Archaeol.
Oceania 46 (2011) 105117
Looking for the proverbial needle?
The archaeology of Australian colonial frontier massacres
MIrAnI LItSter and LYnLeY A. WALLIS
Keywords: frontier conflict, massacre sites, History Wars, colonial Australia, site formation processes
Abstract
Amongst other issues, the History Wars raise the question as to
whether or not sites of conflict on the Australian colonial frontier
will be preserved in the archaeological record. We explore this
question through a consideration of what the expected nature of
any such evidence might be, based on general and specific
historical accounts and an understanding of site formation
processes. Although limited success has been achieved to date in
locating definitive evidence for such sites in Australia, we
conclude that there are some specific situations where archaeology
could usefully be applied to give rise to a more multi-dimensional
understanding of the past.
In recent years the extent and nature of colonial frontier
conflict has been at the fore of Australian public
consciousness as a result of the widely publicised History
Wars a fierce academic debate that has garnered extensive
media coverage (Attwood 2005; Attwood and foster 2003;
Birch 1997; Blainey 1993; Clark 2002; Connor 2002;
Keating 1992; Macintyre and Clark 2004; Manne 2003;
Stanner 1968; Windschuttle 2000a, 2000b, 2002, 2009). the
crux of the argument is historiographical and also founded
in issues associated with the nature and reliability of social
memory, and the manner in which stories about the
relationships between settlers and Indigenous peoples have
been constructed. As various scholars have demonstrated,
archaeology has the potential to provide alternative views of
the past, and in particular of Indigenous-settler relationships
(e.g. Harrison and Williamson 2004; Murray 2004; Paterson
et al. 2003; Silliman 2004; Stein 2005). Accordingly, some
historians have called for archaeologists to engage in
explorations of frontier conflict events through the
application of archaeological techniques (e.g. Attwood and
foster 2003: 23). Such an approach affords the opportunity
to inform the historiographical debate, through elucidating
written and verbal renditions of frontier conflict events
and/or satisfying the lacunae evident in some historical and
oral accounts.
While most archaeologists are aware of the adage that an
absence of evidence does not necessarily indicate evidence
ML: Archaeology and natural History, College of Asia and the
Pacific, the Australian national University, Canberra ACt
0200. email: mirani.litster@anu.edu.au. LAW: Dept. of
Archaeology, flinders University, Adelaide SA 5001.
of absence, beyond our discipline this is not always the
case. there is concern that some people interpret the
surprisingly small number of massacre sites listed in state
and national heritage registers as further proof as to the
falsity of claims of extreme violence against Indigenous
people on the frontier. In this paper we provide an
explanation as to why so few massacre sites have been
identified archaeologically to date and, through a
consideration of their expected archaeological signatures,
discuss how researchers might effectively engage in the
investigation of such sites. We suggest that such
investigations do not necessarily run the risk of satisfying
revisionist arguments (cf Barker 2007: 12), if discussions of
site formation processes are well incorporated in published
accounts thereafter. Despite arguments by Barker (2007)
that the nature of Australian frontier conflict was such that
there is little probability of massacre events being
manifested in the archaeological record, anecdotal accounts
from archaeologists and Indigenous people dispute this, and
we argue below that evidence from particular types of
frontier massacres are more likely to be preserved than
others. While these might be comparatively rare, there is
little doubt they will be of extreme cultural significance to
Indigenous people. they will additionally be of high social,
historical and scientific significance to non-Indigenous
people and are worthy of identification, investigation and
protection.
The language of conflict
Given the emotive and contentious nature of the topic of
frontier conflict, and the perils of becoming enmeshed in
semantics, it is important to provide clear definitions for the
terminology we utilise in this paper. However, we wish to
make clear that in doing so we, like others before us, do not
intend in any way to detract from the complex range of
suffering experienced by both Aborigines and colonists on
the frontier (rowland 2004: 2).
