well-defined area created by human disturbance, while Yarnell describes agriculture as “intentional husbandry practiced by humans.” MacNeish sees it as the “planting of multipropagators (i.e. seeds) or cultivars in relatively large plots or fields,” but according to Meadows it is simply the “practice of growing crops ... Anyone who sows or harvests domesticated plants is involved in agriculture.” While it would appear from this that there is little definitional consensus, in behavioural terms the principal elements appear to be, after Redman and Harris,10 propagation (sowing, planting, usually of “domesticates”), husbandry (soil preparation, maintenance of moisture and fertility, exclusion of competitors, protection from predators), harvesting and finally storage. The scale or areal extent of these activities would also appear to be a significant factor, though not always explicitly stated, as some of the preceding examples show. This, in fact, is often one of the criteria employed to distinguish between agriculture and horticulture,11 as typified by MacNeish’s concept of horticulture as “cultivation that emphasises the planting of individual domesticates or cultivars in relatively limited plots.”12 But, how ever one views it, clearly planting is absolutely essential to any consideration of agriculture. The common requirement that the planted cultivar be “domesticated” is highly problematic, however.13 Certainly many, but not all, cultivated food plants appear to undergo morphological [phenotypic] changes and/or speciation, some quite quickly, once they are systematically planted, and in so doing may become human-dependent.14 Whether a cultivated plant does become domesticated may depend, Rindos 1984:161. Yarnell 1985:698. MacNeish 1992:11 Meadows 1996:392. 10 Redman 1978:91; Harris 1989:22. 11 Bronson 1977:25-6; Leach 1997:146. 12 MacNeish 1992:10 13 See Helbaek 1970:195; Higgs and Jarman 1972:7; Jarman 1972:15, 20,23; Wilke et al. 1972:204; Coursey 1976a:400n5; 1976b:72; Reed 1977:19; Redman 1978:92; Bailey 1981:2; Nishida 1983:306,310,318; Sowunmi 1985:127; Yen 1985:323; Ladizinsky 1987; Harris 1989:19; Shipek 1989:159; White 1989:157; Zohary 1989:369; Hillman and Davies 1990:156,166; Harlan 1992a:25; Ingold 1996:21-22; Rindos 1996:211; Spriggs 1996:525; Sherratt 1997:275; Anderson 1998:145; Willcox 1999:487-492; Benz and Long 2000:460; Cauvin 2002:51-61; Asouti and Fairbairn 2002:182. 14 It should be noted that even some species that are classically human dependent, such as wheat, can still in fact survive in the wild without human assistance (See Jarman 1972:23; Canadian Food Inspection
- 45. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 30 Figure 6: Nhanda and the Central West Coast (Tindale 1974) however, in part on the harvesting method as well as its genetic responsiveness.15 And it should be noted that intensive harvesting, without planting, may also produce Agency Plant Biotechnology Office:http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/ plaveg/bio/dir/dir9901e.shtml#B1:5). Moreover, many species of “domesticated” yam are cultivated forms of wild species (that continue to grow in adjacent areas), and simply revert to the wild form if cultivation ceases. 15 Hillman 1996:194; Sato 2003:146. some of those changes.16 Furthermore, domestication itself does not seem to be essential to systems otherwise characterised as agricultural, with some engaging in what has been termed “pre-domestic agriculture” or “pre- domestic cultivation” by Hillman and Davies, Willcox, 16 Ladizinsky 1987; Chikwendu and Okezie 1989; Hillman and Davies 1990:159; Harlan 1992a:25; Higham 1995:150; Evans 1996:63. This may explain the occurrence of “domesticated” squashes (Cucurbita pepo) in Mesoamerica (Harrington 1997; Roush 1997; Smith 1997), thousands of years before maize and agricultural lifeways became
- 46. A Case of Indigenous Agriculture in Australia 31 Cauvin and others.17 Such seems to have been the case as in south west Asia, where current evidence indicates wild, undomesticated or only partially domesticated cereals were being grown well into the Neolithic, the period when it is usually accepted agriculture was becoming, or had become, established.18 Rice (Oryza sativa) is another case in point. It had been cultivated for at least 3000 years as “ancient cultivated rice” before becoming “domesticated” by the end of the Chinese Middle Neolithic,19 yet few would deny that a well developed agricultural economy was in effect in that period. Broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), another Neolithic crop from China, does not appear to have ever been fully domesticated.20 So, while domestication may be a common consequence, and strong indicator, of systematic cultivation, it is not a necessary condition for systematic, larger scale sowing and harvesting of plants. Certainly it may signify the subject species genetic response to those practices, as a biological marker signifying in its strictest sense possible entry into a fully commensal, human-dependent, relationship.21 But it is nonsensical to define a human activity on the basis of how a plant may respond genetically when that response may take time and can be quite variable, depending as much as anything on the genetics of the particular species. Consequently it is, in my view, more rational to define agriculture just in terms of the human behaviours involved, that it can be demonstrated in particular cases that there is an on-going commitment to providing a significant proportion (say in excess of 30%) of the food supply through systematic planting.22 Domestication can then be simply treated as an indicator, one that can be diagnostically tested, in ascertaining that systematic planting and agriculture may have been taking established there (Benz and Long 2000:460,464; Fritz 1995:5). Support for the contention that squashes were not grown in the period in question comes from the observation that it was not translocationally planted in the Tehuacan Valley for a further 2000 years (Lamberg-Kalovsky and Sabloff 1995:253), as would be expected if it were being cultivated. See also n61 of Chapter 6. 17 Hillman and Davies 1990:166,199-201; Colledge 1998:121; Willcox 1999:494; Colledge 2001:150; Cauvin 2002:51,53-59,214,217. 18 Hillman and Davies 1990:159,166,208; Kislev 1992:87-93; Bar-Yosef and Meadows 1995:66; Bar-Yosef 1998a:167,168-9; Anderson 1998: 147; Willcox 1999:478-80,489-93; Colledge 2001:146-7,150-1; Cauvin 2002:53-59,214,217; Holmes 2004:29-30. 19 Pei 1998; Zhang and Wang 1998; Sato 2003:147; Yuan 2003:161; W. Zhang 2003; Bellwood 2005:116,164. Sato (2003:147) points out that “the classification between cultivated and wild rice is not always clear”. See also Yasuda 2003a:130 and W. Zhang 2003. According to Bellwood (205:150) harvested rice would have taken on domesticated characteristics after 5 generations. 20 Harlan 1995:154; Lu 1999:61; Crawford 2006:80-1; Lee et al. 2007. There are other examples of cultivation for long periods before genetic changes occur, such as Setaria and corn in Mesoamerica (Flannery 1986:15; Lamberg-Karlovsky and Sabloff 1995:250), and sorghum in northern Africa, taking perhaps 6000 years to become domesticated (Wetterstrom 1998:34,37- 8,42). 21 Higgs and Jarman 1972:7; Coursey 1976a:387,391; Bronson 1977:27; Unger-Hamilton 1989:101; Kislev 1992:87-93; Bar-Yosef and Meadows 1995:66; Bar-Yosef 1998:167,168-9; Willcox 1999:489. 22 The qualification is also based on the observation that domestication may occur before the scale of planting reaches a point where the plant in question is providing a significant proportion of the food supply. See p.75 in respect to maize. place, particularly in archaeological contexts where planting is not otherwise directly detectable.23,24 Plant husbandry, another element commonly incorporated in definitions of agriculture, involves an array of behaviours, which the evidence appears to indicate were not developed or applied synchronously. In effect husbandry is a series of refinements introduced over time, probably as adaptations aimed at improving the productivity of the crops being produced.25 Decrue planting (sowing on muddy or flooded flats that dry out) or broadcast seeding is often noted in early agricultural endeavours involving seed crops,26 with no clearing, or at most simply burning, and no deliberate tilling of the soil.27 Measures to protect the crop, such as weeding, are also seemingly later developments, as may be the case with watering and irrigation.28 In the European Neolithic, measures to retain or enhance fertility were not initially practised in some areas, and probably did not appear until the Bronze Age.29 Even the physical storage requirement is not considered essential in agricultural systems, it being a frequent practice with vegetatively reproduced staples, such as taro, sweet potatoes and yams, for the tubers to be left in situ and harvested as needed.30 In summary it would seem that the characterisation of agriculture should include as a minimum: propagation and harvesting of plants on a systematic basis, of sufficient extent to provide a significant proportion of the food supply for the people undertaking those activities. It should also involve a strategy to conserve the resultant output through storage or other means. Non-essential complementary features should include activities intended to maintain or enhance productivity (i.e. husbandry), and the expectation that the cultivar is likely to have undergone, or be undergoing, some morphological change. The Case for Indigenous Agriculture in Australia The notion that traditional Aboriginal Australians, prior to British colonisation, never grew crops, tilled the soil, 23 Unger-Hamilton 1989:89. 24 It should be noted, however, that domestication usually results in an improvement in productivity as the subject species develops “desirable” characteristics in response to the human selection regime (See Jarman 1972:19). 25 Helbaek 1970:194; Bailey 1981:8; Stark 1981:352; Pryor 1983:114- 5; Smith 1995:21; Cauvin 2002:20,57. 26 Harlan 1989:95; Shipek 1989:162; Hillman and Davies 1990:210; Anderson 1992:180,186; Smith 1995a:113; Pringle 1998:1447. Decrue planting is also the norm in the Nile Valley, the farmers planting following the annual floods (Childe 1934:51; Wetterstrom 1998:34) 27 Boserup 1965:24; Stark 1981:352; Anderson 1992:180-1; Harlan 1995:13; Smith 1995:21; Anderson 1998:145,151; Ibanez 1998:140- 142. Of course “slash and burn” agriculturalists do little more than clear an area and plant a crop for one to several years. See for example Lu’s (1999:136) description of corn and millet agriculture in parts of China until recent times. 28 MacNeish 1972:82; Anderson 1992:181,186,206; Smith 1995a:21; Balter 1998:1443; Anderson 1998:151. 29 Boserup 1965:24; Jewell 1981:226; Reynolds 1992:385; Bogucki and Grygiel 1993:408; Bakels 1997. 30 Coursey 1972:218;Ingold 1983:570n; Degras 1993:57.
