The archaeological evidence for ancient Polynesian contact with Australia: a Norfolk Island adze on coastal NSW & unusual east coast Aboriginal fishhook traditions from c. 1200 CE
Thought I'd make a post about this since it seems to be very little known.
In 1928 a basalt adze of Polynesian appearance was found in an Aboriginal midden at Dark Point on the coast of NSW, Australia. A study published in Australian Archaeology in 2014 determined that the basalt certainly came from Norfolk Island, which Polynesians inhabited sometime around 1300-1500 CE before abandoning.
The paper also suggests that a one-piece shell fishhook design used by inexplicably geographically distant Aboriginal populations along the east coast since roughly 1200-1300 CE could be another indication of contact.
Some excerpts from the paper:
>The adze was described and published by Thorpe (1929), who noted formal similarities to adzes collected on Norfolk Island, and from Polynesia more generally. However, petrological examination [...] was inconclusive as to its source (Thorpe 1929:126).
>Thorpe (1929) originally argued that European period deposition, whether by chance or deliberate discard, was unlikely, requiring a string of improbable events in an area he described as wild and not occupied by Europeans. However, if looking for a European period deposition, probably the simplest explanation is that it was picked up and brought back to Dark Point by one of the unknown number of Aboriginal people who visited Norfolk Island after 1788 (Karskens 2013:110; Specht 1984:29).
>Pre-European visitation of Aboriginal people to Norfolk Island is unlikely, as there are currently no records of seafaring technology available to travel such a distance (Bowdler 1996; Davidson 1935; cf. recent discussion in Balme 2013:71), but absence of evidence does not mandate absence. [...] Other more elaborate scenarios could be developed, but become increasingly improbable.
>The alternative explanation is an original Polynesian deposition. The short-lived Polynesian settlement of Norfolk Island occurred about 1300 CE (800–600 years ago) (Anderson and White 2001), at a time when there was a good deal of Polynesian voyaging in much of the Pacific (Anderson 2003), so it is not inconceivable that a canoe equipped with Polynesian material culture arrived either at Dark Point or Broughton Island. Of its possible cargo, only two kinds of material are likely to survive to the present: basalt and obsidian. In the only known Polynesian archaeological site on Norfolk Island, Emily Bay, 3178 basalt flakes were excavated compared with 26 pieces of obsidian (Turner et al. 2001), so the absence of obsidian from any voyage which landed at Dark Point should not surprise us. We can speculate about the several possible fates of the voyagers. A date of around 1300 CE is also about the most recent that can be expected for such an event, since there is reason to believe that long-distance Polynesian voyaging was severely curtailed or ceased about this time (Finney 1997:46–51), although accidental drift voyages could have occurred at any time.
>Considering these scenarios, we suggest that a Polynesian deposition is the more likely explanation for the presence of the adze, since it requires no intermediary events, but this is an Occam's Razor solution and history has a way of confounding these.
>From the Australian side, in what we can argue is further possible confirmation of direct contact, one-piece shell fishhooks began to be made along the NSW coast some 800–900 years ago (Attenbrow et al. 1998) (or 700–500 years ago; see Walters 1988). The archaeological distribution of this type of hook – northern Queensland, south to Keppel Islands, and along the NSW coast, from Port Stephens south, with a major gap between – has caused considerable discussion.
>As with the occurrence of the Dark Point adze, we argue that the simpler explanation – a Polynesian stimulus for the southern series at least, whatever the reason for its wider adoption – is the more economical.
>[...] we can solve only part of the Dark Point adze mystery. We can be certain it came from Norfolk Island, but, short of an unexpected historical record or further, less ambiguous archaeological data, its appearance on the midden remains unexplained.