The Bass Strait Islands revisited

Quaternary International 385 (2015) 206e218

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The Bass Strait Islands revisited Sandra Bowdler Archaeology, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Available online 4 September 2014

Bass Strait divides mainland Australia from Tasmania (Fig. 1). During much of the Pleistocene, lowered sea levels meant there was a land bridge joining these land masses. It is now generally accepted that the formation of the Strait by post-glacial sea rise effectively separated the human populations of Tasmania from those of mainland Australia, leading to one of the most extreme cases of isolation known on the global scale. The Tasmanian Aborigines were separated for some 12,000 years from their nearest neighbours in Southeast Australia. None of the larger islands of Bass Strait appears to have been occupied at the time of European contact, and the archaeological record sees this lack of occupation stretching back centuries, and millennia in some cases. Some 35 years ago, Rhys Jones (1977) presented a complex model relating to the past human occupation of the Bass Strait Islands. Using biogeographical concepts and principles he concluded that there were critical points of size and distance that led to the abandonment of these islands, with the exception of the Hunter group in northwest Tasmania. Archaeological research carried out since 1977 does not militate against the broad strokes of this model e there is still no evidence for more recent contact between Australia and Tasmania, or for any recent occupation of most of the abandoned islands. There is however scope for a more nuanced consideration of their occupation and abandonment, in the light of more recent research which this paper will attempt. In general, archaeologists have not considered in this framework the latest phase of Aboriginal occupation in the Bass Strait Islands; there has been an ongoing Aboriginal population since the early 19th century, continuing many of the traditions of Tasmanian Aboriginal society. This paper attempts a continuous narrative from archaeology and history of the Tasmanian Aborigines and the Bass Strait Islands. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Tasmania Bass Strait Tasmanian Aborigines Archaeology Colonial history Pleistocene archeology

1. Introduction Low lying Bassiania, so beguilingly exposed to the wind … Jones, 1977, p. 339. I first set foot on a Bass Strait island about forty years ago. I recently revisited beguiling Bassiania early in 2013, with an idyllic visit to Flinders Island. Much water has flowed through the Strait over that time, and much research has been carried out by archaeologists, historians, natural historians and others. In this paper I want to revisit that research, and document how humans have visited and revisited these islands from their first footsteps over 35,000 years ago until the recent past. I write as an archaeologist, that is, one who is interested in and concerned about the past, but primarily the human past, as understood from material remains. The written past is however impossible to ignore, so archaeology

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must be informed by history where possible and necessary, and also vice versa. In Tasmania as elsewhere the present is the outcome of the past, and the present day descendants of the original Aboriginal inhabitants have much to inform us.

1.1. Concepts and terminology In addressing this paper, I was confronted by a problem with the terms customarily used by archaeologists (including myself) to describe the phenomena we grapple with. We refer to the “colonisation” of Australia, including Tasmania, by the first Aborigines who came here. The term has specific connotations, particularly now in the social sciences, where it implies a form of conquest by one culture of another, the establishment of “colonies” in already occupied territory. Obviously there is a dictionary definition (e.g. Oxford English Dictionary “The action of colonizing or fact of being colonized; establishment of a colony or colonies”) which has a more neutral affect, but the term now carries a freight of other meanings. Apart from the social science usage, it is used by biologists with reference to plants and (non-human) animals (Oxford English

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Dictionary). Similarly the words “occupy” and “occupation” in the modern world have aggressive overtones at odds with what I believe we want to convey. “Settlement” is now a term used frequently for the Europeans who colonised and occupied Aboriginal land. We are also tending to conflate two different ideas, one being an understanding of how humans first arrived in Australia, the other how they established themselves permanently in a new landscape. The former includes the more mechanical issues of when people came and how, and where they came from; the second is about how these people established a viable and on-going relationship with the land. In lieu of being able to come up with a simple alternative word to colonisation, I will use various permutations of “human relationships with the land”. It is now well-understood by most Australian archaeologists that Aboriginal relationships with the land were on the one hand adaptive, that is, they allowed people to survive and flourish in the environments in which they were located. On the other hand, these adaptations were manifested and operationalised in a web of social and religious networks, obligations, beliefs and cultural codifications which have little to do with Western ideas about land tenure. The idea of a “land-owning group” differs from Western customs in being communal rather than individual, and in expressing a mutual relationship between human community and country, rather than the idea embodied in the terms “land-holding” or “land tenure”. I suggest that what archaeologists are investigating are the origins of specific humaneland relationships in the past, on the one hand tracking their development in different environments, and on the other attempting to descry different forms of such relationships which identify different cultural groups, of the kind traditionally defined under the terms “tribe” or “band”. In Tasmania, such identifications have been made using the terminology coined by Jones (1977, p. 345), “regionally coordinated economic systems”. I would like to suggest that this rather mechanistic and/or cybernetic, not to mention bureaucratic (try a web search) phrase actually refers to a culturally cohesive group of people with a specific and successful relationship with the country in which they live. Tindale in 1974 described an Aboriginal “tribe” as follows. … the largest [political organization] in which a man can readily share in the full life of the community, imparting his thoughts to others whom he meets with a feeling that he is among his own kind …. They share a common bond of kinship and claim a common territory, even though the sharing in it may be the subject of restrictions on the taking of certain foods and the exploitation of some other resources may be limited without prior arrangement or permissible only by reason of the possession of specific kinship ties, for within the tribe there are sometimes distinctions between what a man may do in his own clan country, in that of his mother, and in those of his wife's people. In Australia this larger unit has a widely recognized name, a bond of common speech, and perhaps a reputation, and even an aura of names … given to it by other tribes people who lie in adjoining territories Tindale, 1974, p. 30. This is a workable, pragmatic and descriptive (if somewhat gender biased) view of a “tribe” which can lend itself to archaeological interpretation. It manifests no firm view about boundaries. It is not based on any particular internal structure(s), thus avoiding the difficulties canvassed by Berndt (1959). One would expect such