Frontier
We follow the definition provided by Grguric (2008: 59) of
the frontier being any area where colonial settlers were
using the land for agricultural, mining and/or livestock,
whilst Aboriginal people were still maintaining their
105
traditional life-ways in the area. As we discuss later, land-
uses varied across Australia and sometimes resulted in
specific patterns of conflict, and therefore have implications
for site formation processes.
Frontier conflict
We define frontier conflict as that which occurred between
non-Indigenous settlers and Indigenous people in the
frontier areas. thus we are particularly concerned with
conflict following British settlement of Australia during the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, though we
recognise that there were isolated instances of conflict
between Indigenous people and others prior to this time.
Massacre
the etymology of the noun massacre reveals the term
derives from the Persian maslakh which was then adapted to
the ancient french maacre (meaning butchery or
slaughterhouse) (Dauzat 1938: 462). this linguistic
history provides some understanding of what the term
means when in general usage; however, a comprehensive
definition of what constitutes a massacre in relation to
human deaths is more difficult to assign. Surprisingly, the
term is defined neither in international statute, nor in
modern Australian common law or criminal code (Muozos
2000: 83-4), and the Un cautions against using such a
phrase with a high emotional charge, but no agreed
definition (Hoyos 2002: 7). Within this paper we are
concerned with considering the possible archaeological
signatures of massacre sites rather than broader frontier
conflict sites (cf. Barker 2007; Grguric 2008, 2010), and
thus it is necessary to adopt a consistent, explicit definition.
As such, when using the term massacre herein we are
referring to an event involving two parties:
Victims a group comprising more than one person,
typically possessing inferior weaponry with which to
defend themselves; and,
Before discussing the potential application of
archaeological techniques to frontier massacre sites, we
briefly review the historical context of such events on a state
by state basis. this provides a framework for understanding
the nature and timing of conflict that occurred, in order to
establish the scaffolding for the subsequent discussion of
how such events might be manifested archaeologically.
While we are concerned with frontier conflict post-1788,
this was by no means the first time that Indigenous
Australians had contact with foreigners. frost (1987:371)
suggested that Portuguese explorers located the Australian
continent as early as 1530, though there is little written
evidence to support this claim. However, it is clear that
Aboriginal people along the northern shorelines and islands
had contact with Macassan trepangers from at least the mid-
1600s (May et al. 2010), and more regularly through the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Clarke 2000; Crawford
2001; MacKnight 1986; Morwood and Hobbs 1997). the
available historical and linguistic evidence is conflicting as
to the early nature of such relationships (russell 2004), and
while the archaeological evidence can be interpreted to
indicate there may well have been an initial phase of
hostility (Stone 1999), there is as yet no clear understanding
of such events.
the first well-documented discovery of the Australian
mainland by europeans was at Cape York in the northeast in
1606 an event that also marked the first recorded instance
of Indigenous-european conflict when one of the crew from
the Dutch vessel Duyfken was fatally speared near the
Wenlock river (Sutton 2008; see figure 1). It was following
the British 1788 establishment of the Sydney Cove colony
[later to become new South Wales (nSW)] that sustained
conflict commenced. Here there was an active phase of well
documented killings and reprisal, a situation that was
exacerbated when pastoralism and farming spread west of
the Blue Mountains. relationships disintegrated into
extreme violence and the Black War of 1824, during which

Perpetrators another group, who distinguish

themselves from their victims by having the power to
kill without substantial risk of physically injuring
themselves, and who might generally be considered to
have instigated the event.
A massacre is also seen as having some temporality
meaning that victims were killed at approximately the same
time or as a part of the same action or event over a
constrained period, usually no more than a few days. And
while Indigenous people were also responsible for carrying
out killings, in this paper we are particularly concerned with
massacres of Indigenous people by settlers.

A brief overview of frontier conflict in Australia

I look on the blacks as a set of monkies, and the earlier
they are exterminated from the face of the earth the better.