- 47. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 32 planted or sowed is an old one. It was indeed one of the rationalisations employed to justify the expropriation of Australia, often repeated in the ethnographic literature of the 19th century.31 It is also a common preconception or unquestioned assumption among modern scholars. However, one confounding case in particular, which arose as a consequence of an accident of history a little over 370 years ago, may warrant closer attention. On the 16 November 1629 two Dutch mariners, 18 year- old cabin-boy Jan Pelgrom de Bye and 24 year-old soldier Wouter Loos, were deliberately marooned on the shores of the west coast of Australia, at a place now believed to be the mouth of the Hutt River,32 450 kilometres north of Perth, Western Australia. These hapless seafarers were abandoned on the orders of Captain Francisco Pelsaert for their part in a bloody mutiny. Five months earlier, in the early hours of 4 June 1629, the Dutch ship “Batavia” had been wrecked on Morning Reef in the Wallabi Group of the Abrolhos Islands, 60 kilometres from the Western Australian coast. All but about 40 of the 316 passengers and crew appear to have eventually managed to make their way to nearby islands, coral specks in most instances, by boat, swimming or clinging to flotsam. However, water was in critically short supply, so Captain Pelsaert and about 40 of the crew sailed in the ship’s yawl to the continental mainland to search, without success. Rather than return to the beleagued survivors, Pelsaert next decided to head for the Dutch fort at Batavia (modern-day Djakata) in Java for help. And so, in an epic voyage, they sailed the open boat 2,400 kilometres back to Indonesia, hoping to effect a rescue. In their absence an horrific mutiny, the Batavia Mutiny, took place in which 125 men, women and children were murdered. The mutineers had been secretly conspiring even before the “Batavia” was wrecked. With Pelsaert gone, the mutineers, led by Undermerchant Jeronimus Corneliszoon connived to have body of Dutch and French soldiers abandoned on one of the islands, West Wallabi Island, so as to remove any source of opposition. They thought the soldiers would die of thirst or hunger there, but in fact they prospered, finding water and living on bird’s eggs, seals and tammar wallabies. The soldiers were soon joined by some stragglers who had escaped from the mutineers. They informed the soldiers of the mutineers’ murderous rampage. Because the mutineers planned to capture any rescue ship and become pirates they decided it was necessary to eliminate the soldiers and stragglers, known collectively as the Defenders. Consequently the mutineers launched two attacks against the Defenders, both quite ineffective. In the course of the conflict the Defenders even managed to capture Corneliszoon and so the mutineers elected a new leader, Wouter Loos. Loos then launched another, much more effective attack, on the Defenders. They were about to overwhelm them when, on 17 September, Pelsaert 31 e.g. Lang in Eyre 1845:2:298; Curr 1886:1:36,78; Worsnop 1897:2. 32 Gerritsen 1994a:271-287; Playford 1996:237-42; Gerritsen, Slee and Cramer 2005; Gerritsen 2007b,2008. miraculously reappeared in the rescue ship, the “Sardam”. The leader of the Defenders, Webbie Hayes, raced to warn Pelsaert of the mutineers plot to seize his ship, and the mutiny was immediately put down and the mutineers rounded up. Following a series of inquisitions in which judicial torture was freely used, 8 mutineers, including de Bye, were sentenced to be hanged. Due to lack of evidence Loos escaped that sentence. Pelsaert and the ship’s council decided in the end to maroon Loos and de Bye (because of his youth) on the Australian mainland.33 Pelsaert subsequently issued the castaways, the first Europeans known to inhabit Australia, with orders, which read (in part): “.... to put ashore there or here, to make themselves known to the folk of this land by tokens of friendship. Whereto are being given by the Commandeur [Pelsaert] some Nurembergen [cheap wooden toys and trifles], as well as knives, Beads, bells and small mirrors, of which shall give to the Blacks only a few until they have grown familiar with them. Having become known to them, if they then take you into their Villages to their chief men, have courage to go with them willingly. Man’s luck is found in strange places;”34 In order to assist the reluctant “pioneers” Pelsaert provided them not only with the aforementioned articles but also, on the day they were put ashore, “... a Champan [flat-bottomed boat] provided with everything [my emphasis]...”35 Exactly two centuries later (1829) the European colonisation of Western Australia began in earnest when the British established a permanent settlement, the Swan River Colony, on the site of the present-day state capital, Perth. For a decade the colony was largely restricted to an area within a radius of 80 kilometres around Perth, during which time the Indigenous populations were pushed aside and then “pacified” when they began to resist. Tentative explorations beyond this area took place during this period, but in 1839 an ambitious expedition was planned to examine the coastal lands between Perth and Shark Bay, 880 kilometres to the north. Led by Lt. George Grey (later Sir George Grey, Governor of South Australia, New Zealand and then the Cape Colony) the expedition soon foundered when, at Shark Bay, they were caught in a terrible cyclone [hurricane] - the 33 At the time the continent was Terra Incognita to Europeans, unknown apart from the shadowy outlines of parts of the north, south and west coasts. Numerous accounts of the Batavia Mutiny have been written, for example: Drake-Brockman, H. 1963/1982 Voyage to Disaster. London: Angus Robertson. Godard, P. 1993 The First and Last Voyage of the Batavia, Perth: Abrolhos Publishing. Gerritsen, R. 1994 And Their Ghosts May Be Heard. South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, pp.16-30,271-287. Dash, M. 2002 Batavia’s Graveyard London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. • • • • 34 Pelsaert 1629:230 35 Pelsaert 1629:237
- 48. A Case of Indigenous Agriculture in Australia 33 “eye” passing directly over them. Having lost most of their stores and equipment Grey decided to return immediately to Perth in the two remaining boats. Continuing south for some 300 kilometres Grey attempted to put in at a place known as Gantheaume Bay, the embouchure of the Murchison River and Wittecarra Creek. Unfortunately a large and unexpected surf close to shore swamped the two boats, leaving Grey and his party 500 kilometres from “civilisation” with little food and no water. The party resolved at that point to walk overland back to Perth, experiencing great hardship, but accomplished this remarkable feat with the loss of only one life. In the course of his travails Grey kept a journal, later published as part of A Journal of Two Expeditions In North-West and Western Australia, 1837-39, in which he recorded at length the events that took place and his observations along the way. Several days after their mishap at Gantheaume Bay, as the ragged band of explorers approached the Hutt River, Grey began to make some interesting observations. About 18 kilometres from the Hutt River valley, in a valley leading into it, Grey recorded in his journal: “April 4 1839: we soon fell in with the native path we quitted yesterday; but now became quite wide, well beaten and differing altogether by its permanent character, from any I had seen in the southern portion of this continent ... And as we wound along the native path my wonder augmented; the path increased in breadth and its beaten appearance, whilst along the side of it we found frequent wells, some of which were ten and twelve feet [3-4 m] deep, and were altogether executed in a superior manner. We now crossed the dry bed of a stream, and from that emerged upon a tract of light fertile soil quite overrun with warran [original emphasis] plants [the yam plant - Dioscorea hastifolia], the root of which is a favourite article of food with the natives. This was the first time we had seen this plant on our journey, and now for three and a half consecutive miles [5.6 kms] traversed a piece of land, literally perforated with holes the natives made to dig this root; indeed we could with difficulty walk across it on that account whilst the tract extended east and west as far as we could see. It is now evident that we had entered the most thickly-populated district of Australia that I had yet observed, and ... more had been done to secure a provision from the ground by hard manual labour than I could believe it in the power of uncivilised man to accomplish. After crossing a low limestone range we came upon another equally fertile warran [original emphasis] ground ..... The next day, as they reached Hutt River, Grey continued: April 5 1839: ..... The estuary [actually a salt marsh, Hutt Lagoon] became narrower here, and shortly after seeing these natives, we came upon a river running into it from the eastward [Hutt River]; its mouth was about forty yards [36 m] wide, the stream strong but the water brackish, and it flowed through a very deep ravine, having steep limestone hills on each side ... Being unable to ford the river here, we followed it in a SE direction for two miles [3.2 kms], and in this distance passed two native villages, or, as the men termed them, towns - the huts of which they were composed differed from those in the southern districts, in being built, and very nicely plastered over the outside with clay, and clods of turf, so that although now uninhabited they were evidently intended for fixed places of residence.”36 Over the next 130 kilometres, as Grey and his party traversed the Victoria District, they encountered a series of small fertile river valleys (the Bowes, Chapman, Greenough, Irwin and Arrowsmith Rivers) each conforming to the pattern observed at Hutt River in terms of the intensive utilisation of the warran plant (it was actually known locally as ijjecka or adjukoh). Two further villages were sighted, at the Bowes and Greenough Rivers. Grey estimated the latter “contained at least a hundred and fifty natives”37 . All the elements of Grey’s observations were subsequently borne out over the following 12 years, as exploration continued and British settlements became established in the Victoria District [Hutt River to Irwin River], by a variety of explorers, government officials and pioneers including Lt. Helpman (Explorer), A. C. and F. T. Gregory (Surveyors, Explorers), James Drummond (Government Botanist, Pioneer), Mrs Brown (Pioneer), Phillip Chauncy (Surveyor), John Septimus Roe (Surveyor- General), William Burges (Government Resident), Edward Cornally (Shepherd) and Dr Robert J. Foley (Pioneer). Lt. Helpman, for example, provided a detailed description of the type of huts referred to by Grey: “We here met with the first native hut; it was well plastered outside and the timber which formed it was about 6in. [15cm] thickness, about 6ft. [1.8m] high inside and capable of holding ten persons easily.”38 Captain Stokes and his party from the famous “Beagle” (Darwin was not on this voyage) even slept in one during a land reconnaissance in the Geraldton area in 1841: “We noticed their winter habitations substantially constructed and neatly plastered over with red clay ... Some neighbouring wigwams of superior structure gave us snug quarters for the night.”39 36 Grey 1841a:2:12,19 I believe I have identified the site of this first village, as well as some of the others in the region, through field investigations (Gerritsen 2002). The site of this first village appears to cover an estimated area of almost 4 hectares (Personal Observation 29/4/1998,21/5/1999) having an estimated population of 290(Gerritsen 2002:12). 37 Grey 1841a:2:37 38 Helpman 1846:9 39 Stokes 1841:2-3. How Stokes came to the conclusion these dwellings were only inhabited in winter is a moot point as he was only in the area for about one and a half days in early summer (1846:2:385-93). He probably just assumed this was when they were usually occupied because of their substantial construction. However winters here are quite mild (minimums never fall below zero, av. maximum 18 deg.C) compared to further south where far less substantial or protective shelters were constructed. Protection from rain