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a unit to have shared religious ceremonies with concomitant subsistence strategies and material culture expressions. Jones, in an Appendix to Tindale (1974) and working from very different sources, defined a Tasmanian “tribe” as follows. A tribe was that agglomeration of bands that lived in contiguous regions, spoke the same language or dialect, shared the same cultural traits, usually intermarried, had a similar pattern of seasonal movement, habitually met together for economic or other reasons, the pattern of whose peaceful relations were within the agglomeration, and of whose enmities and military adventures were directed outside it (Jones, 1974, 328). The main difference from the Tindale definition is in assuming an internal structure, based on a smaller unit, the “band”, which need not detain us here (One might also wonder about “military adventures”). Today, Aboriginal people characterise these groupings as “Nations” (e.g. Ryan, 2012, p. 14). At this point I suggest that these descriptions be used as the basis for something called an “archaeological Nation”, without concern for epistemological realities. It can certainly be argued that this is just a semantic device, but it is one that to me sits more comfortably with the fact we are dealing with an Aboriginal human past rather than a cybernetic construct. In any case it provides a heuristic device for investigating the human past, particularly with respect to the Bass Strait Islands. The baseline for identifying Nations of the past is our understanding of them in the present. In Tasmania, Jones's (1974) detailed historical and archaeological research resulted in the identification of nine tribes (as per the definition above), comprised of smaller foraging/family groups termed bands. Further delineation of these tribes has been carried out by several researchers, including Ryan (2012), who used the term Nations. Ryan's map of Tasmanian Aboriginal Nations showing their names and geographical extent is reproduced here as Fig. 2. In this paper, I use Ryan's (2012) designations for the Tasmanian Nations, based on Jones (1974), which differ from those used by Cameron (2011). I have also followed in most instances Ryan's spelling of Aboriginal names, which in turn generally follow those of Robinson (Plomley, 1966). Aboriginal people resisted the archaeologists' concept of “prehistory”, when it was distinguished from “history”; why was it, they asked, that Europeans have history but Indigenous people, for much of their long past, had something called prehistory? That term has now fallen from favour in Australia, as applied to people, and here I follow the more productive concept of a long history of Aboriginal life being documented by various means which include archaeology, oral tradition and history e in the disciplinary or methodological sense of information gained from written documents. I am also avoiding the term “midden” for sites composed of or containing mollusc remains. It is considered derogatory by some Aboriginal people (Patsy Cameron, personal communication); it does after all mean literally “A dunghill, a dung heap; a refuse heap” or, at best, “A receptacle for refuse, a dustbin” OED. Archaeological “midden sites” are often places where people lived, not just dumps. I would like to add a note on the use of radiocarbon dates. In this paper I prefer to use original radiocarbon dates with calibrated dates provided in the text (see also Appendix). It should be noted that all the scientific dates cited here were obtained by radiocarbon dating, with the single exception of the OSL date for the Brighton bypass site. 2. Research in the Bass Strait Islands Scholars and scientists from many disciplines have followed their interests in the Bass Strait Islands e historians,

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Fig. 1. Bass Strait Islands.

anthropologists, geomorphologists, biogeographers, botanists, zoologists and of course archaeologists. There is a general idea, particularly amongst natural scientists, that islands are excellent laboratories for testing theories. It has been the case that archaeologists have followed such scientists in seeing islands as laboratories for human behaviour, not always taking into account the fact that humans are not quite as predictable or quantifiable as other species. Archaeology as a professional discipline is recent in Australia, with the first university departments not being established until the 1960s. Prior to that, archaeological research was undertaken by people who worked in museums, not necessarily trained in the modern way of archaeology. One example is Norman Tindale, who began his working life as an entomologist in the South Australian Museum, but who subsequently became known as both anthropologist and archaeologist. His work in South Australia as an archaeologist was significant in establishing the antiquity of the human presence on Kangaroo Island, which has significance in relation to the Bass Strait Islands. He was also part of the “HarvardAdelaide Universities Anthropological Expedition, 1938e1939”, along with physical anthropologist Joseph Birdsell, which, controversially, carried out research on Flinders Island (see Fig. 1 for locations of islands). Tindale carried out social anthropological investigations, although he did comment on archaeological materials found on the Furneaux Islands (e.g. Tindale, 1941). In 1946, an expedition of “students” under the auspices of the National Museum of Victoria in Melbourne, collected stone artefacts from several sites on Flinders Island (Mackay, 1946). In the 1950s, geomorphological research by Joe Jennings (1957, 1959) established a pattern of sea level changes which set up parameters for human occupation of the Bass Strait Islands east and west. Research on the biogeography of mammals on the islands was pursued by Jeannette Hope in the 1960s. Her resulting doctoral thesis and published papers (1969, 1973) were influential in suggesting biogeographical models for human life in the islands.

The first fully professional archaeological research in Tasmania was inaugurated by Rhys Jones in 1963 (Jones, 1964e5), who carried out fieldwork mostly in northwest Tasmania, leading to a detailed sequence of human occupation since c.8000 BP (c.9000 cal BP; Jones, 1966, 1971). A paper by Jones (1969a) entitled “Bass Strait in Prehistory”, considered the role of the Strait in the history of the Tasmanian Aborigines. He argued that the Tasmanians were Aboriginal people who had been cut off from their mainland Australian fellows by the raising of post-glacial sea levels about 10,000 years ago. In a discussion prefiguring future themes in his work, he discussed the loss of certain cultural traits across the 8000 years of human life his research had documented, and argued that it reflected other examples of the archaeology of remote islands as documenting a “loss of useful arts” as the feasible result of “isolation and the lack of outside stimulus” (Jones, 1969a: 28e29). It was against this background of previous research and ideas that I began field work on Hunter Island in 1973 (Bowdler, 1974). One of the smaller islands, not far off the tip of the northwest Tasmanian mainland, was known to have been visited in the historical past by Tasmanian Aborigines (Meston, 1936). By carrying out excavations in a large sea cave (Cave Bay Cave) and open living sites. I was able to establish a long history of an Aboriginal presence from 23,000 years ago. This was not a continuous sequence but showed that people had been present at different times within that span, in a way which was related to changing sea levels. While not necessarily the first time people had been present in the region, it nonetheless provided a chronological framework within which to investigate their lives, and is, as we shall see, consistent with evidence from the eastern Bass Strait Islands. 23,000 years ago (27,000 cal BP) sea levels were lower, and Hunter Island was a hill on the Bassian plain. At this time the climate was becoming colder and more arid, preparatory to the height of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) 18,000 years ago (c.21,000e19,000 cal BP, Lewis et al., 2013) which was also the time

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Fig. 2. Tasmanian Nations.

of lowest sea level. At that point it seems that the cave was abandoned. The levels after a date of 18,550 BP (22,400 cal BP) are very different in being almost devoid of evidence for a human presence. A single hearth within the bounds of the excavation was dated to c.15,000 years ago (18,500 cal BP); while it is unique within the excavated area it is unlikely that it represents only one visit, as other such hearths may exist in the unexcavated deposit. At about 6600 years ago (7500 cal BP), people occupied the cave exploiting the rich resources of the sea, which reached its present level and position at about that time (7500e8000 cal BP, Lewis et al., 2013). There is then a hiatus of human evidence until c.2500 years ago (2600 cal BP; Bowdler, 1988). Fig. 3 illustrates diagrammatically periods of occupation at sites discussed. I have previously speculated that the island may not have been completely severed from the mainland 5000e4500 years ago, although I now tend towards thinking that is unlikely. In any case, the cave was then apparently unoccupied between c.5000 and

2500 years ago, when another dense shell-bearing layer was deposited. I have suggested that this most recent layer represents an effective rediscovery of the cave by people from the Tasmanian mainland travelling there by boat, and representing the kind of land relationship seen in the historically recorded past (Meston, 1936; Bowdler, 1984). This is supported by evidence from open living sites on Hunter Island (Bowdler, 1984, 1988). While the Hunter group of islands was known to have been visited by Aboriginal people by boat in the recent pre-European past, this was not the case with the large islands of King and the Furneaux group, which were also much further from both the Tasmanian and Australian mainlands. As soon as Matthew Flinders had established that Tasmania was an island in 1789, he puzzled over the fact of these islands being seemingly uninhabited by humans (Flinders, 1814; pp. cxxxviecxxxvii). As mentioned above, an expedition of 1946 had registered the presence of human artefacts on Flinders Island (largest of the Furneaux group), indicating

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Fig. 3. Diagram showing approximate periods of occupation at sites/places discussed in the text.