A letter in the Australian, 18 December 1838 as cited in figure 1. Location of places and events mentioned in text.
elder 2003:83

106
many deaths on both sides were experienced (Pearson
1984), followed a decade later by the Waterloo Creek
massacre. Argued by some to be the largest mass killing in
Australian history, it involved the systematic killings in
1838 of an estimated 300 Aboriginal men, women and
children (Milliss 1992). the increasing incidence of conflict
and violent encounters in nSW ultimately led to the
formation of a colonial cavalry troop (Pearson 1984: 75).
this was arguably the precursor to the first official corps of
native Mounted Police (nMP) that formed in 1842, which
were given instructions to disperse Aboriginal people to
ensure colonial advancement (reynolds 1991: 15).
Of further note in the history of colonial frontier violence
in nSW (and to which we refer later) was the Myall Creek
massacre, also in 1838. this massacre involved a group of
stockmen who rode into a pastoral station and killed most of
the Aboriginal inhabitants (Barber 1993; Connor 2002;
elder 2003; rowley 1972). Word of the killings soon
became common knowledge and the action eventuated in a
trial in which seven of the eleven stockmen involved were
found guilty of murder and hanged on 18 December 1838
(reece 1974:140, R v Douglass, R v Kilmeister). this repre-
sented the first killing of Aboriginal people whereupon the
perpetrators were punished, ultimately resulting in the
emergence of more clandestine rather than overt acts of
frontier violence against Aboriginal people.
Settlement in the southeast soon encroached beyond
nSW towards the new colonies of Victoria in the south
(with an initial settlement in 1803 being abandoned before
successful official resettlement in 1834) and Queensland
(QLD) to the north (where settlement commenced from
1825 with official separation from nSW in 1859). While the
former witnessed conflict associated with pastoralism
similar to that experienced in nSW (Critchett 1990: 28-9),
the latter experienced pressure from the expansion of
additional industries including mining and fisheries (Loos
1993: 11). As had been the case in nSW, the nMP were also
adopted in QLD, an event which rowley (1972: 39)
considered to be the final bankruptcy of frontier policy.
the actions of the QLD-based nMP are sufficiently
recorded in newspapers and archives (even excluding
instances of clerical errors or exaggeration) to confirm them
as one of the major causes of violent Indigenous deaths in
colonial Queensland (richards 2008: 207).
tasmania was settled as a penal colony in 1804 and the
frontier conflict that ensued in this state is amongst the most
widely acknowledged by historians (e.g. ryan 1981; cf
Windschuttle 2002). A notable occurrence here was the
1804 massacre at the risdon Cove settlement, involving the
death of between probably two and 50 members of an
Aboriginal hunting party at the hands of settlers and
soldiers. this event arguably set the scene for how
participants of that state subsequently viewed each other
(see tardiff 2003). By 1835, after George Augustus
robinson had travelled tasmania trying to locate surviving
Aboriginal people to remove them to settlements on
offshore islands, it was estimated that of at least 4000
(probably many more) inhabitants at the time of British
arrival (Jones 1974; Pardoe 1986; Stockton 1983), only ca
150 remained (Birmingham 1992; Plomley 1966, 1987).
Indeed, Indigenous-settler conflict in tasmania was
arguably so sustained, brutal and systematic that some
historians have suggested it might represent a case of
genocide (e.g. Armand 2003; elder 2003: 29-48).
South Australia (SA) was settled as a free colony in 1836;
however, despite initial attempts by the British Crown to
protect local inhabitants (rigney et al. 2008), here too
colonisation was severely detrimental to the lives of
Aboriginal people. As the interior became more settled,
more clandestine episodes of violence occurred: for settlers
who were a long way from Adelaide and often well beyond
the range of police and other government officials,
utilitarian concerns prevailed (foster et al. 2001: 5). A
demonstration of the extent of violence in this free
settlement where convicts and military personnel did not
form the basis of the population is clear when examining
the effects of settlement on the ngarrindjeri, the traditional
Owners of the lower reaches of the Murray river and
Coorong region. In 1836 it was estimated there were 3000
ngarrindjeri (Jenkin 1979); by 1875 only ca 100 remained
(taplin 1879). And while some of the deaths were
attributable to the effects of disease (Campbell 2002), at
least a portion were the result of deliberate violence by
settlers (foster et al. 2001).