- 49. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 34 Perhaps of greater significance were other comments made by some of the vanguard of the colonial invasion. William Burges, the first representative of the Colonial government in the district, reported in 1851 that: “They [the Nhanda people] seem very little addicted to hunting and very few of them are even expert at tracking a Kangaroo. This may result from the great variety of edible roots, particularly the A-jack-o or warang which grows here in great abundance.”40 a view echoed by Helpman: “They are a fine race of men but seem to depend entirely [my emphasis] upon warran and gum, of which they have great abundance. Very few, even of the women, had kangaroo skins”41 Finally A. C. Gregory, as mentioned earlier, a noted Australian explorer, provided the telling observation mentioned in the last chapter regarding the Nhanda people of the Victoria District: “Agricultural science seemed to have made some progress, as they never dug a yam without planting the crown in the same hole so that no diminution of food supply should result.”42 with the conclusion supported by Maiden in 1889 in Useful Native Plants of Australia: “[Dioscorea hastifolia] ... is the only plant on which they [Aboriginal people] bestow any kind of cultivation, crude as it is.”43 The significance of these passages lie in the references to the warran, the yam plants growing “as far as we could see”, or, “tracts of land several square miles in extent”44 [calculated to cover an area of 15-16 sq. kms45 ], evidence of their propagation, the paths, the wells, the huts and the villages - all bespeak an agricultural society exhibiting a high degree also appears an unlikely explanation. This area receives about 463 mm p.a., about half that of Perth, usually in winter from heavy falls lasting only an hour or two. Curiously Stokes’ reference to “their winter habitations substantially constructed” is omitted from the later account. 40 Burges 1851a:6 41 Helpman 1849:3. 42 Gregory 1886:23 It will be recalled that Gregory, who had been in the district at various times between 1849 and 1854, originally made the claim in 1882 (though not published until 1887), in which he specifically stated: “The natives on the West Coast of Australia are in the habit amongst other things of digging up yams as a portion of their means of subsistence; the yams are called ‘ajuca’in the north and ‘wirang’in the south. In digging up these yams they invariably re-insert the head of the yams so as to be sure of a future crop, but beyond this they do absolutely nothing which may be regarded as tentative in the direction of cultivating plants for their use.” (Gregory 1887:131). 43 Maiden 1889:22. 44 Grey 1841a:1:292. 45 See Gerritsen 1994a:298n19. of sedentism.46 Gregory’s information is unequivocal and clearly indicates propagation was in evidence, while Grey elsewhere observed “these circumstances all combined to give the country an appearance of cultivation, and of being densely inhabited, such as I had never before seen”.47 Other comments, particularly Helpman’s and Burges’, regarding the degree of dependence on the yams, if read in conjunction with Grey and others on the extent of the yam grounds and the presence of villages, strongly suggests that this propagation was carried out on a systematic basis, to an extent where it provided a major proportion of local subsistence. Dr Foley, in 1851, referring to the Chapman River valley, noted “You can see for miles, and it being dug for warrang or agacs, as they call it here, you can see the nature of the soil.”48 At nearby Wizard Peak, Bynoe, the surgeon from the “Beagle”, had noticed during their reconnaissance a decade earlier that “the native yam seemed to grow in great abundance.”49 Again Grey, in describing the Arrowsmith River valley reported, “the whole of this valley is an extensive warran ground”.50 Grey’s remark, that the ground at Hutt River was “literally perforated with holes the natives made to dig this root”, was often repeated by other observers, pointing to intensive harvesting.51 Unfortunately, apart from one minor study carried out in 1914,52 no published archaeological investigations have ever been carried out in the Victoria District, necessitating a reliance on historical ethnographic sources. These limited sources do not contain any information on any husbandry that may have been undertaken by the Nhanda of the Victoria District. However it could be inferred that at Hutt River at least the plants may have been watered. Grey, it will be recalled, stated that, “we found frequent wells, some of which were ten and twelve feet [3-4 m] deep, and were altogether executed in a superior manner”. He described them in another account as being “of a depth and size quite unknown in the southern portions of the continent.”53 The climate in this semi-arid region is of Mediterranean type, with hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters, and an annual 46 See Gerritsen (2002) for an analysis of the sites, form of the structures, size of the settlements, degree of sedentism and the settlement pattern. Information has recently come to light which appears to confirm the conclusion in that work that the dwellings were hemispherical in their morphology (Vivienne 1901:337). Furthermore Rev. John Wollaston (Burton and Henn 1954:144) recorded in his diary (1 March 1853) that he had learnt from Government Botanist James Drummond Snr. and his son John Drummond (policeman stationed in the Victoria District) that in the Victoria District, “Their families are more numerous and less wandering in their movements.” 47 Grey 1841b:44. 48 Foley 1851. 49 Bynoe in Stokes 1846:2:389. 50 Grey 1841a:2:54. 51 e.g. Helpman 1846:9-10; Roe 1847:26. Rev. Wollaston (Burton and Henn 1954:144) also recorded in his diary (1 March 1853) that he had learnt from the Drummonds that in the Victoria District “the ‘Warrang’, a kind of Yam, greatly abounds and grows to a large size”. 52 Campbell 1914. 53 Grey 1841b:44.
- 50. A Case of Indigenous Agriculture in Australia 35 rainfall of 463 mm [18.5 in]. Wells of the type described by Grey normally only appear singly in the arid zone in Australia, an adaptation to the “more marginal areas of the desert lowlands.”54 Following an exhaustive search of the ethnographic literature, historical and contemporary, regarding the occurrence of a number of these type of wells in close proximity, only two comparable cases could be found. One was an account from northern Australia by explorer Ludwig Leichhardt of “some large wells, ten or twelve feet deep [3-4 m], and eight or ten feet [2.4-3 m] in diameter, which the natives had dug near the Zamia groves, but they were without the slightest indication of moisture.”55 The other was from the Irwin River valley, again in the Victoria District, where Lt. Helpman reported “several wells of considerable size dug about 8 feet [2.4 m] deep.”56 Given that there are dozens of permanent springs in the Hutt region,57 Grey actually commenting on passing springs “every few hundred yards” and a “chain of reedy fresh water swamps” on 3 and 4 April, 1839,58 as well as the presence of various watercourses (Hutt River and a number of creeks), it is difficult to account for the wells. The most likely explanation was that they were being used 54 Veth 1989:83;1993:106. 55 Leichhardt 1847b:403-4. Martin (1865:281) reported another possible example, in this instance “native wells” which may have been 3-4 m deep, spaced about a mile apart inland from Roebuck and La Grange Bay in the south Kimberley region of Western Australia. 56 Helpman 1846:13-14. Grey (1841a:2:39-41) also reported two separate wells of “considerable depth” and “great depth” in the Irwin River valley on 9 April 1839, even though there was a spring in the vicinity. Mrs Brown (1851:3) also reported a well (dimensions were not mentioned but it was deep enough for their dogs to fall in) near Mt. Hill which lies between the Greenough and Irwin Rivers. 57 Australian Topographic Survey Map 1741 58 Grey 1841a:2:10,13 to water the yam fields and this contention is supported by their adjacency to the yam fields as well as by the similar occurrence of grouped wells in the Irwin River valley. The yam plant referred to earlier, the warran or ijjecka, Dioscorea hastifolia, is a species of yam that is in fact one member of the tropical genus Enantiophyllum, described as “ ... the most tropical yams”.59 Yet in Western Australia its distribution was almost exclusively encompassed by the South-West Botanical Province,60 ranging from the wetter Mediterranean climate just south of Perth, to the prolific Victoria District, with isolated occurrences in the fringe of the coastal desert region of southern Shark Bay, reportedly “abounding” on Salutation Island [1.5 sq. kms] in that locality when the British reconnoitred there in 1851.61 Around Perth the tuber grew to the thickness of a man’s thumb,62 “to a very large size,”63 in the Victoria District and the thickness of a man’s thigh at Shark Bay.64 The global distribution of the Enantiophyllum genus, excluding the cultivar Dioscorea alata, is illustrated in Figure 7 below: It can readily be seen that there are two main areas of distribution, in Africa and Asia/Oceania, separated by the deserts of the Middle East, with an isolated outlier on the central west coast of Western Australia. Australia, however, was completely isolated from the Paleocene [65 Million 59 Alexander and Coursey 1969:410. 60 Beard 1984; Keighery 1990:64. 61 Helpman 1851:273; Roth 1903:48. Isolated specimens have recently been reported from the “northern range end” on North West Cape (Keighery and Gibson 1993:55,73). 62 Moore 1884:74 63 Burges 1851a:6 64 Oldfield 1865:277 Figure 7: Global Distribution of Enantiophyllum (Courtesy of the Linnean Society of London)
- 51. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 36 Years Ago] until the mid-Miocene [20 MYA],65 the period in which the Dioscoreaceae were evolving, probably in south east Asia or Africa,66 virtually ruling out the possibility that Dioscorea hastifolia has evolved independently in Western Australia. If this is the case then it can only have reached its distribution in Western Australia by natural migration from the north of Australia, or with human assistance. Some have speculated that D. hastifolia, or its ancestral species, could have migrated by coming directly across the Great Sandy Desert,67 or by “extending progressively down the coast” to reach the west coast and then “evolving into a distinct species over … perhaps several million years”.68 Natural migration such as this is extremely improbable, however. By the Paleocene Australia had broken away from Antarctica and was heading north, before beginning to collide with the Asia/Pacific region in the mid-Miocene. In so doing it entered the desert belt now stretching across the middle of the continent. Consequently for D. hastifolia to reach the west coast of Western Australia it would have had to cross this desert belt. Given the fact that the deserts of the Middle East acted as an effective barrier dividing the African and Asian distribution of Enantiophyllum yams from the Pliocene [15 MYA] until after 2000 BP, when sea-borne traders and immigrants began transporting them around it,69 this seems highly unlikely. Moreover, the present distribution of the genus east of Indonesia, including northern Australia, reputedly has only arisen in the last two to four millennia.70 . As the “barrier dunefields” of the Great Sandy Desert have formed a biogeographic barrier for at least 35,000 years,71 and a coastal route requires direct carriage or diffusion through “one of the largest arid coastal zones in the world,”72 incorporating at least 200 kilometres of coastal desert on the upper west coast, migration from northern Australia seems highly implausible. Furthermore, if Enantiophyllum yams had only reach northern Australia sometime in the preceding two millennia, then they could not have evolved naturally “over … several million years” into a distinct species in Western Australia as postulated by Playford. The absence of D. hastifolia, or any other species of yam, in any intervening areas, or in other parts of southern, western and eastern Australia, would appear to confirm this conclusion, that it did not migrate to the west coast of Western Australia. Consequently it must have arrived by some other means. 65 Briggs 1987:67,78 66 Coursey 1967:34;1972:217; 1976b:70. 67 Burkill 1958-61:Fig 5,330,334. 68 Playford 1996:227 69 Burkill 1958-61:334; Coursey 1967:16-17,33; 1972:226-7; 1976b:70- 1. 70 Alexander and Coursey 1969:417; Coursey 1976b:71. This explains the presence of species such as D. bulbifera and D. Transversa in the humid tropical and sub-tropical coastal regions of northern and north eastern Australia. 71 Veth 1995. 72 Veth 1995:733. The harsh barrier dunefield ecozone was only colonised and occupied by Indigenous Australians in the last 5000 years, while the current climate regime has been in effect for the last 7000 years. See Wyrwoll et al. 1986:208-10; Veth 1993:8-9,103-14. It will be recalled that when Pelsaert marooned Loos and de Bye in the aftermath of the Batavia Mutiny they were given “... a Champan provided with everything,” and presumably this included food. Pelsaert, it should also be noted, had returned two months earlier on his rescue mission in the “Sardam”, having come directly from Java, where the ship had been requisitioned and provisioned before sailing. With numerous species of yam from the Enantiophyllum genus found in Java, and it being a common and extensive practice to use yams in victualling ships in the 17th century because of their keeping properties,73 it is quite probable that the two mutineers were put ashore with a supply of yams. The obvious inference from this is that they introduced the yam to the Nhanda, along with the knowledge of its means of propagation, and perhaps some other cultural innovations such as the huts mentioned earlier. From that point on, however, all further developments were essentially of Indigenous provenance. This proposition is supported by detailed arguments that have been put forward contending that a significant foreign influence was discernible in the Victoria District and the surrounding region at the time of British “settlement” there in 1849. This arose not only as a result of the impact of the abandoned mutineers, but probably the presence of at least part of a group of 68 Dutch castaways, marooned as a result of the sinking of the Vergulde Draeck further south in 1656.74 One manifestation of this was the physical appearance of the Nhanda, A. C. Gregory, for example, reported that when exploring in the Hutt River region in 1848 he came across a tribe whose “colour was neither black nor copper, but that peculiar colour that prevails with a mixture of European blood.”75 These people Gregory wrote elsewhere had “light flaxen hair, the eyes approaching the colour of the same,”76 and similar comments were made by others on numerous occasions in succeeding years.77 Mythological evidence has also been interpreted as evidence of the Dutch presence and incorporation into the traditional societies of the Nhanda and other peoples in the region. One example is the Kooranup concept, a set of beliefs based on the idea that there existed a land over the sea, in this case the Indian Ocean, where the spirits of the deceased went.78 As one colonist, E. R. Parker, recounted: “there is the idea prevalent amongst the sea-coast tribes in the vicinity that their ancestors originally came from the west, and that their dead return thither, and that when the first Whites [British colonists] came in their ships 73 Burkill 1966:827; Coursey 1967:16-18; 1972:227; 1976b:72; Hancock 1992:254; Hahn 1995:114. 74 It is conjectured that surviving members of a group of 68 sailors stranded on the coast following the wreck of the “Vergulde Draeck” in 1656 also made their way into the region (Gerritsen 1994a:232-46). 75 Gregory 1886:23. 76 Gregory quoted in Bates n.d.f:31. 77 See Gerritsen 1994a:71-73 for other examples 78 Gerritsen 1994a:66,71,145-50,160-1,169,171.