that people had lived or visited there some time in the past. Jones, citing examples also from King, Cape Barren and Erith Islands, argued that they must represent an earlier period when the islands were part of a land bridge between Australia and Tasmania (Jones, 1977; pp. 348e349). This raised the question of whether the people who had left the artefacts there had abandoned the islands as the sea reclaimed them, or had been stranded on the newly formed islands and subsequently died out. Jones (1977, p. 349) cited the lack of sites containing marine shellfish remains and rejected the latter proposition. Despite considerable subsequent research, that question is still under debate. Fieldwork carried out by Wayne Orchiston at Palana, at the north end of Flinders Island, focused on dune sites, and showed evidence of a human presence about 7000 years ago (8000 cal BP) although these dates were subsequently queried by Sim, 1994, within the period when the sea reached its present level (Orchiston and Glenie, 1978). The sites in question contain marine shell fish, suggesting their occupation by people familiar with exploiting the coastline for food, thus maintaining the possibility that people had been stranded. Also in the 1970s, Jones, during a stopover on King Island, located some stone artefacts and obtained a radiocarbon date of c.7500 years ago (8500 cal BP; Jones, 1979; this date is also considered unsafe by Sim, 1994). He also investigated sites on Erith Island, finding older evidence there of a human presence between 10,500 and 8000 BP (precise dates not available for calibration; Jones and Lampert, 1978; Jones, 1987; Porch and Allen, 1995). At that time, the sea was low enough for the Kent Group to be one larger island, maybe 15 km wide, but still at least 15 km away from the larger Furneaux land mass. Unless the people represented there

had watercraft (see below), it would seem likely they would have been stranded there as the seas rose ever higher. Great Glennie Island, close to the Australian mainland, was investigated in the early 1980s, producing a relatively young date of c.1850 BP (1720 cal BP). The question of abandonment versus stranding was still unclear (Gaughwin and Fullager, 1995). In 1998, a project of archaeological research in the Furneaux Islands was initiated by Steve Brown (Brown, 1991, 1993). He excavated a cave on Prime Seal Island named Mannalargenna Cave after the historically well-known chief of the North East Nation and ancestor of many members of the modern Tasmanian Aboriginal community. Brown established that the site was used as a human habitation site between about 20,500 (25,000 cal BP) and 14,000 years BP (17,000 cal BP), with the most substantial evidence occurring around c.18,000 (22,500 cal BP), the time of the last glacial maximum. Some sporadic evidence of further occupation occurred around 8000 BP (8800 cal BP). A thorough investigation of the Bass Strait Islands overall was clearly called for, and this challenge was admirably met by Robin Sim in detailed studies of King Island and the Furneaux through the 1980s and 90s (Sim, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1998; Sim and West, 1998). First tackling King Island, she investigated a series of sites, revealing evidence of a human presence in a cave (Cliff Cave) containing a human skeleton but little other cultural material, dating to about 14,000 years ago (17,000 cal BP; Sim, 1994; Sim and Thorne, 1990). One open site (Cataraqui Monument Quarry) was dated to c.10,000 BP (12,000 cal BP), and two others (Cataraqui Point), (Quarantine Bay) to 2000 BP (1900 cal BP) and 1100 BP (1000 cal BP). Sims' initial interpretation was that the former site

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represented people living on King Island just before abandoning it, and the latter two dates resulted from fleeting visits by people from Hunter Island (Sim, 1991). She later modified this latter speculation to one of castaways accidentally blown, rather than deliberately voyaging to, to King Island as victims of the dangerous winds and seas of the region (Sim, 1994). With respect to the Furneaux Islands, Sim conducted detailed surveys not only on Flinders Island, but on many of the smaller islands as well. Two cave sites were productively investigated, Mannalargenna Cave on Prime Seal Island (previously excavated by Brown, 1993), and Beeton Cave on Badger Island. These sites contained evidence of human presence between about 23,000 (26,000 cal BP) and 19,000 (23,500 cal BP years ago), then only sporadic occupation after the LGM, about 18,000 years ago. As Brown had shown in the previous excavation of Mannalargenna Cave, there is evidence in the Beeton site for later if more sporadic occupation, with shellfish remains being left behind c.8400 years ago (9300 cal BP). Open sites on Flinders Island with shellfish remains are as recent as c.4700 BP (5400 cal BP). No such evidence was found on other islands however, indicating to Sim that watercraft were not in use. Sim argues that this recent evidence for coastal dwellers, well past the time of the inundation of Bass Strait, confirms the idea that people continued living on an isolated Flinders Island until dying out about 4500 years ago, probably due to environmental changes (Sim, 1994, 1998). Little new archaeological research on the pre-European past of the Bass Strait Islands has been published since Sim's contributions. There has however been some archaeological fieldwork pertaining to the period of written records, and also new historical research which throws light on the long Aboriginal history of the Bass Strait Islands. Judy Birmingham carried out archaeological investigations at Wybalenna, the place on Flinders Island where Tasmanian Aborigines were institutionalised in the 1830s (Birmingham, 1973, 1992, 1993). New historical insights on the Aboriginal presence in the Bass Strait Islands since the late eighteenth century may be found in books by Patsy Cameron (2011) and Lyndall Ryan (2012), discussed further below. With respect to Tasmania overall, the oldest potential archaeological evidence for humans in Tasmania is found at a site not far from the modern city of Hobart. Surveys were carried out near the town of Brighton, about 30 km north of Hobart, to determine whether archaeological resources were likely to be disturbed by the construction of a by-pass road including a bridge over the Jordan River, a tributary of the Derwent. In a levee deposit on the west bank of the river, stone artefacts were found, and associated sediments were dated by OSL dating to around 37,000 years ago. The excavators argue that the depth of the sediment indicates a possible date for earliest occupation of the site about 40,000 years ago. Unfortunately this information is only available in an unpublished report (Paton, 2010), which stresses that the conclusions are only of a preliminary nature. Nevertheless, pollen research suggests this would have been a suitable environment for humans at the time, with dry sclerophyll forest providing good hunting and easily negotiable country (Colhoun and Shimeld, 2012,p.310). Firmer evidence for early people in Tasmania derives from Southwest Tasmania, from several sites (e.g. Warreen, Parmerpar Meethaner) with a time frame of 35,000 (40,000 cal BP) to 10,000 years ago (12,000 cal BP; Cosgrove, 1995). 3. A human history of the Bass Strait Islands 3.1. First nations Most archaeologists agree that the first people to set foot on the Australian continent were modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens),