Owing to slower rates of settlement and increased
remoteness from the southeastern hub, Western Australia
(WA; with an initial settlement at King George Sound in
1826 followed by a settlement at the Swan river later to
become the capital Perth in 1829) and the northern
territory (nt; settled initially in 1825 as part of nSW but
administered by SA from 18631911) saw conflict continue
later in time than in the other Australian colonies and states.
Collisions in the nt and northern WA related largely to the
expanding pastoral industry (roberts 2005: 1-23). In the
south, clearance and farming of substantive tracts of
Aboriginal land were the main sources of conflict where, for
example, the 1834 Battle of Pinjarra saw the killing of
between 15 and 80 nyungar people, though Aboriginal
accounts suggest the victim count was in the hundreds
(Connor 2002: 76-83; reynolds 1987). In WA and the nt
the more recent occurrence of conflict has sometimes
resulted in relatively better historical records of such events,
as well as increasingly convincing oral testimony. for
instance, the forrest river massacre of 1926 (fitzgerald
1984; Green 1995) and the Coniston Station massacre of
1928 (Cribbin 1984) were both punitive expeditions that
were later subjects of legal inquiry and as a result generated
large bodies of related archival material. Like the massacre
at Wounded Knee in north America, the Coniston Station
massacre is generally regarded as marking the closing of
the Australian frontier.
As illustrated, the nature and timing of frontier violence
varied across Australia, though certain general patterns to
the interaction can be discerned, following elkin (1951). He
considered that initial encounters, typically with explorers,
were part of a transition phase marked by observation and
107
careful contact, with the underlying assumption on the part
of Indigenous parties that the newcomers are temporary
sojourners only (elkin 1951: 166-7). Yet there were
exceptions. for example, frederick Walkers exploration
party of 1861 (in search of the ill-fated Burke and Wills
expedition) encountered a group of approximately 30
Aboriginal men in the vicinity of the Stawell river who
were fired on, the result being that twelve were killed, and
few if any escaped unwounded the gins [sic] and
children had been left camped on the river and as there was
no water there our possession of the spring was no doubt the
cause of the war (Walker, 31 October 1861). Likewise, the
establishment of the Canning Stock route saw violent
clashes causing deaths on both sides, resulting in a royal
Commission being held to scrutinize the treatment of
Aboriginal people by exploration party members (Bianchi et
al. 2010). When it became clear to Indigenous people that
the visitors and those following in their wake intended to
remain, clashes over resources became commonplace, with
Indigenous people beginning to offer overt and determined
resistance (elkin 1951: 167; see also Loos 1982: 35).
Settlers, the police and sometimes even the military were
responsible for killing Indigenous people, who would then
sometimes engage in retributive actions, though in some
cases the killings were initiated by the latter in response to
some misunderstood transgression by the intruders.
The archaeological signatures of frontier massacres
A review of the literature makes it apparent that
archaeologists have only recently become engaged in
debates about Australian frontier conflict (eg Anderson
2005; free and Markwell 2005; Harkins 2009; Litster 2006;
McKewin 2006; rowland 2004). As shown in figure 1,
there have been investigations at the massacre sites of
Panton river (Smith et al. 2005), the Woolgar river (Wallis
et al. 2005) and Irvinebank (Genever 1996)1, the latter being
the only published case thus far to definitively suggest the
location of a massacre based on the survival of physical
archaeological evidence. In addition to these accounts, there
are speculated to exist considerable materials in the form of
unpublished documents and oral histories which are not
easily accessed, though are often referred to in heritage
register listings of massacre events, as is the case with the
Myall Creek massacre (DeWHA 2010). In the remainder of
this paper we explore why massacre sites are not more
common given the ubiquitous violence on the Australian
frontier (Clarke 1995: ix), considering various factors that
will affect their likely archaeological preservation
including: the location of such events; the relative number
of victims and the spatial nature of the events; who the
perpetrators were and the mode of killing they adopted; and
finally the treatment of victims after death.