- 52. A Case of Indigenous Agriculture in Australia 37 English Nhanda* Dutch Notes Bad Gooraa’ee (N) Goor, goorheid (Dutch – Nasty, nastiness) Cold Koon’dhetha (A) Koudachting, koudheid (Dutch – coldish, coldness) Coughing Oondoonda mok (A) Aandoen ademtocht (Dutch – gasping) Hawk Kirkenjo (W) Kiekendief (Dutch – the hawk-like kite) Many/plenty Boola (W) Boel (Dutch – a lot, a whole lot) Wind Windhoo (A) Wind Table 1. English Nhanda* Dutch Aged Oop’baija (A) Oop bejard Bowl, wooden Bat.tje (W) (large oblong dish) Badje (small bath) Clod of earth Turpa (W) Turfje, turf (peat, turf) Digging stick Wippa (A,N,W) Wipje (short plank) Old Man Wingja bardo Wijze baard (‘wise beard’) Table 2 * Designated Nhanda dialects: A = Amangu; N = Nandakorla; W = Watjandi they believed them to be their ancestors risen from the dead.”79 For a time the initial wave of British colonists were in fact known as the djanga, the dead, returned spirits, by Aboriginal people in western coastal areas, and accorded the respect normally extended to long lost relatives.80 A variant found in the Victoria District, known as the Moondung Myth, gave the moon as the final resting place for souls, who were later reincarnated as the spirits of babies. According to well-known amateur ethnographer Daisy Bates: “The first half caste child whom Cornally [shepherd Edward Cornally] remembers seeing in Champion Bay [Geraldton, early 1860s] was also stated by the mother and mother [sic – brother] to come from the moon and when asked why the child was a different colour they stated that this was not uncommon amongst them.”81 Nhanda social organisation was highly unusual as well, being based on reciprocal localities and explicit consanguinity rather than the sections or moieties which characterised social organisation in most other parts of Australia. Marriage partners had to come from groups associated with different localities or places, and they were not allowed to be any closer than wadjira, or cousins. This may have come about, as I originally suggested, as a result of the cultural influence of the castaways once they had been absorbed by the Nhanda and other local groups.82 However, it could also be a result of the increasing sedentism and circumscription, 79 Parker 1886:339. 80 See Gerritsen 1994a:163-168. 81 Bates n.d.g:65. 82 See Gerritsen 1994a:144-150 for a fuller discussion. Note that the key in Fig. 3 on p.147 has been inadvertently reversed in publication in most copies of the 1994 edition and all of 2002 edition. as outlined earlier and in other research.83 This may have led to the formation a new set of social conjugal relations based on a new form of social organisation. Another discernible influence was a linguistic one. An example is the Moondung Myth, in which the spirits resided in the moon, the suffix -ung means ‘belonging to’. In Dutch the ‘moon’ is ‘maan’, which here is associated with the explanation that their paler colour was a result of the paler light of the moon.84 Many such linguistic coincidences and close correspondences are apparent in historical records of Nhanda and its dialects. For example see Table 1. Other close correspondences are also apparent if one takes account of sound transpositions as well. One example is the Dutch ‘j’, which sounds as a ‘y’ to English speakers. It was presumed that the Nhanda heard it that way as well, so words of Dutch origin may have entered the language modified by that or very a similar sound transposition. An examination of Nhanda word lists recorded by British colonists in the 19th century indeed revealed other words of Dutch origin if allowance was made for the Dutch ‘j’ to ‘y’ transposition. For example see Table 2. A full analysis of the Nhanda dialects, based on a 937 word/600 item vocabulary built up from early historical records, was been carried out, looking for direct correspondences as well as those arising not only from the ‘j’ to ‘y’ transposition but a number of other hypothetical regular sound transpositions. This analysis concluded that 83 Gerritsen 2002. 84 In the Gascoyne version (450 km north) of the Moondung Myth the moondung are explicitly described as ‘being like white people’ (Bates n.d.h:87)
- 53. Rupert Gerritsen - Australia and the Origins of Agriculture 38 16% of the Nhanda language was of Dutch derivation.85 It has been argued that the Dutch influence also explains some of the numerous unusual linguistic features in Nhanda, such as the appearance of the word-initial ‘kn-’ phoneme and ‘initial phoneme dropping’.86 While this linguistic evidence is considered controversial,87 it is nevertheless difficult to dismiss the proposition that there was at least some degree of Dutch influence on Nhanda. An issue that has arisen from this analysis is the degree of Dutch language influence in Nhanda, its extent is a little surprising given the small numbers involved. However, the fact that the Dutch castaways, with their radically different appearance and ways, were the first foreigners the Nhanda had ever had contact with, may have given them a disproportionate influence. If they did fully assimilate with the Nhanda then the degree of their language influence may have been further enhanced. However, it may also be another indication of the adoption of an agricultural way of life. In this scenario the abandoned mutineers only needed to directly influence a few families in the Hutt River area, with that local population exploding and expanding as a result of their cultivation of yams, a process known as “demic expansion.” Consequently, this founder population would have carried their distinctive linguistic influence with them, as has happened with the development of agriculture in other parts of the world, resulting in a much broader impact. The critical point, however, is that this introduced yam was probably already a “domesticate”, although yams often do not become “true cultigens”.88 Presumably, once introduced, it underwent further speciation, either through 85 Gerritsen 1994a:113-30; Gerritsen 1994b. Five historical sources (1840-1908) were employed, being temporally closest to the local language at the time of British colonisation and therefore least likely to suffer some form of language “disturbance”. The decline of the Nhanda was such that now only a small number of individuals remain who can claim descent from the original population. Paralleling this has been a catastrophic loss of cultural and linguistic information (See Blevins 2001a; Gerritsen 2004). 86 Initial phoneme dropping is a feature in which equivalent words in Nhanda to those found in other Aboriginal languages, particularly the Kardu and Nyoongar subgroups, are almost identical except the initial phoneme has been ‘lost’. 87 See Anonymous 1995; Gerritsen 1997; Blevins 1998; Gerritsen 2001b; Blevins 2001a,b; Gerritsen 2004; Blevins 2006. 88 Coursey 1976b:387,391. founder-induced speciation, known as the “founder effect”,89 becoming a naturalised form of the original species or, as happens when domestication occurs, as a result of the selection regime applied by its Nhanda cultivators.90 The exact genetic relationship between D. hastifolia and other species of Enantiophyllum yams has not as yet been determined. Once introduced it was carried to other localities, such as mentioned previously, presumably through trading, gifting and payments of yams, a common occurrence if early colonial accounts are a valid guide.91 In conclusion it can be seen that, by the minimum criteria established earlier, agriculture was being practised in the Victoria District, with evidence of propagation, and harvesting on a systematic basis and of sufficient extent to provide a major component of the Nhanda’s subsistence.92 Furthermore, there is some evidence of possible husbandry (watering) as well as utilisation of what appears to be a domesticate in cultivation, with in situ storage being employed.93 By extension the features of the Nhanda economy are consistent with most of the definitions of agriculture discussed earlier. Other indirect lines of evidence, such as a higher population density, large permanent or near-permanent dwellings and settlements, seemingly a high degree of sedentism, an atypical sexual division of labour, concepts of fixed land tenure, even specific artworks, are consistent with and support this conclusion.94 We will return later to the Victoria District to re-examine developments there in terms of theories on the origins of agriculture, socioeconomic development and sociopolitical evolution, but will now consider other matters. 89 Hancock 1992:117-121. 90 What constitutes “domestication” in yams is an open question but would seem to include selection for greater size, shallower rooting, reduced spines, less bitterness and lower toxicity (Chikwendu and Okezie 1989:349; Evans 1996:74). “Domestication” of cultivated yams can happen very rapidly, within three to eight years (Coursey 1972:225; Chikwendu and Okezie 1989; Dumont and Vernier 2000). 91 Oldfield 1865:236; Drummond 1842:719; Roe 1847:32. 92 Hobhouse, Wheeler and Ginsberg (1915:20-1) conceded that “technically” practices such as the Nhanda people’s were the beginning of agriculture, but then discounted the notion because they claimed there was insufficient evidence of “clearing, digging and planting”. However they were probably unaware of the extent of the areas apparently being cultivated by the Nhanda. 93 In situ storage is assumed because of the extent of yam harvesting frequently noted by nineteenth century explorers and colonists, and the absence of any evidence of other forms of storage in the historical ethnographic literature. However, Oldfield (1865:230) mentions stockpiling of yams in preparation for the “Caa-ro Ceremony” by the Watjandi, a non- agricultural northern Nhanda group, so it is possible above ground storage was practised but not recorded. 94 Gerritsen 1994a:86-7,139-41,185; 2002.