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the ancestors of the modern Australian and Tasmanian Aborigines, and that this took place at least 50,000 years ago (eg O'Connor, 2007). Many Aboriginal people on the other hand believe that humans e their ancestors e have always been present in Australia. In Tasmania, for example, George Augustus Robinson (see below) recorded a traditional story, told to him by Wourredy of the Nuenonne clan, describing the creation of the first man in Tasmania (Plomley, 1966: 373). At least we can agree that Aboriginal people were the original occupants, and that they have been in Australia since at least 50,000 years ago. Between c.50,000 and 10,000 years ago, the sea level was between 70 and 40 m lower than today (Chappell, 1994; Sim, 1998, p. 289). There was however a deep channel between Australia and South East Asia, never less than 100 km across. The first humans in Australia, if they came from elsewhere, were obliged to come by sea. The first visitors therefore must have had reasonably seaworthy boats. That such boats existed in the past has been further demonstrated by the discovery of evidence for deep-sea fishing in Timor (O'Connor, 2007). Once in the Sahul region, people who had made the water crossing could disperse across the Greater Australian continent by foot, including the island of New Guinea in the north, and Tasmania in the south. As we have seen, the earliest evidence for people in Tasmania is dated to possibly c.40e37,000 years ago, and definitely 35,000 years ago. Within that time frame, they could have walked into Tasmania across the Bassian plain. The climate would have been somewhat colder than today's, but was destined to get worse, with the onset of the Last Glacial period around 26,000 years ago, reaching its maximum at c.18,000 BP. During this period, sea levels fell to their lowest, exposing considerable amounts of land, and the climate was colder and more arid. Not only was Bass Strait 40,000 years ago a relatively flat grassy plain with some upland areas, but there was probably a swampy area in its centre, which could have provided water and resources for waterfowl and other potential bird and animal resources (Blom, 1988). The coastlines were some distance away from their present position. The southwest area of modern day Tasmania is now covered with resource-poor, almost impenetrable cool temperate rainforest. Aboriginal people in the recent past lived along the coastal strip, and developed a close and productive relationship with that land. They were able to open up paths and large grassy patches with firestick farming (e.g. Jones, 1969b), but did not penetrate deep into the rainforest. During the glacial period, the area was open heathland, and access to the inland river systems was easy. People were here 35,000 years ago, using caves as bivouacs for hunting expeditions which targeted a range of wallabies and other marsupials (Cosgrove, 1995). Cosgrove considers that the evidence from a number of excavated caves in the southwest represents a “system” due to its mutual similarity, or shared “archaeological signatures”. These comprise the dominance of quartz as a raw material for stone artefacts, thumbnail scrapers, wallaby hunting, and the presence of Darwin glass (a volcanic material found at the Darwin crater in western Tasmania) (McNiven, 1994; Cosgrove, 1995; Porch and Allen, 1995). A model of seasonal movement based on a study of wallaby teeth suggests that this group was restricted to an inland seasonal round. It cannot be clear however what its western boundary might be, as there could be more evidence now lying under the sea. Rather than referring to a “system”, this would seem to be a good example of an archaeological Nation. While we do not currently know when people actually arrived in Tasmania, by 35,000 years ago they seem to have established a successful and dynamic relationship with the land, which allowed them to make a good living hunting wallabies, and formed a Nation which made similar artefacts, and traded amongst themselves for the desirable

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Fig. 4. Suggested early Nations of Tasmania.

Darwin glass. The onset of the LGM seems to have produced some hardship, as the archaeology shows a less intense presence between 25,000 and 16,000 years ago (Cosgrove, 1995; Porch and Allen, 1995). The caves were no longer visited after the end of the glacial period, presumably because of the encroaching rainforest. What happened to this Nation, which we might refer to as the Early Southwest Nation? Perhaps they retreated to the distant coast, to become the forbears of the modern South West Nation? In the Bassian Plain, we have seen a number of sites showing a human presence at the onset of the LGM. Cave Bay Cave on Hunter Island in the southwest of the Bassian Plain, Beeton Cave on Badger Island and Mannalargenna Cave on Prime Seal Island on the east side of the Bassian Plain, would all have been located on hills arising out of a flat grassy landscape (Brown, 1991, 1993). All have evidence for a human presence about 23,000 years ago, and a consistency of evidence which allows us to propose another early Nation, which I will refer to as the Bassian Nation. This evidence has some similarities with the Early Southwest Nation, but also differences based on environmental and locality factors, and some cultural differences as well. One significant difference is that the evidence for a human presence is much sparser than those in the caves of the southwest, which clearly reflects environmental differences. The Bassian Plain would have been a harsher environment, more exposed to the glacial wind and with fewer available resources. In cultural terms, all these sites have a predominant use of local quartz as a raw material for stone tools, thumbnail scrapers, ochre and bone points made out of wallaby fibulae. At the eastern sites, artefacts are also made out of fossil shell, not found in Cave Bay Cave, and obviously showing exploitation of a locally available eastern

Bassian resource (Sim, 1998). Perhaps these unique artefacts represent an eastern clan within the Bassian Nation. What were the boundaries of the Bassian Nation? In time, as we have seen, it is at least 23,000 years old, and continues to about 15,000 years ago. Its geographical extent to east and west is indicated by Hunter Island and Flinders Island, but of course the actual boundaries were probably the east and west coasts now sunk below Bass Strait (Fig. 4). If so, the territory of the Bassian nation extended some 450 km east to west. Did it extend to the current south coast of Victoria and north coast of Tasmania? Hunter Island is close enough to the Tasmanian mainland to suggest the inclusion of the north coast, although there is no evidence at Rocky Cape or the other sites excavated by Jones; the oldest dated human presence here is well after the end of the glacial period (c.8000 BP or 9000 cal BP; Jones, 1971). We have evidence for a human presence on King Island in the form of skeletal remains about 14,000 years ago, but associated with no cultural evidence. On the Victorian side, the only site of sufficient antiquity to be considered is at Keilor on the edge of modern Melbourne, discovered and excavated in the 1940s through to the 1980s (Mahony, 1943a, 1943b; Wunderly, 1943; Macintosh, 1965; Gallus, 1971/ 1972; Coutts, 1978; Simmons and Ossa, 1978; Witter and Simmons, 1978). It is located north of Port Phillip Bay, some 60 km from the modern coast. That the site contains evidence of a human presence by c.36,000 years ago has been convincingly canvassed by Bowler (1976). Besides a rather younger human skull (dating problematic but probably about 16,000 BP, Macintosh, 1965), the older levels contain humanly produced artefacts of stone and possibly bone. There are unresolved issues of provenance

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and dating of the site and its artefacts. There has been confusion in the literature about the nature of the archaeological assemblage (Wright, 1971). The evidence available shows little use of quartz, no thumbnail scrapers or ochre, nor convincing bone tools, and thus it does not seem to be a Bassian site (Witter and Simmons, 1978; Munro, 1998). We can speculate that the Bassian Nation extended some 450 km east to west, and maybe 150 km north to south, perhaps 68,000 km2. While this would be considered large for a Tasmanian Nation, the very different environmental conditions during the LGM would suggest the need for a wider range of territory. The vegetation regime of the exposed Bassian plain consisted of a grassy plain with scattered eucalypts, with a colder drier climate than today (Hope, 1978; Colhoun and Shimeld, 2012). We can compare this to the Wiradjuri Nation of New South Wales, who lived in a largely grassland environment and whose territory was about 97,000 km2 (Tindale, 1974; south-east map; Horton, 1994; map). As with the Early South West Nation, the ultimate fate of the Bassian Nation is far from clear. As described above, the evidence for this Nations lasts from about 23,000 years until about 15,000 years ago. The apparent decline in the archaeological record from about 18,000 BP suggests that people were retreating during the height of the LGM, presumably towards the coasts which were then much further away. As the sea began to rise again, there is evidence for people following the returning coasts. The human skeleton found in a cave on King Island dating to 14,000 years ago, was possibly a lone inland explorer. Further evidence on King Island dates to 10,000 years ago, when the sea was less than 5 km away. On Badger Island, on the western end of the Furneaux land mass, people returned about 8500 years ago when the sea was only a few kilometres away, and there is similar evidence from tiny Erith Island. At Hunter Island, people returned about 6600 years ago, during the period when the sea reached its present level and it became in fact an island. It seems that during the height of the Last Glacial period, at a time when environmental conditions were particularly harsh, the Bassian Nation had been living on the coastal areas of the Bassian Plain, and had followed the sea as it began to rise. While King Island seems to have been abandoned after about 10,000 years ago, the Hunter and Furneaux Islands have evidence for people carrying on a coastal lifestyle until 4000 or so years ago (Bowdler, 1988; Sim, 1994). What happened then continues to be the subject of much speculation. This raises the issue of watercraft in Tasmania, and indeed Aboriginal Australia generally. While I argued for a “coastal colonisation” of Australia many years ago (Bowdler, 1977), and there is strong evidence to support this e a minimum of 100 km of water to cross to get here, deep sea-going vessels in Timor e it does still raise a number of puzzling issues. Thinking back to Flinders Island, we have seen that people were there during times of lower sea level when the sites they were using were far from the coast. When climatic conditions became difficult, they retreated to the coast, and returned with the sea when it rose to its current position. The archaeological evidence shows they survived on Flinders Island clustered around the new coastline until 4000 years ago, after which there is no archaeological trace. Sim (1998) argues that her survey of a substantial sample of the Furneaux Islands including the outer islands shows that watercraft was not in use during the time people were exploiting the resources of the coast, and that they must have been stranded by its final insulation, and died out. Following this argument would imply that the people who seemed to have been on Hunter Island between c.6600 and 2500 years ago were also stranded and died out, as I believe my earlier argument about a remnant connection between island and mainland is no longer tenable (Sim, 1998).