1. Informal communication of the location of other massacre
site investigations by archaeologists has also been made, but
at the request of the investigating researchers details cannot
be included in this paper.
108
Locations of massacres
the locations where massacres were perpetrated will have
an important impact not only on what physically survives,
but also whether such sites are able to be relocated.
Massacres were generally staged on the more isolated
boundaries of the frontier rather than in the immediate
vicinity of settlements where there were larger congrega-
tions of settlers (though there are some exceptions, such
as at risdon Cove). the reasons for this patterning are
multiple, though not difficult to understand. As settlements
grew in size and Aboriginal populations in their immediate
vicinity declined (through deliberate killing, death by
disease or through the tactical retreat of Aboriginal people to
safer country beyond the frontier), the possibility of
hostilities occurring in close proximity to townships became
slimmer. furthermore, after the Myall Creek massacre, the
increased risks of violence against Aboriginal people being
witnessed and reported (either in verbal or written form)
served to minimise the possibility that indiscriminate
killings would occur in locations with high non-Indigenous
populations. In several settlements local authorities
prominently displayed pictographs illustrating that such
violence would not be tolerated, and while it is doubtful
such measures prevented violence per se, they did have the
effect of pushing it beyond the official administrative,
policing and judicial system of the settlements to the less
regulated frontiers (Broome 2003).
the remote location of many massacres not only reduced
the likelihood of eye-witnesses, but also increased
substantially the time that might elapse between the event
itself and the possible discovery of the crime scene, either
by contemporaries or modern archaeologists. It is still the
case that much of northern Australia, whose main industry
continues to be pastoralism, remains isolated and remote
even today. Such landscapes are typically not well named,
traversed or even known by more than a handful of non-
Indigenous people, and thus relocating specific locations
within them, at which massacres occurred decades ago, is
challenging, a point made by Barker (2007: 9). However,
exceptions are likely to exist in specific cases where there
was either (a) some form of documented investigation of the
event soon after its occurrence, or (b) where strong oral
testimony by people (usually but not always Indigenous)
with an intricate awareness of the landscape has survived.
Support for the existence of such exceptions is offered by
the Irvinebank massacre. In October 1884 a detachment of
nMP officers allegedly killed several Aboriginal people
near the mining town of Irvinebank. Local residents visited
the crime scene within a day or two of the killing, and
subsequently reported the event to Police Magistrate
Mowbray who investigated (Genever 1996). Mowbray and
the Government Medical Officer visited the site where they
found burned bones, though they were so badly burned that
the doctor was unable to state categorically whether or not
they were human (Genever 1996: 9). the survival of a map
drawn in 1884 showing the location of the killing, along
with the detailed inquest documentation, enabled the site to
be relocated in 1996, at which time ash and charcoal still
remained on the ground surface, along with several Snyder
cartridges, pieces of lead bullets, buttons, tins, billy cans and
other items (see also sections below on Specific Mode of
Killing Adopted and treatment of Victims after Death). victims in table 1, as rowland (2004) discussed, we are not
the rufus river massacre (nettelbeck 1999) is another
event where the comparatively substantial documentation
(see Perpetrators of Massacres and Specific Modes of
Killing Adopted below) affords the strong opportunity for
archaeological detection. While we are not suggesting that
archaeological evidence will exist in all or even most cases,
the Irvinebank case study does demonstrate that in some
situations it will be possible for archaeological evidence of
killings to be relocated, even when more than a century has
passed. Indeed, the isolation and remoteness that served to
make massacres on the frontier less likely to be detected
after they occurred, may also have served to protect such
locations from destruction by modern development.