- 54. 39 Chapter 5. Sowing the Seeds The traditional subsistence economy of the Paakantyi people of the Darling River region in western New South Wales has been nominated at various times as the prime Australian example of “incipient agriculture”. The researcher who originally drew attention to this region, Harry Allen, claimed that the people here met Kent Flannery’s pre-adaptation criteria for a proto-agricultural society, of broader-spectrum procurement (i.e. utilisation of a wider variety of food sources), the employment of ground stone technology and the development of storage facilities. But it was the large- scale harvesting of native millets and other seed-bearing plants by the Paakantyi that was seen as one of the most notable feature of their subsistence economy. It was these practices that Diamond has conjectured were “most likely to have evolved eventually into crop production.” Incipient or proto-agriculture, as the terms suggest, relates to developments preceding a commitment to an agricultural lifeway. But what exactly does this entail? Originally Braidwood saw it as a “period of experimentation with plants and animals,” but for others, such as Higgs, plant domestication was the critical threshold. Consequently he took the position that incipient agriculture occurred, “when certain plants were grown but not changed in form,” pointing to the “Natufians”, the precursor culture to the Neolithic of south west Asia, as an exemplar. But, apart from the difficulties identified previously arising from an insistence on domestication as a critical indicator of agriculture, it now appears that wild, undomesticated or only partially domesticated cereals were being grown well into the Neolithic, the period when it is believed agriculture was becoming, or had become, established as an integral part of the lifeways of people in the Levant. An alternative definition proposed by MacNeish, in which “planting of individual domesticates or cultivars in relatively limited plots,” was seen as fulfilling the basic criteria for incipient agriculture, suffers from two defects, the inclusion of domestication as a benchmark and the notion that only small numbers of plants are involved. Furthermore, Mulvaney 1975:242; Flood 1999:265. Allen 1972:95. Diamond 1997:311. Redman 1978:71. Higgs 1968:619. Kislev 1992:87-93; Bar-Yosef and Meadows 1995:66; Bar-Yosef 1998a:167,168-9; Anderson 1998:147; Willcox 1999:478-80,489-94; Colledge 2001:146-151. And rice in the Chinese Neolithic as well (Pei 1998; Zhao 1998). MacNeish 1992:10. definitions such as these have also been criticised by Harris as being “vague” and “deterministic”. To overcome this problem others, rather than attempting to define incipient agriculture, have tried to identify necessary conditions or common factors evident in proto-agricultural societies. Employing this approach Hole described five preconditions including: high quality, abundant and storable food sources, highly seasonal availability of such foods, the inability to escape this high seasonality, the yield of these sources could be increased by some modification, ability to stockpile commodities such as dung, bitumen or obsidian. It was further argued by McCorriston and Hole that the ability to gather and process plant foods in bulk, store them, ensure their preservation and distribute them as needed was also required.10 Others, such as Hayden, have focussed on broader socioeconomic features. He pointed to a number of “consistent variables” in proto-agricultural societies such as: high levels of sedentism, storage, high population densities, processing and harvesting technologies, suitable potential domesticates.11 Another approach, emphasising the ecological characteristics of regions in which agriculture has developed has been proposed by Richard MacNeish. In this, his five “necessary conditions” included: environments with layered ecozones, multiple food resources not exploitable from a base, harsh seasonality, intense interaction with ecologically similar regions, potentially domesticable plants in one or more ecosystems.12 Harris 1989:19. Hole 1984. 10 McCorriston and Hole 1991:49. 11 Hayden 1995a:277-8. 12 MacNeish 1992:320. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
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- 56. pealed from underneath the arches of Salisbury’s wondrous cathedral. Yet over all the music and the poems of this Church poet, and over his life, a tender gloom lay constantly; the grave and death were always in his eye—always in his best verses. And after some half-dozen years of poetic battling with the great problems of life and of death, and a further battling with the chills and fogs of Wiltshire, that smote him sorely, he died. He was buried at Bemerton, where a new church has been built in his honor. It may be found on the high-road leading west from Salisbury, and only a mile and a half away; and at Wilton—the carpet town—which is only a fifteen minutes’ walk beyond, may be found that gorgeous church, built not long ago by another son of the Pembroke stock (the late Lord Herbert of Lea), who perhaps may have had in mind the churchly honors due to his poetic kinsman; and yet all the marbles which are lavished upon this Wilton shrine are poorer, and will sooner fade than the mosaic of verse builded into The Temple of George Herbert. Robert Herrick. I deal with a clergyman again; but there are clergymen—and clergymen. Robert Herrick[41] was the son of a London goldsmith, born on Cheapside, not far away from that Mermaid Tavern of which mention has been made; and it is very likely that the young Robert, as a boy, may have stood before the Tavern windows on tiptoe, listening to the drinking songs that came pealing forth when Ben Jonson and the rest were in their first lusty manhood. He studied at Cambridge, receiving, may be, some scant help from his rich uncle, Sir William Herrick, who had won his title by giving good jewel bargains to King James. He would seem to have made a long stay in Cambridge; and only in 1620, when our Pilgrims were beating toward Plymouth shores, do we hear of him domiciled in London—learning the town,
- 57. favored by Ben Jonson and his fellows, perhaps apprenticed to the goldsmith craft, certainly putting jewels into fine settings of verse even then; some of them with coarse flaws in them, but full of a glitter and sparkle that have not left them yet. Nine years later, after such town experiences as we cannot trace, he gets, somehow, appointment to a church living down in Devonshire at Dean Prior. His parish was on the southeastern edge of that great heathery stretch of wilderness called Dartmoor Forest: out of this, and from under cool shadows of the Tors, ran brooks which in the cleared valleys were caught by rude weirs and shot out in irrigating skeins of water upon the grassland. Yet it was far away from any echo of the Mermaid; old traditions were cherished there; old ways were reckoned good ways; and the ploughs of that region are still the clumsiest to be found in England. There Robert Herrick lived, preaching and writing poems, through those eighteen troublous years which went before the execution of Charles I. What the goldsmith-vicar’s sermons were we can only conjecture: what the poems were he writ, we can easily guess from the flowers that enjewel them, or the rarer “noble numbers” which take hold on religious sanctities. This preacher-poet twists the lilies and roses into bright little garlands, that blush and droop in his pretty couplets, as they did in the vicar’s garden of Devon. The daffodils and the violets give out their odors to him, if he only writes their names. Hear what he says to Phyllis, and how the numbers flow:
- 58. “The soft, sweet moss shall be thy bed, With crawling woodbine overspread: By which the silver-shedding streams Shall gently melt thee into dreams. Thy clothing next, shall be a gown Made of the fleeces’ purest down. The tongues of kids shall be thy meat; Their milk thy drink; and thou shalt eat The paste of filberts for thy bread, With cream of cowslips butterèd: Thy feasting table shall be hills With daisies spread and daffodils; Where thou shalt sit, and Red-breast by, For meat, shall give thee melody.” Then again, see how in his soberer and meditative moods, he can turn the rich and resonant Litany of the Anglican Church into measures of sweet sound:
- 59. “In the hour of my distress, When temptations me oppress, And when I my sins confess, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! “When I lie within my bed, Sick in heart, and sick in head, And with doubts discomforted, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! “When the house doth sigh and weep, And the world is drown’d in sleep, Yet mine eyes the watch do keep, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! “When the passing bell doth toll, And the furies in a shoal Come, to fright a parting soul, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! “When the judgment is reveal’d, And that opened which was seal’d, When to thee I have appeal’d, Sweet Spirit, comfort me!” Now, in reading these two poems of such opposite tone, and yet of agreeing verbal harmonies, one would say—here is a singer, serene, devout, of delicate mould, loving all beautiful things in heaven and on earth. One would look for a man saintly of aspect, deep-eyed, tranquil, too ethereal for earth. Well, I must tell the truth in these talks, so far as I can find it, no matter what cherished images may break down. This Robert Herrick was a ponderous, earthy-looking man, with huge double chin, drooping cheeks, a great Roman nose, prominent glassy eyes, that
- 60. showed around them the red lines begotten of strong potions of Canary, and the whole set upon a massive neck which might have been that of Heliogabalus.[42] It was such a figure as the artists would make typical of a man who loves the grossest pleasures. The poet kept a pet goose at the vicarage, and also a pet pig, which he taught to drink beer out of his own tankard; and an old parishioner, for whose story Anthony à Wood is sponsor, tells us that on one occasion when his little Devon congregation would not listen to him as he thought they ought to listen, he dashed his sermon on the floor, and marched with tremendous stride out of church—home to fondle his pet pig. When Charles I. came to grief, and when the Puritans began to sift the churches, this Royalist poet proved a clinker that was caught in the meshes and thrown aside. This is not surprising. It was after his enforced return to London, and in the year 1648 (one year before Charles’ execution at Whitehall), that the first authoritative publication was made of the Hesperides, or Works, both Humane and Divine, of Robert Herrick, Esq.—his clerical title dropped. There were those critics and admirers who saw in Herrick an allegiance to the methods of Catullus; others who smacked in his epigrams the verbal felicities of Martial; but surely there is no need, in that fresh spontaneity of the Devon poet, to hunt for classic parallels; nature made him one of her own singers, and by instincts born with him he fashioned words and fancies into jewelled shapes. The “more’s the pity” for those gross indelicacies which smirch so many pages; things unreadable; things which should have been unthinkable and unwritable by a clergyman of the Church of England. To what period of his life belonged his looser verses it is hard to say; perhaps to those early days when, fresh from Cambridge, Ben Jonson patted him on the shoulder approvingly; perhaps to those later years when, soured by his ejection from the Church, he dropped his Reverend, and may have capped verses with such as Davenant or Lovelace, and others, whose antagonism of Puritanism provoked wantonness of speech.