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One might mention here Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia. Lampert's original research found that the oldest evidence for a human presence (at the Seton Site) was c.16,000 years ago (19,000 cal BP), with coastal sites (e.g. Rainy Creek) dated to c.8000 (9000 cal BP) and the most recent (Sand Quarry) being about 4000 years ago (5000 cal BP; Lampert, 1981). While not being identical to the Bass Strait Island sequences, it was assumed that this island, three times larger than Flinders Island, also seemed unable to sustain a population after 4000 years ago. More recent research by Draper (1991) however showed a more recent human presence, suggesting people were visiting with watercraft within the last 2000 years. Cameron argues that there is no reason why people should have “died out” after surviving in isolation for several thousand years. She suggests the possibility of the Furneaux people developing watercraft and migrating across to the mainland to the south, and indeed introducing watercraft to the Tasmanian mainland (Cameron, 2011, p.29). This is an intriguing possibility, but not supported by the current state of archaeological knowledge, which is admittedly not well developed in north east Tasmania. But it certainly raises the question, if they did die out, why? Were there simply not enough resources to sustain people over the long haul? In 1977, Rhys Jones constructed an elaborate model for the ability of islands in general, and the Bass Strait Islands in particular, to sustain an ongoing population. In quantifying these questions (some based on very circular processes), he developed a mathematical formula for biogeographical “laws” governing how many people could live on an island of a given size and a given distance from the mainland: “In the Bassian environmental and cultural context, islands became empty because 4000e5000 sq km were deemed to be too small for a permanent population; and they remained empty because a 10e15 km cross-sea voyage was too great for recolonisation, or re-incorporation into a wider economic system” (Jones, 1977, p. 371). Sim (1998) however believes there may have been environmental reasons for changes in the human relationships with land and sea at this time, 4000e2000 years ago. She draws on palae~ o-Southern Oscillation oclimatic data indicating that the El Nin (ENSO) was exerting influence in the southern Australasian seas between 5000 and 3000 years ago. This argument receives support from Rowland's (1999) excellent study of the impact of ENSO in southern Australia. The main effect was of a colder climate with drier summers replacing a previously warmer and wetter phase. In Tasmania and South eastern Australia, about 3000 years ago there was an onset of lower temperatures, cooling of ocean waters, less precipitation and increased seasonality (Sim, 1998, p. 315). She argues that this major climatic shift on the one hand engendered a successful adaptive response on the Tasmanian mainland, and also on the Australian mainland, but on the other overwhelmed the small survivor populations on the islands. There is not space here to discuss her proposals in detail, but it is important to note that she attributes the demise of the island populations to a very basic lack of water (Sim, 1998, p. 319). In the wider Tasmanian archaeological record, it is true that the evidence seems to suggest that watercraft were not in use until c.2500 years ago, and then only in certain places. The historical record certainly supports the view that watercraft were not in use by the North East Nation. Vanderwal has argued that canoes in all parts of Tasmania were only invented in the last 2500 years (Vanderwal, 1978; see also; Jones, 1976). In fact the evidence from Australia generally, as I observed in 1995 (Bowdler, 1995), could be interpreted as meaning watercraft were not made and used anywhere in Australia before the last 3000e2500 years, and despite suggestions that this is overly simplistic, at least in explaining offshore island use (O'Connor, 1992, 1994), it is still a tenable

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argument. It has subsequently seen support from Sim and Wallis (2008) and Rosendahl (2012) in the Gulf of Carpentaria. McNiven et al. (2014) have evidence to suggest island use by 5000 cal BP, but in that instance it is some 3000e4000 years after islandisation of Queensland's Shoalwater Bay islands. While the situation is still far from being resolved, it does appear that Australians were not quick to exploit offshore islands qua islands. Given that the first people in Australia had to come by boat, and across a reasonable distance (at least 100 km), one might have expected the archaeological record to show, at least indirectly, a long robust tradition of watercraft. While the earliest evidence for people in Australia is often found near what would have been Pleistocene coasts, and often contains evidence for some exploitation of coastal resources, a heavy reliance on the sea is not apparent. Did people really arrive in Australia and burn their boats? Were they really the dedicated coastal dwellers I once imagined (Bowdler, 1977)? Could it be that they were brought here by the more maritime-adept people we see in the Timor archaeological record, a case of people smugglers of the deep past? These issues continue to be unresolved. 3.2. First revisiting As we have seen, many of the Bass Strait Island sites show no evidence of people after about 4500 years ago, but some such as Cave Bay Cave were revisited c.2500 years ago. Other sites on Hunter Island were also visited for the first time around 2500 years ago. I have argued that these were regular visits by people of the North West Nation in canoes, on a seasonal basis, attracted in particular by muttonbirds (Bowdler, 1988). No archaeological site in the Furneaux group however has any sign of human presence between c.4500 and c.250 years ago. On King Island on the other hand there are two sites dated to about 2000 and 1000 BP. Sim (1991) originally interpreted this evidence as perhaps representing people voyaging deliberately from the Hunter group, adventurous groups seeking what were now new pastures for the acquisition of food. Subsequently she changed her mind, and considered that it was more likely that these people had been castaways, caught by the dangerous rips around Hunter Island and driven north beyond their control, and presumably perishing on King Island (Sim, 1994). Given the nature of archaeological sites however, in that they are vulnerable to destruction by the elements, and that those actually found by archaeologists are really only a fractional representation of the activities that generated them, I think two dated sites could represent a more substantial level of visitation than that of just castaways. While the level of visitation by sea to King Island in the last 2000 years was clearly less substantial than that to Hunter Island, I have no problem in seeing it as a regular deliberate adventure. By this time, we are seeing a well developed coastal economy with a good understanding of the use of watercraft by the North West Nation 2000 years ago. Had the Tasmanian peoples not been disrupted from AD 1804 by the European invasion, it is possible King Island might have become a regular port of call for people of the North West Nation, and eventually a clan centre. 3.3. The next revisiting Aboriginal people of Tasmania returned to the Bass Strait Islands in two groups between c.1800 and 1836, one group more or less voluntarily, the other with little choice in the matter. Over time however these groups forged a new land relationship in the Furneaux Islands particularly, which endures to this day. The story of the dispossession of the Tasmanian Aborigines is a well-known one in colonial history (see particularly Ryan, 2012;