Relative number of victims and the spatial distribution
of events
related to the general location of massacres, another
concern related to the potential archaeological evidence of
these events is the relative number of victims and the spatial
distribution of events. In response to criticism from Wind-
schuttle (2000a, 2000b, 2002), Broome (2003) attempted to
reconcile the differing statistics relating to the numbers of
victims of frontier conflict, noting that historians before him
had offered estimates ranging from 1500 european deaths to
ca 20,000 Aboriginal deaths Australia wide (Broome 2003:
96). While he acknowledged these figures as guesstimates
only and that any frontier violence statistics are certain to
be inaccurate, on the balance of available evidence they
(and other such figures for specific regions) are certainly not
the fabrications alleged by Windschuttle; archaeology may
offer one independent means of verifying the disputed
numbers of victims in some instances. And though we will
never know how many people were killed on the frontier, a
very important consideration associated with the
archaeological investigation of massacres will be the
relative number of victims and the spatial nature of killings.
As with most archaeological site types, where evidence is
clustered in a discrete location, as opposed to thinly spread
over a greater expanse, and the greater the abundance of that
evidence, the greater the likelihood for preservation,
survival, detectability and recovery.
Relative number Spatial distribution Frequency of
of victims of the event such events
Medium to High Dispersed (i.e. over a large area) Uncommon
Medium to High Contained (i.e. over a small area) Uncommon
Low to Medium Contained (i.e. over a small area) Common
Low to Medium Dispersed (i.e. over a large area) Common
table 1. Likelihood of relocating certain types of massacre events, based upon two variables: the victim count
and the spatial distribution of the event.
We can consider this with specific reference to the
general nature of massacres in Australia, as summarised in
table 1. We stress that even though we refer to numbers of
attempting to invalidate the emotional weight of the
individual killings themselves. Our use of numbers of
victims is only in order to illustrate the nature of such sites
in Australia and the potential difficulty in archaeologically
locating such sites when the numbers of victims are low. As
illustrated, massacre events with high victim counts and a
high density of skeletal and ordnance evidence (see the
following section) will have the most potential for
archaeological discovery and investigation. this is perhaps
one reason why archaeologists have had success in north
America in investigating the massacres of American
Indians, where massacres often occurred as large military
skirmishes with victims numbering in excess of 200 (see
nPS 2000a and 2000b for examples). In the Australian
context, although there are some well-known incidences
where large numbers of Indigenous people were killed, such
as the Battle of Pinjarra (see Cribbin 1984; Green 1995),
many massacre events were staged as punitive expeditions,
which involved killing small numbers of individuals,
sometimes over large distances [in what Barker (2007: 10)
called opportunistic hit-and-run attacks]; hence their
chance of incorporation into the archaeological record is
low. further, the archaeology of such small-scale, short-
lived events is also strongly affected by the treatment of
victims after death (see below).
Perpetrators of massacres and specific modes of killing
adopted
Massacres were perpetrated by a variety of people including
pastoralists, farmers, miners and other civilians; in short, by
people (generally men) whose livelihoods required them to
reside at the frontier and who therefore were most likely to
come into contact with Indigenous people. And the
environment of fear in which they lived cannot be under-
estimated: the frontier was the stage on which settlers
regularly faced what would have largely been an extremely
foreign and threatening environment. this truth is clear
in historical sources (see, for example, Allingham 1988:
130-1; eden 1872; fysh 1933; Hill 1907: 30-1), to such an
extent that at times entire townships may have been
abandoned through fear of Aboriginal attack (eg Gilberton
Example Relative likelihood of
of archaeological recovery
Coniston Station Massacre, Moderate
forrest river Massacre
Battle of Pinjarra, High
Waterloo Creek Massacre
Moderate
Low
109
in north QLD; see reynolds 1993: 52). further evidence
that points to the apprehension of settlers can be seen in the
archaeological record in the form of civilian architecture.
for example, Grguric (2008, 2010) documented the
presence of defensive, fortified structures in colonial SA and
the nt, arguing such structures were testimony to the fear
and need felt by settlers for defence on the frontier (see also
Burns 2009).