- 61. At the restoration of Charles II., Herrick was reinstated in his old parish in Devonshire, and died there, among the meadows and the daffodils, at the ripe age of eighty-four. And as we part with this charming singer, we cannot forbear giving place to this bit of his penitential verse: “For these my unbaptizèd rhymes Writ in my wild unhallowed times, For every sentence, clause, and word That’s not inlaid with thee, O Lord; Forgive me, God, and blot each line Out of my book, that is not thine!” Revolutionary Times. I have given the reader a great many names to remember to-day; they are many, because we have found no engrossing one whose life and genius have held us to a long story. But we should never enjoy the great memories except they were set in the foil of lesser ones, to emphasize their glories. The writers of this particular period—some of whom I have named —fairly typify and illustrate the drift of letters away from the outspoken ardors and full-toned high exuberance of Elizabethan days, to something more coy, more schooled, more reticent, more measured, more tame.[43] The cunning of word arrangement comes into the place of spontaneous, maybe vulgar wit; humor is saddled with school-craftiness; melodious echoes take the place of fresh bursts of sound. Poetry, that gurgled out by its own wilful laws of progression, now runs more in channels that old laws have marked. Words and language that had been used to tell straightforwardly stories of love and passion and suffering are now put to uses of pomp and decoration.
- 62. Moreover, in Elizabethan times, when a great monarch and great ministers held the reins of power undisturbed and with a knightly hand, minstrelsy, wherever it might lift its voice, had the backing and the fostering support of great tranquillity and great national pride. In the days when the Armada was crushed, when British ships and British navigators brought every year tales of gold, tales of marvellous new shores, when princes of the proudest courts came flocking to pay suit to England’s great Virgin Queen, what poet should not sing at his loudest and his bravest? But in the times into which we have now drifted, there is no tranquillity; the fever of Puritans against Anglicans, of Independents against Monarchy Men, is raging through all the land; pride in the kingship of such as James I. had broken down; pride in the kingship of the decorous Charles I. has broken down again. All intellectual ardors run into the channels of the new strifes. Only through little rifts in the stormy sky do the sunny gleams of poesy break in. There are colonies, too, planted over seas, and growing apace in these days, whither the eyes and thoughts of many of the bravest and clearest thinkers are turning. Even George Herbert, warmest of Anglicans, and of the noble house of Pembroke, was used to say, “Religion[44] is going over seas.” They were earnest, hard workers, to be sure, who went—keen-thoughted—far-seeing—most diligent— not up to poems indeed, save some little occasional burst of melodious thanksgiving. But they carried memories of the best and of the strongest that belonged to the intellectual life of England. The ponderous periods of Richard Hooker, and the harshly worded wise things of John Selden,[45] found lodgement in souls that were battling with the snows and pine-woods where Andover and Salem and Newburyport were being planted. And over there, maybe, first of all, would hope kindle and faith brighten at sound of that fair young Puritan poet, who has just now, in Cambridge, sung his “Hymn of the Nativity.”[46] But the storm and the wreck were coming. There were forewarnings of it in the air; forewarnings of it in the court and in
- 63. Parliament; forewarnings of it in every household. City was to be pitted against city; brother against brother; and in that “sea of trouble,” down went the King and the leaders of old, and up rose the Commonwealth and the leaders of the new faith. In our next talk we shall find all England rocking on that red wave of war. You would think poets should be silent, and the eloquent dumb; but we shall hear, lifting above the uproar, the golden language of Jeremy Taylor—the measured cadences of Waller—the mellifluous jingle of Suckling and of his Royalist brothers, and drowning all these with its grand sweep of sound, the majestic organ-music of Milton.
- 64. I CHAPTER IV. did not hold the reader’s attention long to the nightmare tragedies of Webster and Ford, though they show shining passages of amazing dramatic power. Marston was touched upon, and that satiric vein of his, better known perhaps than his more ambitious work. We spoke of Massinger, whose money- monster, Giles Overreach, makes one think of the railway wreckers of our time; then came the gracious and popular Beaumont and Fletcher, twins in work and in friendship; the former dying in the same year with Shakespeare, and Fletcher dying the same year with King James (1625). I spoke of that Prince Harry who promised well, but died young, and of Charles, whose sad story will come to ampler mention in our present talk. We made record of the death of Ben Jonson—of the hack-writing service of James Howell—of the dilettante qualities of Sir Henry Wotton, and of the ever-delightful work and enduring fame of the old angler, Izaak Walton. And last we closed our talk with sketches of two poets: the one, George Herbert, to whom his priestly work and his saintly verse were “all in all;” and the other, Robert Herrick, born to a goldsmith’s craft, but making verses that glittered more than all the jewels of Cheapside. King Charles and his Friends. We open this morning upon times when New-England towns were being planted among the pine-woods, and the decorous, courtly, unfortunate Charles I. had newly come to the throne. Had the King been only plain Charles Stuart, he would doubtless have gone through life with the reputation of an amiable, courteous gentleman, not over-sturdy in his friendships[47]—a fond father and good husband, with a pretty taste in art and in books, but strongly marked
- 65. with some obstinacies about the ways of wearing his rapier, or of tying his cravat, or of overdrawing his bank account. In the station that really fell to him those obstinacies took hold upon matters which brought him to grief. The man who stood next to Charles, and who virtually governed him, was that George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who by his fine doublets, fine dancing, and fine presence, had very early commended himself to the old King James, and now lorded it with the son. He was that Steenie who in Scott’s Fortunes of Nigel plays the braggadocio of the court: he had attended Prince Charles upon that Quixotic errand of his, incognito, across Europe, to play the wooer at the feet of the Infanta of Spain; and when nothing came of all that show of gallantry and the lavishment of jewels upon the dusky heiress of Castile, the same Buckingham had negotiated the marriage with the French princess, Henrietta. He was a brazen courtier, a shrewd man of the world; full of all accomplishments; full of all profligacy. He made and unmade bishops and judges, and bolstered the King in that antagonism to the Commons of England which was rousing the dangerous indignation of such men as Eliot and Hampden and Pym. Private assassination, however, took him off before the coming of the great day of wrath. You must not confound this Duke of Buckingham with another George Villiers, also Duke of Buckingham, who was his son, and who figured largely in the days of Charles II.—being even more witty, and more graceful, and more profligate—if possible—than his father; a literary man withal, and the author of a play[48] which had great vogue. Another striking figure about the court of Charles was a small, red-faced man, keen-eyed, sanctimonious, who had risen from the humble ranks (his father having been a clothier in a small town of Berkshire) to the position of Archbishop of Canterbury. So starched was he in his High-Church views that the Pope had offered him the hat of a cardinal. He made the times hard for Non-conformists; your ancestors and mine, if they emigrated in those days, may very likely have been pushed over seas by the edicts of Archbishop Laud. His
- 66. monstrous intolerance was provoking, and intensifying that agitation in the religious world of England which Buckingham had already provoked in the political world; and the days of wrath were coming. This Archbishop Laud is not only keen-sighted but he is bountiful and helpful within the lines of his own policy. He endowed Oxford with great, fine buildings. Some friend has told him that a young preacher of wonderful attractions has made his appearance at St. Paul’s—down on a visit from Cambridge—a young fellow, wonderfully handsome, with curling locks and great eyes full of expression, and a marvellous gift of language; and the Archbishop takes occasion to see him or hear him; and finding that beneath such exterior there is real vigor and learning, he makes place for him as Fellow at Oxford; appoints him presently his own chaplain, and gives him a living down in Rutland. Jeremy Taylor. This priest, of such eloquence and beauty, was Jeremy Taylor,[49] who was the son of a barber at Cambridge, was entered at Caius College as sizar, or charity scholar, just one year after Milton was entered at Christ College, and from the door of his father’s shop may have looked admiringly many a time upon the “rosy cheeks Angelical, keen eye, courageous look, And conscious step of purity and pride,” which belonged even then to the young Puritan poet. But Jeremy Taylor was not a Puritan; never came to know Milton personally. One became the great advocate and the purest illustration of the tenets of Episcopacy in England; and the other—eventually—their most effective and weighty opponent. In 1640, only one year after Jeremy Taylor was established in his pleasant Rutland rectory, Archbishop
- 67. Laud went to the Tower, not to come forth till he should go to the scaffold; and in the Civil War, breaking out presently, Jeremy Taylor joined the Royalists, was made chaplain to the King, saw battle and siege and wounds; but in the top of the strife he is known by his silvery voice and his exuberant piety, and by the rare eloquence which colors prayer and sermon with the bloody tinge of war and the pure light of heaven. He is wounded (as I said), he is imprisoned, and finally, by the chances of battle, he is stranded in a small country town near to Caermarthen, in South Wales. “In the great storm,” he says, “which dashed the vessel of the Church all in pieces, I was cast on the coast of Wales, and in a little boat thought to have enjoyed that rest and quietness which in England I could not hope for.” The little boat he speaks of was the obscure mountain home where he taught school, and where he received, some time, visits from the famous John Evelyn,[50] who wrote charming books in these days about woods and gardens, and who befriended the poor stranded chaplain. Here, too, he wrote that monument of toleration, The Liberty of Prophesying, a work which would be counted broad in its teachings even now, and which alienated a great many of his more starched fellows in the Church. A little fragment from the closing pages of this book will show at once his method of illustration and his extreme liberality: “When Abraham sat at his tent door, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man stopping by the way, leaning on his staff, weary with much travel, and who was a hundred years of age. “He received him kindly, provided supper, caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man ate, and prayed not, neither begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of Heaven?