Clements, 2014), which I briefly summarise. After the initial British settlement at Risdon Cove near modern Hobart, the first violent encounter between Aboriginal people and the British occurred there almost immediately in May 1804. Relations between these groups continued to deteriorate thereafter, intensifying as the squatters increased, and increasingly appropriated Aboriginal lands. A state of undeclared war existed, particularly through the later 1820s, and George Arthur, the Governor of Van Diemen's Land, declared martial law on 1 November 1828. This led to further violence, particularly by settlers against Aborigines, but achieved little constructively. The notorious Black Line of 1830, was intended to drive the Big River and Oyster Bay Aborigines from the “settled districts” of eastern Tasmania. A cordon of the military and police forces, along with “all the able-bodied men of the colony” swept the eastern part of the island from north to south towards the Tasman Peninsula, which Arthur designated as an “Aboriginal Reserve” (Ryan, 2012, p. 131). Given that the Aboriginal people were in their own country, it is hardly surprising that all except two eluded the cordon. Overall however Ryan estimates that between December 1826 and 1834 in the settled districts of Tasmania, 60% of the Aboriginal population was killed outright (Ryan, 2012; pp. 145e6). Arthur saw that something else needed to be done to prevent the extinction of the Aboriginal peoples under his governorship. In March 1829, free immigrant bricklayer George Augustus Robinson was appointed by Arthur to run a ration station for the conquered members of the Nuenonne clan of the South East Nation on Bruny Island. Outside the settled districts, the struggle between incoming settlers and Aboriginal people was escalating, especially with the establishment of the British owned Van Diemen's Land Company in the north west. Having negotiated a relationship with the Nuenonne, which included Truganini and Wourreddy among its members, Robinson offered to set off with some of his new-found friends to attempt conciliation with the Aborigines at large, beginning with the South West people at Port Davey who had longestablished relations with the Nuenonne (Ryan, 2012, p. 158). Arthur agreed. Robinson carried out a number of peaceful missions, going unarmed, and persuading many of the Aboriginal people to give up a fight they could not win. By 1833 however the situation was deteriorating rapidly and Robinson, desperate to finish his task, turned to fire-arms and the remaining members of the North West and South West Nations were forcibly rounded up and removed from their own lands (Ryan, 2012, chapters 12e13). In 1831, Robinson estimated there were 700 Aborigines alive in Tasmania (Ryan, 2012, p. 182); about 300 were thought to have surrendered (one way or another), the other approximately 400 people having been killed or died of disease in the interim. Only 112 of the 300 survived in 1835 (Ryan, 2012, p. 219), most of the rest having succumbed to disease. As the missions proceeded, and more people were removed from their traditional lands, it became obvious that they had to be housed somewhere. The settlers would not tolerate them in the settled districts, and there were calls in 1828e1829 for them to be housed on an uninhabited island in Bass Strait (Ryan, 2012; pp.102, 112, 127). Robinson tried a succession of small islands in Bass Strait before the Aboriginal Establishment, as it became known, ended up on Flinders Island. The first was on Swan Island, just off the north east coast, only ever intended as a temporary refuge, where rounded-up Aborigines were housed between 1830 and 1832 (Ryan, 2012, p. 176). In 1831, Robinson recommended Gun Carriage (now Vansittart) Island, between Flinders and Cape Barren Island as a more permanent home, and 60 Aboriginal people were moved there. It soon became evident that it was too small (Ryan, 2012; pp.182, 187). While Robinson was off on his mission, the military sergeant attached to the Establishment moved it onto Flinders Island, at a site named The Lagoons (Ryan, 2012, p 198), on the south

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west coast. Here, the Aborigines had ructions with local sealers, and they were moved to Green Island, just off the coast. Finally, the site of Wybalenna on the west coast of Flinders Island was established in February 1833, where the institutionalised Aborigines remained until October 1847 (Birmingham, 1992, p.129). When Robinson became permanent commandant in 1835, 112 Aboriginal people were in his charge. It is evident that at each settlement, the Aborigines tried to maintain their own identities, and establish a meaningful relationship with the new land in which they found themselves. Men hunted and women gathered traditional foods; traditional crafts, such as shell necklace making were maintained; and ceremonial singing and dancing were carried out into the night (e.g. Ryan, 2012, p. 227). Many Nations were represented however, and Ryan describes how the people formed three distinct groups, based on linguistic and cultural affiliations: a western group including people from the North West and South West Nations including Wourreddy and Truganini of the South East Nuenonne; a Ben Lomond group including people from the Ben Lomond, North Midlands and North East Nations; and a Big River group which also included members of the Oyster Bay Nation (Ryan, 2012, p. 220). Having such diverse groups representing a range of different cultural traditions (e.g. Cameron, 2011, p. 13) cannot have made it easy to form meaningful new relationships with the land. At least however the Aborigines at Wybalenna carried out a largely independent existence, living in communal huts away from the main settlement (Ryan, 2012, p. 222). Ryan sees this “apparent idyll” coming to an end with the death of the charismatic leader Mannalargenna (more of him below) on 4 December 1835 (Ryan, 2012, p. 223). There were more pragmatic issues. Rations were irregular and slow to arrive, water was contaminated, and the local game were being hunted out (Ryan, 2012, p. 228). This last issue would seem to indicate a breakdown in the relationship with the land, in that hunting was not being regulated in the traditional way by ceremonial practices and dictates. It is likely also that resources were stretched because people were effectively tethered to a limited area. And disease continued unabated. In 1836, Robinson intensified the regimentation of the Aborigines, even more so after being offered the position of Protector of Aborigines in Port Phillip, contingent on proving his ability to civilise and Christianise those currently under his control (Ryan, 2012, p. 229). This involved a new building program, and educational regime, designed to accomplish these things. Continued outbreaks of illness did not help, during which the people would decamp to the bush to counter the illnesses (Ryan, 2012, p. 230). From this point, it was clear that the Aboriginal people had no hope of establishing their own relationship to country. Robinson departed for Port Phillip in 1839 and took with him fifteen of the Mission Aborigines, leaving behind sixty people. Under a succession of more or less incompetent commandants, the population continued to dwindle, and even with the return of some of the Mission people, stood at forty nine in 1847. They were then removed from what had become seen as a useless expense, to a former convict station at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart. If there had ever been any genuine belief that the Aborigines might have established a successful settlement on Flinders Island, it was now in tatters. The Bass Strait Islands did however provide a haven for Tasmanian Aboriginal people, in which they survived, flourished and remain to this day, completely outside the framework of colonial society, in the final and successful revisitation of the islands. This is probably a story well known in its usual formulation, but much new light has been shed by Indigenous scholar Patsy Cameron (2011). Aboriginal women living in the Bass Strait Islands have generally been construed as unwilling abductees living a desperate and

