2,000-Year-Old Pottery Reveals Trade Networks in Australia Long Before Colonization

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Dozens of bits of broken pottery that are estimated to be between 2,000 and 3,000 years old have been found on a remote island in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef – the oldest pottery ever discovered here in Australia.

The remnants, chook-busted (found very close to the surface) by Traditional Owners and archeologists, show a tradition of hundreds of generations of First Nations people making pots on Jiigurru (Lizard Island).

Made from locally sourced clay and sand, the pottery was fired thousands of years before British settlers arrived in Australia in 1788, a time when other island communities around here were also making ceramics.

Senior author Dr Ian McNiven, an archeologist from Monash University in Australia.

Digging in the scorching sun for over two years, the team of researchers and members from the Dingaal and Ngurrumungu Aboriginal community gradually uncovered a shell midden around 2.4 metres deep (basically 8 feet) while finding bits of pottery among the remnants of shellfish, fish, and turtle bones, along with burnt plant bits.

Those daily tides had worn down the shattered pieces of pottery, making it tough to pinpoint their age, leaving the researchers with only a hint that possibly, locally crafted pottery might turn up on Jiigurru one day.

McNiven and his team kept digging, unable to find any other signs of ceramics in another nearby shell midden from around 4,000 years ago.

Then, in 2017, their luck changed. An archaeology student on the team chanced upon the first piece of pottery, just 40 centimetres below the outback.

We wrapped up the dig and recorded all the details of the discovery. There were some heated discussions going till midnight about what this finding could imply and how we should approach the next phase of the excavation.

The most recent layers of the excavated rubbish dump had been deposited roughly between 6,510 to 5,790 years ago, making Jiigurru the earliest offshore island inhabited on the northern Great Barrier Reef.

The site was suddenly overrun around 3,000 years ago, the researchers claim, with seashells beginning to accumulate and the oldest ceramics discovered in the rubbish heap making their final landing.

For another thousand years or so, until roughly about a couple of thousand years ago, ceramics were produced, used and discarded by local people, the team's dating suggests. This makes the Jiigurru ceramics the oldest pottery ever found in Australia.

Off the coast of the Australian mainland, in the Torres Strait, between the northernmost point of Australia, Cape York, and the island of Papua New Guinea, which McNiven and colleagues described in 2006.

The Jiigurru ceramics were also locally made. Analysis showed the broken pieces were made of clay and contained quartz, calcareous sand and feldspar similar to the types of sand found on the island's beaches. The researchers also found that the fragments were from small, thin-walled vessels that were less likely to break than thicker pots and easier to cart around.

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likely exchanging technological expertise, goods and ideas with other island communities.

That knowledge of pottery-making has since been passed on, however Grog-making techniques have been lost, with Aboriginal communities displaced and fragmented by British colonisation.

In fact, discovering these top-notch ceramics that date back thousands of years could really help local communities give ceramics a boost and save Jiigurru for future generations by providing a hands-on reminder of their ancestors' history, which is otherwise only recorded in old stories passed down through the family.

Yalgawarra wanthala wapidhala yił Ngayulu linthuru jinawur bjarran bikalŋuy wuŋgartay kawayjunu.

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