With specific regard to north QLD, where frontier
violence is widely acknowledged to have been especially
brutal, Breslin (1992: 6) pointed out that settlers brought
with them the same ideas and attitudes which had given
birth to violence and dispossession in the southern
colonies. Charles eden (1872: 40-1) illustrated this point
when he recounted his familys journey to a remote station
in 1864:
We slept as only tired men do, and at daylight Arthur
started for Mount McDonnell, to get fresh horses, his last
words being Look out for blacks, and dont leave Lucy.
I had not yet had any experience about the blacks and did
not know or think much about them, so asked him, What
shall I do if they do come?. Shoot them, of course.
Good-bye, old fellow! and away he rode. I then began to
think of my position, which was far from an enviable one,
with my wife and child; and ... I unable to move twenty
yards away for fear of blacks attacking them.
One of the earliest homesteads along the Stawell river
(near where Walkers party had killed numerous Aboriginal
figure 2. Conflict between settlers and Indigenous people in tasmania. [Attack on a settlers hut. Possibly by James
Bonwick. rex nan Kivell Collection: nK1300. Published with permission of the national Library of Australia.]
110
men a few years earlier) was a fortified stone building ill-
suited to the tropical climate, but a necessary defensive
response to repeated attacks from local Aboriginal people
(Wallis unpublished data). Likewise, rainworth fort is
another example of mud and basalt blocks with rifle
embrasures cut into the walls, built shortly after the Cullin
la ringo massacre (with 19 victims making it the largest
killing of settlers by Aboriginals in Australian history and
which was followed by massive retribution; for further
details see elder 2003). Visual depictions of violent
confrontations between settlers and Indigenous people by
colonial artists fed the anxiety settlers felt about the frontier
(e.g. figure 2), contributing to the general sense that
settlement at the colonial boundaries quite literally meant
putting ones life on the line. Hence, it is clear that many
perpetrators were psychologically vulnerable.
Other than civilians, in many parts of Australia there
were also military or paramilitary groups who perpetrated
killings of Aboriginal people. these included the Mounted
Police force responsible for the massacre at Waterloo
Creek (Cunneen 2001: 54) and more infamously the nMP
of nSW and later QLD (Anon. 1880; Haydon 1911: 304,
370-1; Kennedy 1902; Loos 1982; reynolds 1982, 1991;
richards 2008; Skinner 1975; Whittington 1964-65). While
there has been debate about the level of government
knowledge of, and therefore accountability for, such events,
both recent and older accounts make clear that dispersals
(a euphemism for killing) were part of the core business of
the nMP in particular (richards 2008: 15), though
documentary evidence of such actions were typically
minimal. In contrast, in north America massacres were a
routine and open part of government military campaigns. As
a consequence they were often officially and extensively
documented, thereby providing archaeologists with an
improved chance of relocating their locations through
linking information presented in archival sources with field-
based research.
Who the perpetrators were has clear implications for the
methods they used to carry out killings, and therefore for the
type of evidence we could expect to find preserved
archaeologically. reviewing what is known of violence on
the Australian frontier, the main categories of killing
methods include firearm injury, poisoning, and to a lesser
degree stabbing or bayoneting, and blunt force trauma.
Potential evidence resulting from these types of killings
likely to remain at the attack scene are either consumable
components of the instruments utilised (e.g. bullets or bullet
casings), as weapons themselves are unlikely to have been
discarded, or skeletal remains from the victims.