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oppressed life under the ruthless control of the lawless riff raff, mostly sealers, expelled from traditional colonial society (e.g. McMahon, 1976). This was certainly the view of George Augustus Robinson, despite his having spent an amiable time in such company on Hunter Island in 1830 (Plomley, 1966; pp. 176, 295); he was particularly keen to remove such women from their base servitude, as he perceived it, to his Establishment. It is certainly true that women were abducted against their will and treated with excessive violence (e.g. Taylor, 2000). Cameron has looked outside the usual sources, which comprise Robinson's clearly biased accounts, to determine a different view, not entirely agreed on by the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. She establishes that while there were undeniable atrocities committed by Europeans on the coastal dwelling Aboriginal people, the community established in the islands had a more generally benign origin. They were not established during the first phase of sealing (1798e1810), nor had they anything to do with the “desperadoes” and “banditti” of the subsequent ten years. Rather, the European men involved might have been on the fringes of European society, but they were far from lawless; many of them were former convicts seeking independence and who “just wanted a quiet life” (Cameron, 2011; pp. 53e72). Cameron prefers the term “Straitsmen” to describe these men, rather than the more usual “sealers”. While there certainly were abductions, most of the women involved found themselves on the islands as the subject of “friendly exchanges”, and some of them seemed to have been quite voluntary; in any case, they were not happy to be taken away by Robinson into the regimented existence of the Establishment (Cameron, 2011; pp. 92ff). The North East people in particular had begun to develop strategic relationships with the Straitsmen as early as 1812 (Cameron, 2011, p. 88). These relationships evolved into detailed reciprocal systems involving the exchange of women for European items such as dogs and blankets, but also for food supplies: as the women left their traditional country, so the remaining clanspeople were deprived of the resources they provided (Cameron, 2011, p. 94). The nature of the exchanges of the women was in accord with traditional marriage customs, and so a new community was born. Far from being slaves, or merely economic chattels, the women were integral to a new economy and a new community, and recognised this by distinguishing themselves with a new name, the tyereelore. By 1830 there were about 25 tyereelore and 20 Straitsmen living in the eastern Bass Strait Islands (Cameron, 2011, p. 88e90). Furthermore, far from leading an oppressed, depraved violent existence, the tyereelore e Straitsmen communities were well organised, economically successful, and neat and orderly residential centres (Cameron, 2011, p. 97). The tyereelore were also responsible for maintaining their own cultural traditions, thus ensuring the longterm survival of Aboriginal traditions amongst their many descendants (Cameron, 2011, p. 101). It is interesting to speculate on the extent to which this could have been a deliberate strategy for survival on the part of the Aboriginal people. The renowned leader Mannalargenna of the North East Nation exchanged at least three of his daughters and a sister with the Straitsmen, and Cameron suggests this bonded the latter to him as relatives, and that he considered that the women would be safer in the islands than in their original country (Cameron, 2011, p. 96). It was also a successful insurance for the future; Mannalargenna's descendants form a goodly proportion of the modern Aboriginal community in Tasmania. The brevity of this account should not be allowed to obscure some of the complexities of history. On the one hand, the intitutionalised people and the tyereelore communities were not quite as separate as it may seem. Robinson and his agents rounded up numbers of the tyereelore, beginning with eleven in 1830 (Ryan,

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2012, p. 180). In 1831, Arthur had decreed that each Straitsman should be allowed just one tyereelore, and Robinson was obliged to return some of them (to their relief, it seems) (Ryan, 2012, p. 187), but later got Arthur's permission to get some of them back again (Ryan, 2012, p. 192). Thus, at different times, some of the tyereelore were also women of the institution; several of them ended up at Oyster Cove. It should also be pointed out that Tasmanian Aboriginal communities survived and thrived outside the islands. One of Mannalargenna's daughters, the tyereelore Woretemoeteyenner, was the mother of a woman known as Dolly Dalrymple (or Dalrymple Mountgarrett Briggs or Dalrymple Johnson and various other permutations), who lived in Launceston, and who had in turn thirteen children and was thus the ancestor of a very large number of people (Wyllie, 2004; Ryan, 2012, p. 271). The tyereelore Tarenootairrer, or Sarah, finished her days at Oyster Cove. Before becoming a member of the institution however she had three well-known children: Mary Anne, Adam and Fanny. Fanny, later known as Fanny Cochrane Smith, married a European man and established a household at Nichols Rivulet south of Hobart; she had eleven children and 30 grandchildren at the end of the nineteenth century (Ling Roth, 1898) and was likewise the ancestor of many people. Fanny Cochrane Smith also contributed to the survival of the only recordings we have of songs of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people (Clark, 1983, p. 38). While these communities flourished outside of the context of the islands, it was the tyereelore who engendered them.

4. Conclusion The Aboriginal people of Tasmania have had a long and complex association with the Bass Strait Islands. An early interaction with the exposed Bassian Plain was manifested in the establishment of the Bassian Nation, a possibly unique humaneland relationship with a now vanished environment. The archaeological record only hints at what this culture was like, when Tasmanian Aboriginal people grappled with an arid windy plain, with sparse and scattered resources away from the ancient coast, between 23,000 and 18,000 years ago. As sea levels rose with the melting of the glacial ice, the people retreated to what became increasingly isolated land masses and finally the islands as they are today. Dense archaeological deposits which appear with archaeological abruptness between 8000 and 6000 years ago at Rocky Cape and Cave Bay Cave suggest people who were closely familiar with the resources of the sea. There is no evidence to tell us whether this marine adaptation was in place 23,000 years ago and supported the Bassian Nation, or whether it developed some time after 18,000 years ago. It seems in any case that these people were able to survive for some time on their new island homes. The disappearance of the island-dwellers about 4500 years ago is a puzzle. Sim's correlation of this event with the climate change brought about by ENSO is compelling, especially the possibility that the islanders suffered from a sheer lack of water. Given that the islands were firmly isolated by this time, logic suggests the people simply died out. If they had watercraft, they may have escaped, but, as we have seen, the evidence suggests they did not, at this time. The possession of watercraft by 2500 years ago is attested to by the revisitation of some of the islands e Hunter Island and later King Island, but not the Furneaux. The lack of water borne visitations to the Furneaux Islands is usually coupled with the well documented lack of watercraft in northeast Tasmania in recent times. Only new archaeological data will resolve these questions. The regular visits to Hunter Island and perhaps King Island by Aboriginal people were disrupted by the arrival of European settlers.