- 68. “The old man told him he had been used to worship the sun only. “Whereupon Abraham in anger thrust him from his tent. When he was gone into the evils of the night, God called to Abraham, and said, ‘I have suffered this man, whom thou hast cast out, these hundred years, and couldest thou not endure him one night, when he gave thee no trouble?’ Upon this Abraham fetched the man back and gave him entertainment: ‘Go thou and do likewise,’ said the preacher, ‘and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.’”[51] Jeremy Taylor did not learn this teaching from Archbishop Laud, but from the droiture of his own conscience, and the kindness of his own heart. He wrote much other and most delectable matter in his years of Welsh retirement, when a royal chaplain was a bugbear in England. He lost sons, too—who had gone to the bad under the influences of that young Duke of Buckingham I mentioned; but at last, when the restoration of Charles II. came, he was given a bishopric in the wilds of Ireland, in a sour, gloomy country, with sour and gloomy looks all around him, which together, broke him down at the age of fifty-five. I have spoken thus much of him, because he is a man to be remembered as the most eloquent, and the most kindly, and the most tolerant of all the Church of England people in that day; and because his treatises on Holy Living and Holy Dying will doubtless give consolation to thousands of desponding souls, in the years to come, as they have in the years that are past. He was saturated through and through with learning and with piety; and they gurgled from him together in a great tide of mellifluous language. The ardors and fervors of Elizabethan days seem to have lapped over upon him in that welter of the Commonwealth wars. He has been called the Shakespeare of the pulpit; I should rather say the Spenser—there is such unchecked, and uncheckable, affluence of language and illustration; thought and speech struggling together
- 69. for precedence, and stretching on and on, in ever so sweet and harmonious jangle of silvery sounds. A Royalist and a Puritan. Another Royalist of these times, of a different temper, was Sir John Suckling:[52] a poet too, very rich, bred in luxury, a man of the world, who had seen every court in Europe worth seeing, who dashed off songlets and ballads between dinners and orgies; which songlets often hobbled on their feet by reason of those multiplied days of high living; but yet they had prettinesses in them which have kept them steadily alive all down to these prosaic times. I give a sample from his “Ballad upon a Wedding,” though it may be over- well known: “Her cheeks so rare a white was on No daisy makes comparison (Who sees them is undone): For streaks of red were mingled there Such as are on a Catharine pear, The side that’s next the sun. Her feet beneath her petticoat Like little mice stole in and out As if they feared the light. But O, she dances such a way! No sun upon an Easter day Is half so fine a sight!” He was a frequenter of a tavern which stood at the Southwark end of London Bridge. Aubrey says he was one of the best bowlers of his time. He played at cards, too, rarely well, and “did use to practise by himself abed.” He was rich; he was liberal; he was accomplished— almost an “Admirable Crichton.” His first military service was in
- 70. support of Gustavus Adolphus, in Germany. At the time of trouble with the Scots (1639) he raised a troop for the King’s service that bristled with gilded spurs and trappings; but he never did much serious fighting on British soil; and in 1641—owing to what was counted treasonable action in behalf of Strafford, he was compelled to leave England. He crossed over to the Continent, wandered into Spain, and somehow became (as a current tradition reported) a victim of the Inquisition there, and was put to cruel torture; a strange subject surely to be put to the torture—in this life. He was said to be broken by this experience, and strayed away, after his escape from those priest-fangs, to Paris, where, not yet thirty-five, and with such promise in him of better things, he came to his death in some mysterious way: some said by a knife-blade which a renegade servant had fastened in his boot; but most probably by suicide. There is, however, great obscurity in regard to his life abroad. He wrote some plays, which had more notice than they should have had; possibly owing to a revival of dramatic interests very strangely brought about in Charles I.’s time—a revival which was due to the over-eagerness and exaggeration of attacks made upon it by the Puritans: noticeable among these was that of William Prynne[53] —“utter barrister” of Lincoln’s Inn. “Utter barrister” does not mean æsthetic barrister, but one not yet come to full range of privilege. This Prynne was a man of dreadful insistence and severities; he would have made a terrific schoolmaster. He was the author, in the course of his life, of no less than one hundred and eighty distinct works; many of them, it is true, were pamphlets, but others terribly bulky—an inextinguishable man; that onslaught on the drama and dramatic people, and play-goers, including people of the Court, called Histriomastix, was a foul-mouthed, close-printed, big quarto of a thousand pages. One would think such a book could do little harm; but he was tried for it, was heavily fined, and sentenced to stand in the pillory and lose his ears. He pleaded strongly against the sentence, and for its remission upon “divers passages [as he says in
- 71. his petition] fallen inconsiderately from my pen in a book called Histriomastix.” But he pleaded in vain; there was no sympathy for him. Ought there to be for a man who writes a book of a thousand quarto pages —on any subject? The violence of this diatribe made a reaction in favor of the theatre; his fellow-barristers of Lincoln’s Inn hustled him out of their companionship, and got up straightway a gay masque to demonstrate their scorn of his reproof. They say he bore his punishment sturdily, though the fumes of his book, which was burned just below his nose, came near to suffocate him. Later still, he underwent another sentence for offences growing out of his unrelenting and imperious Puritanism—this time in company with one Burton (not Robert Burton,[54] of the Anatomy of Melancholy), who was a favorite with the people and had flowers strown before him as he walked to the pillory. But Prynne had no flowers, and his ears having been once cropt, the hangman had a rough time (a very rough time for Prynne) in getting at his task. Thereafter he was sent to prison in the isle of Jersey; but he kept writing, ears or no ears, and we may hear his strident voice again— hear it in Parliament, too. Cowley and Waller. Two other poets of these times I name, because of the great reputation they once had; a reputation far greater than they maintain now. These are Abraham Cowley and Edmund Waller.[55] The former of these (Cowley) was the son of a London grocer, whose shop was not far from the home of Izaak Walton; he was taught at Westminster School, and at Cambridge, and blazed up precociously at the age of fifteen in shining verses.[56] Indeed his aptitude, his ingenuities, his scholarship, kept him in the first rank of men of letters all through his day, and gave him burial between Spenser and Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. He would take a humbler place if he were disentombed now; yet, in Cromwell’s time,
- 72. or in that of Charles II., the average reading man knew Cowley better than he knew Milton, and admired him more. I give you a fragment of what is counted his best; it is from his “Hymn to Light:” “When, Goddess, thou lift’st up thy waken’d head Out of the morning’s purple bed, Thy quire of birds about thee play, And all the joyful world salutes the rising day. “All the world’s bravery, that delights our eyes, Is but thy sev’ral liveries, Thou the rich dye on them bestowest, Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou goest. “A crimson garment in the Rose thou wear’st; A crown of studded gold thou bear’st, The virgin lilies in their white, Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light!” If I were to read a fragment from Tennyson in contrast with Cowley’s treatment of a similar theme I think you might wonder less why his reputation has suffered gradual eclipse. Shall we try? Cowley wrote a poem in memory of a dear friend, and I take one of the pleasantest of its verses: “Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say, Have ye not seen us walking every day? Was there a tree about, which did not know The love betwixt us two? Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade, Or your sad branches thicker join, And into darksome shades combine, Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid.”
- 73. Tennyson wrote of his dead friend, and here is a verse of it: “The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well Thro’ four sweet years, arose and fell From flower to flower, from snow to snow; But where the path we walk’d began To slant the fifth autumnal slope, As we descended, following hope, There sat the shadow feared of man, Who broke our fair companionship, And spread his mantle dark and cold, And wrapped thee formless in the fold, And dulled the murmur on thy lip, And bore thee where I could not see Nor follow—though I walk in haste; And think—that somewhere in the waste, The shadow sits, and waits for me!” Can I be wrong in thinking that under the solemn lights of these stanzas the earlier poet’s verse grows dim? Cowley was a good Kingsman; and in the days of the Commonwealth held position of secretary to the exiled Queen Henrietta, in Paris; he did, at one time, think of establishing himself in one of the American colonies; returned, however, to his old London haunts, and, wearying of the city, sought retirement at Chertsey, on the Thames’ banks (where his old house is still to be seen), and where he wrote, in graceful prose and cumbrous verse, on subjects related to country life—which he loved overmuch—and died there among his trees and the meadows.
- 74. Waller was both Kingsman and Republican—steering deftly between extremes, so as to keep himself and his estates free from harm. This will weaken your sympathy for him at once—as it should do. He lived in a grand way—affected the philosopher; was such a philosopher as quick-witted selfishness makes; yet he surely had wonderful aptitudes in dealing with language, and could make its harmonious numbers flow where and how he would. Waller has come to a casual literary importance in these days under the deft talking and writing of those dilettante critics who would make this author the pivot (as it were) on which British poesy swung away from the “hysterical riot of the Jacobeans” into measured and orderly classic cadence. It is a large influence to attribute to a single writer, though his grace and felicities go far to justify it. And it is further to be remembered that such critics are largely given to the discussion of technique only; they write as distinct art-masters; while we, who are taking our paths along English Letters for many other things besides art and rhythm, will, I trust, be pardoned for thinking that there is very little pith or weighty matter in this great master of the juggleries of sound. Waller married early in life, but lost his wife while still very young; thenceforth, for many years—a gay and coquettish widower—he pursued the Lady Dorothy Sidney with a storm of love verses, of which the best (and it is really amazingly clever in its neatness and point) is this:
- 75. “Go, lovely Rose, Tell her, that wastes her time and me, That now she knows When I resemble her to thee How sweet and fair she seems to be. Tell her that’s young, And shuns to have her graces spied, That hadst thou sprung In deserts where no men abide, Thou must have, uncommended, died.” But neither this, nor a hundred others, brought the Lady Dorothy to terms: she married—like a wise woman—somebody else. And he? He went on singing as chirpingly as ever—sang till he was over eighty. John Milton. And now we come to a poet of a larger build—a weightier music— and of a more indomitable spirit; a poet who wooed the world with his songs; and the world has never said him “Nay.” I mean John Milton.[57] He is the first great poet we have encountered, in respect to whom we can find in contemporary records full details of family, lodgement, and birth. A great many of these details have been swooped together in Dr. Masson’s recently completed Life and Times of Milton, which I would more earnestly commend to your reading were it not so utterly long—six fat volumes of big octavo—in the which the pith and kernel about Milton, the man, floats around like force meat-balls in a great sea of historic soup. Our poet was born in Bread Street, just out of Cheapside, in London, in the year 1608. In Cheapside—it may be well to recall—stood the Mermaid Tavern; and it stood not more than half a block away from the corner where
- 76. Milton’s father lived. And on that corner—who knows?—the boy, eight years old, or thereby, when Shakespeare died, may have lingered to see the stalwart Ben Jonson go tavern-ward for his cups, or may be, John Marston, or Dekker, or Philip Massinger—all these being comfortably inclined to taverns. The father of this Bread Street lad was a scrivener by profession; that is, one who drafted legal papers; a well-to-do man as times went; able to give his boy some private schooling; proud of him, too; proud of his clear white and red face, and his curly auburn hair carefully parted—almost a girl’s face; so well-looking, indeed, that the father employed a good Dutch painter of those days to take his portrait; the portrait is still in existence—dating from 1618, when the poet was ten, showing him in a banded velvet doublet and a stiff vandyke collar, trimmed about with lace. In those times, or presently after, he used to go to St. Paul’s Grammar School; of which Lily, of Lily’s Latin Grammar, was the first master years before. It was only a little walk for him, through Cheapside, and then, perhaps, Paternoster Row—the school being under the shadow of that great cathedral, which was burned fifty years after. He studied hard there; studied at home, too; often, he says himself, when only fourteen, studying till twelve at night. He loved books, and he loved better to be foremost. He turns his hand to poetry even then. Would you like to see a bit of what he wrote at fifteen? Well, here it is, in a scrap of psalmody:
- 77. “Let us blaze his name abroad, For of gods, he is the God, … Who by his wisdom did create The painted heavens so full of state, … And caused the golden tressèd sun All the day long his course to run, The hornèd moon to hang by night Amongst her spangled sisters bright; For his mercies aye endure, Ever faithful, ever sure.” It is not of the best, but I think will compare favorably with most that is written by young people of fifteen. At Christ’s College, Cambridge, whither he went shortly afterward—his father being hopeful that he would take orders in the Church—he was easily among the first; he wrote Latin hexameters, quarrelled with his tutor (notwithstanding his handsome face had given to him the mocking title of “The Lady”), had his season of rustication up in London, sees all that is doing in theatrics thereabout, but goes back to study more closely than ever. The little Christmas song, “It was the winter wild, While the heaven-born Child,” etc., belongs to his Cambridge life; though his first public appearance as an author was in the “Ode to Shakespeare,” attaching with other and various commendatory verses to the second folio edition of that author’s dramas, published in the year 1632.
- 78. Milton was then twenty-four, had been six or seven at Cambridge; did not accept kindly his father’s notion of taking orders in the Church, but had exaggerated views of a grandiose life of study and literary work; in which views his father—sensible man that he was— did not share; but—kind man that he was—he did not strongly combat them. So we find father and son living together presently, some twenty miles away from London, in a little country hamlet called Horton, where the old gentleman had purchased a cottage for a final home when his London business was closed up. Here, too, our young poet studies—not books only, borrowed where he can, and bought if he can; but studies also fields and trees and skies and rivers, and all the natural objects that are to take embalmment sooner or later in his finished verse. Here he wrote, almost within sight of Windsor towers, “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso.” You know them; but they are always new and always fresh; freshest when you go out from London on a summer’s day to where the old tower of Horton Church still points the road, and trace there (if you can) “The russet lawns and fallows gray Where the nibbling flocks do stray, … Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks and rivers wide. … Sometimes with secure delight The upland hamlets will invite, When the merry bells ring round And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth and many a maid Dancing in the chequered shade; And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday.”
- 79. In reading such verse we do not know where to stop—at least, I do not. He writes, too, in that country quietude, within sight of Windsor forest, his charming “Lycidas,” one of the loveliest of memorial poems, and the “Comus,” which alone of all the masques of that time, and preceding times, has gone in its entirety into the body of living English literature. In 1638, then thirty years old, equipped in all needed languages and scholarship, he goes for further study and observation to the Continent; he carries letters from Sir Henry Wotton; he sees the great Hugo Grotius at Paris; sees the sunny country of olives in Provence; sees the superb front of Genoa piling out from the blue waters of the Mediterranean; sees Galileo at Florence—the old philosopher too blind to study the face of the studious young Englishman that has come so far to greet him. He sees, too, what is best and bravest at Rome; among the rest St. Peter’s, just then brought to completion, and in the first freshness of its great tufa masonry. He is fêted by studious young Italians; has the freedom of the Accademia della Crusca; blazes out in love sonnets to some dark-eyed signorina of Bologna; returns by Venice, and by Geneva where he hobnobs with the Diodati friends of his old school-fellow, Charles Diodati; and comes home to England to find changes brewing—the Scotch marching over the border with battle-drums— the Long Parliament portending—Strafford and Laud in way of impeachment—his old father drawing near to his end—and bloody war tainting all the air. The father’s fortune, never large, is found crippled at his death; and Milton, now thirty-two, must look out for his own earnings. He takes a house; first in Fleet Street, then near Aldersgate, with garden attached, where he has three or four pupils; his nephew Phillips[58] among them. Milton’s Marriage.
- 80. It was while living there that he brought back, one day, a bride— Mary Powell; she was a young maiden in her teens, daughter of a well-established loyalist family near to Oxford. The young bride is at the quiet student’s house in Aldersgate a month, perhaps two, when she goes down for a visit to her mother; she is to come back at Michaelmas; but Michaelmas comes, and she stays; Milton writes, and she stays; Milton writes again, and she stays; he sends a messenger—and she stays. What is up, then, in this new household? Milton, the scholar and poet, is up, straightway, to a treatise on divorce, whereby he would make it easy to undo yokes where parties are unevenly yoked. There is much scriptural support and much shrewd reasoning brought by his acuteness to the overthrow of those rulings which the common- sense of mankind has established; even now those who contend for easy divorce get their best weapons out of this old Miltonian armory. Meantime the poet went on teaching, I suspect rapping his boys over the knuckles in these days for slight cause. But what does it all mean? It means incongruity; not the first case, nor will it be the last. He—abstracted, austere, bookish, with his head in the clouds; she— with her head in ribbons, and possibly loving orderly housewifery: [59] intellectual affinities and sympathies are certainly missing. Fancy the poet just launched into the moulding of such verse as this: “Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire Mirth and youth, and warm desire! Woods and groves are of thy dressing——” when a servant gives sharp rat-tat at the door, “Please, sir, missus says, ‘Dinner’s waiting!’” But the poet sweeps on—
- 81. “O nightingale, that on yon blooming spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still, Thou, with fresh heat, the lover’s heart dost fill, Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate——” And there is another rat-tat!—“Please, sir, missus says, ‘Dinner is all getting cold.’” Still the poet ranges in fairyland— “——ere the rude bird of hate Foretell my hopeless doom, in some grove nigh, As thou from year to year hast sung too late For my relief, yet hadst no reason why——” And now, maybe, it is the pretty mistress who comes with a bounce —“Mr. Milton, are you ever coming?”—and a quick bang of the door, which is a way some excellent petulant young women have of—not breaking the commandments. There is a little prosaic half-line in the “Paradise Lost” (I don’t think it was ever quoted before), which in this connection seems to me to have a very pathetic twang in it; ’tis about Paradise and its charms— “No fear lest dinner cool!” However, it happens that through the advocacy of friends on both sides this great family breach is healed, or seems to be; and two years after, Milton and his recreant, penitent, and restored wife are living again together; lived together till her death; and she became the mother of his three daughters: Anne, who was crippled, never even learned to write, and used to be occupied with her needle;
- 82. Mary, who was his amanuensis and reader most times, and Deborah, the youngest, who came to perform similar offices for him afterward. Meantime the Royalist cause had suffered everywhere. The Powells (his wife’s family having come to disaster) did—with more or less children—go to live with Milton. Whether the presence of the mother-in-law mended the poet’s domesticity I doubt; doubt, indeed, if ever there was absolute harmony there. On the year of the battle of Naseby appeared Milton’s first unpretending booklet of poems,[60] containing with others, those already named, and not before printed. Earlier, however, in the lifetime of the poet had begun the issue of those thunderbolts of pamphlets which he wrote on church discipline, education, on the liberty of unlicensed printing, and many another topic—cumbrous with great trails of intricate sentences, wondrous word-heaps, sparkling with learning, flaming with anger—with convolutions like a serpent’s, and as biting as serpents. A show is kept up of his school-keeping, but with doubtful success; for in 1647 we learn that “he left his great house in Barbican, and betook himself to a smaller in High Holborn, among those that open back into Lincoln’s Inn Fields;” but there is no poem-making of importance (save one or two wondrous Sonnets) now, or again, until he is virtually an old man. The Royal Tragedy. Meantime the tide of war is flowing back and forth over England and engrossing all hopes and fears. The poor King is one while a captive of the Scots, and again a captive of the Parliamentary forces, and is hustled from palace to castle. What shall be done with the royal prisoner? There are thousands who have fought against him who would have been most glad of his escape; but there are others —weary of his doublings—who have vowed that this son of Baal shall go to his doom and bite the dust.
- 83. Finally, and quickly too (for events move with railroad speed), his trial comes—the trial of a King. A strange event for these English, who have venerated and feared and idolized so many kings and queens of so many royal lines. How the Royalist verse-makers must have fumed and raved! Milton, then just turned of forty, was, as I have said, living near High Holborn; the King was eight years his senior—was in custody at St. James’s, a short way above Piccadilly. He brought to the trial all his kingly dignity, and wore it unflinchingly —refusing to recognize the jurisdiction of the Parliament, cuddling always obstinately that poor figment of the divine right of kings— which even then Milton, down in his Holborn garden, was sharpening his pen to undermine and destroy. The sentence was death—a sentence that gave pause to many. Fairfax, and others such, would have declared against it; even crop- eared Prynne, who had suffered so much for his truculent Puritanism, protested against it; two-thirds of the population of England would have done the same; but London and England and the army were all in the grip of an iron man whose name was Cromwell. Time sped; the King had only two days to live; his son Charles was over seas, never believing such catastrophe could happen; only two royal children—a princess of thirteen and a boy of eight—came to say adieu to the royal prisoner. “He sat with them some time at the window, taking them on his knees, and kissing them, and talking with them of their duty to their mother, and to their elder brother, the Prince of Wales.” He carried his habitual dignity and calmness with him on the very morning, going between files of soldiers through St. James’s Park—pointing out a tree which his brother Henry had planted—and on, across to Whitehall, where had come off many a gay, rollicking masque of Ben Jonson’s, in presence of his father, James I. He was led through the window of the banqueting-hall—the guides show it now—where he had danced many a night, and so to the scaffold, just without the window, whence he could see up and down the vast court of Whitehall, from gate to gate,[61] paved with a great throng of heads. Even then and there rested on him the same kingly composure; the fine oval face,
- 84. pale but unmoved; the peaked beard carefully trimmed, as you see it in the well-known pictures by Vandyke, at Windsor or at Blenheim. He has a word with old Bishop Juxon, who totters beside him; a few words for others who are within hearing; examines the block, the axe; gives some brief cautions to the executioner; then, laying down his head, lifts his own hand for signal, and with a crunching thud of sound it is over. And poet Milton—has he shown any relenting? Not one whit; he is austere among the most austere; in this very week he is engaged upon his defence of regicide, with its stinging, biting sentences. He is a friend and party to the new Commonwealth; two months only after the execution of the King, he is appointed Secretary to the State Council, and under it is conducting the Latin correspondence. He demolishes, by order of the same Council, the Eikon Basilike (supposed in that day to be the king’s work) with his fierce onslaught of the Eikonoklastes. His words are bitter as gall; he even alludes, in no amiable tone—with acrid emphasis, indeed—to the absurd rumor, current with some, that the King, through his confidential instrument, Buckingham, had poisoned his own father. He is further appointed to the answering of Salmasius,[62] an answer with which all Europe presently rings. It was in these days, and with such work crowding him, that his vision fails; and to these days, doubtless belongs that noble sonnet on his blindness, which is worth our staying for, here and now:
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