The final return to the islands by Tasmanian Aboriginal people was twofold, with one unsuccessful involuntary settlement, and one with greater agency on the part of the Aboriginal people, and more success. Those Aboriginal people rounded up by George Augustus Robinson and other government agents between AD 1830 and 1842 e about 300 people e were institutionalised on Flinders Island between 1831 and 1847. There was a period within which it seemed possible that the people, representing diverse clans and nations, might establish a new coherent identity and relationship with this country, using their traditional skills. This potential was disrupted by several factors, including the death of the great chief Mannalargenna in 1835, the lack of rations, and the inroads of disease. A further factor was the failure to develop appropriate hunting strategies, possibly because they were limited in the extent to which they were permitted to roam, so that the game was being hunted out. In 1847 fewer than 50 Aborigines remained alive and they were moved to Oyster Cave, south of Hobart. Meantime however another, less formal, community of Aboriginal people established itself in the islands of Bass Strait. Tasmanian Aboriginal women in particular, known as the tyereelore, formed well-established family groups with European men, and some other men of colour on many of the islands e Hunter and King Islands in the west, Cape Barren Island and smaller islands in the Furneaux, and indeed Kangaroo Island in South Australia. While many of the women had been abducted by “sealers”, there was also a process whereby Aboriginal groups had established reciprocal relationships with the Straitsmen, and many of the unions with Aboriginal women were stable and mutually advantageous. It is evident that the traditional skills of the tyereelore were the backbone of these communities. Jones (1977:376) made an interesting point in a footnote, that they “re-occupied, physically and ecologically, the empty niche abandoned 8000 years previously, presumably by the direct ancestors of some of the women” (although we would now change 8000 to 4500 years). It is possible that the North East chief Mannalargenna had strategically considered the likelihood of survival of his people through such alliances, and three of his daughters and a sister became tyereelore. The children of these families were brought up as Aboriginal people within a loosely formed but identifiable Aboriginal community, even if the dominant society chose not to recognise it as such until the 1980s. Thus, it was the Bass Strait Islands which ensured the continued survival of the Tasmanian Aborigines to the present day.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre for providing feedback from the Tasmanian Aboriginal community on this paper. I must also thank Patsy Cameron, Julie Gough, Lyndall Ryan and Jane Balme for their comments and discussions of different aspects at different times. Thanks to Val Attenbrow, an anonymous reviewer and the editors for their generally helpful comments. I also thank Lyndall Ryan for her permission to use the map comprising Fig. 2, which was originally prepared by Robert J. Anders (University of Tasmania). That map and the others were prepared for this publication by Joe Dortch e much appreciated. I was inspired to write this paper by the suggestion of a Mike Rowland festschrift, and would like to record here my admiration for his scrupulous scholarship and appreciation of his warm collegiality over the last 37 or so years.

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Appendix A. Calibrated radiocarbon dates. Ox Cal 4.2 [83]: https://c14.arch.ox.ac.uk (Bronk Ramsey, 2009), using curve SHCal 13 (Hogg et al., 2013). For shell dates, DR ¼ 2, 3 ± 69 (Ulm, 2006).

Site

Island

C14 Date

Beeton Cave Beeton Cave Cataraqui Monument Quarry Cataraqui Point Cave Bay Cave Cave Bay Cave Cave Bay Cave Cave Bay Cave Cave Bay Cave Cliff Cave, Skeleton Site Erith Island: no precise dates available Great Glennie Island

Badger Island Badger Island King Island King Island Hunter Island Hunter Island Hunter Island Hunter Island Hunter Island King Island Erith Island

Basal Holocene Open site Open site Lowest occupation Upper LGM level Post LGM hearth Base of upper midden Base of lower midden Associated with skeleton

Rockshelter

King Island Mannalargenna Cave Mannalargenna Cave

Great Glennie Island King Island Prime Seal Island Prime Seal Island

Mannalargenna Cave Mannalargenna Cave Mannalargenna Cave Palana Palana Parmerpar Meethaner Parmerpar Meethaner Quarantine Bay Rainy Creek Rocky Cape South Sand Quarry Seton Site Warreen

Prime Seal Island Prime Seal Island Prime Seal Island Flinders Island Flinders Island Tasmania Tasmania King Island Kangaroo Island Tasmania Kangaroo Island Kangaroo Island Tasmania

Open site, Jones Basal, Brown Top of Pleistocene occupation, Brown Densest occupation, Brown Most recent occupation, Brown Basal, Sim Open site, Orchiston Open site, Sim Basal Upper Pleistocene Open site Open site Basal Open site Oldest occupation Basal

References Berndt, R.M., 1959. The concept of ‘the tribe’ in the Western Desert of Australia. Oceania 30, 81e106. Birmingham, J.M., 1973. Wybalenna, the Tasmnanian Aboriginal settlement on Flinders Island. Tasmanian Year Book 7, 10e13. Birmingham, J., 1992. Wybalenna: the Archaeology of Cultural Accommodation in Nineteenth Century Tasmania. A Report of the Historical Archaeological Investigation of the Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island. The Australian Society for Historical Archaeology Incorporated, Sydney. Birmingham, J., 1993. Engendynamics: women in the archaeological record at Wybalenna, Flinders Island 1835e1840. In: du Cros, H., Smith, L. (Eds.), Women in Archaeology a Feminist Critique, Occasional Papers in Prehistory No 23. Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, pp. 121e128. Blom, W.M., 1988. Late Quaternary Sediments and Sea-levels in Bass Basin, Southeastern Australia e a Preliminary Report. Search, vol. 19, pp. 94e96. Bowdler, S., 1974. An account of an archaeological reconnaissance of Hunter's Isles, northwest Tasmania, 1973/4. Records of the Queen Victoria Museum (Launceston) 54, 1e22. Bowdler, S., 1977. The coastal colonisation of Australia. In: Allen, J., Golson, J., Jones, R. (Eds.), Sunda and Sahul: Prehistoric Studies in Southeast Asia, Melanesia and Australia. Academic Press, London, pp. 205e246. Bowdler, S., 1984. Hunter Hill, Hunter Island. Terra Australis 8. Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. Bowdler, S., 1988. Tasmanian Aborigines in the Hunter Islands in the Holocene: island resource use and seasonality. In: Bailey, G., Parkington, J. (Eds.), The Archaeology of Prehistoric Coastlines. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 42e52. Bowdler, S., 1995. Offshore Islands and maritime explorations in Australian prehistory. Antiquity 69, 945e958.

Material dated

Lab no.

Oxcal 94.5% range

Oxcal midpoint

Charcoal Shell Charcoal Shell Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal

ANU-8752 ANU-8750 ANU-7420 ANU-7422 ANU 1498 ANU 1361 ANU-1613 ANU-1362 ANU-1773 ANU-7039

25,272e21,778 9624e9020 12,631e11,186 2046e1716 27,686e26,127 23,880e20,995 19,416e17,902 2760e2376 7590e7280 18,893e15,606

23,525 9322 11,909 1881 26,906 22,438 18,659 2568 7436 17,250

1850

120 Charcoal

ANU-3832

2008e1431

7670 20,560 14,300

150 Charcoal 290 Charcoal 1100 Charcoal

ANU-2189 NZA-974 SUA-2894

8972e8059 25,467e24,026 20,303e14,197

8516 24,747 17,250

SUA-2983 SUA-2895 ANU-8999 SUA-641 ANU-7400 Beta-68159 Beta-52808 ANU 7058 ANU-1784 GXO-226 ANU-1650 ANU-1221 Beta42122B

23,266e21,563 9254e8404 26,695e25,720 8196e7666 5599e5076 39,295e36,799 12,558e11,643 1175e793 9197e8343 9478e8484 5262e4525 19,639e19,063 40,531e38,324

22,415 8829 26,208 7931 5338 38,047 12,101 984 8770 8981 4894 19,351 39,428

19,300 8441 10,180 1980 22,750 18,550 15,400 2580 6600 14,270

18,650 7960 21,890 7150 4730 33,840 10,370 1100 7890 8120 4310 16,100 34,790

SD 730 136 240 69 420 600 330 70 90 640

350 170 230 135 78 450 120 78 170 200 90 100 510

Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Shell Charcoal Charcoal Shell Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal Charcoal

1720

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