Ordnance and weaponry
the presence of particular types of ordnance supplied to
militant-type groups such as the nMP gives rise to the
potential for definitive artefacts to be located. By
definitive artefact we mean one that is tied historically to a
situation, and is quite specific to that particular engagement
an excellent example can be derived from the relocation of
the Sand Creek Massacre site in Colorado. Here the location
was pinpointed archaeologically primarily through the
recovery of a specific type of howitzer shell fragment (nPS
2000a, 2000b); the Sand Creek battle was the only
engagement in Colorado history to utilise such weaponry,
thus its presence in the archaeological record indicated a
definitive location for the event. While the Australian
context does not lend itself so easily to such interpretations,
there may still be instances where the knowledge of
weaponry may prove valuable. for example, until 1861 the
QLD nMP were issued with muzzle loading carbines, after
which they used terry breech-loading rifles, until 1874
when they were issued with highly lethal Snyder rifles
capable of killing many people quickly at great distances;
the latter remained the primary weapon for the following
decades (richards 2008: 55-6). In 1884 Martini-Henry rifles
were issued to the ordinary police, and richards (2008: 56)
noted that many of these deadly weapons also found their
way into nMP corps. While weapons on the frontier,
amongst the civilian population in particular, may have had
a long use life, being able to identify the type of weaponry
used by the nMP at a specific time may help to build a case
for their involvement in an incident. An archaeological case
in point involves the aforementioned Irvinebank massacre
investigation, whereby Snyder cartridge cases, which can be
aligned to the nMP at that time, were key to convincingly
confirming the original site location.
nonetheless, there will be many instances whereby
specific ordnance supplies will not have been used, thereby
making it difficult to unequivocally remark about a site
based on the discovery of a particular type of bullet casing.
It is expected that this will frequently be the case as many
perpetrators are unlikely to be linked to specific ordnance,
although it does not rule out locating or identifying sites
based on alternative lines of evidence. further, as much of
the ordnance issued to the nMP was also available to the
civilian population, evidence for its presence in a particular
location may do little more than merely indicate that guns
were involved. However, richards (2008: 54-56)
considered the question: Did the frontier, as some
historians contend [e.g. reynolds 1993: 52], bristle with
guns?, concluding that most frontier residents were armed,
but rifles, revolvers and other firearms were infrequently
mentioned in the historical material until the 1870s. It is
also important to point out that in pastoral areas in particular
it is not uncommon to regularly locate bullet casings ejected
onto the ground surface from pastoral, sport and hunting
activities. In such instances, the contextual association of
bullet casings with other lines of evidence, such as skeletal
remains, is critical if they are to be confidently linked to
massacre events.
Skeletal remains
Despite popular television programs suggesting otherwise,
the cause of death can be difficult to determine from the
analysis of skeletal remains alone, since death typically
involves trauma to soft rather than hard tissues (Byers 2002:
257; roberts 1996: 129). thus, if a victim suffered shooting,
stabbing or blunt force trauma, the impact needs to have
intercepted bone to be apparent in their skeletal remains.
Harkins (2009: 10-17) makes clear how uncommon it is for
evidence of violent death to occur in the Australian
Indigenous archaeological record in the pre-contact period
(though see McDonald et al. 2007: 877 and Knuckey 1991),
thus suggesting the presence of such evidence in the
historical period might reasonably be attributed to non-
Indigenous perpetrators (or Indigenous nMP acting as
agents of non-Indigenous parties).
even if bones with impact trauma are recovered, tying
the death to a specific perpetrator can be challenging. As
richard Wright noted during his work on the Polyukhovich
v Commonwealth War Crimes trial, where the archae-
ological evidence was extensive, while it was possible to
determine cause of death it was not possible to legally
determine who was responsible based on that archaeological
evidence (Wright 1995). the answer as to whether or not
skeletal remains with evidence for violence definitively
relate to a massacre event will almost certainly require the
presence of supporting historical accounts or other
corroborating lines of evidence.
However, the presence of skeletal remains showing
evidence of gunshot trauma in Australian Indigenous
skeletal remains would point strongly to either non-
Indigenous perpetrators or Indigenous members of the
nMP, primarily since few Indigenous people had access to
such weaponry. rev. JB Gribble was told that a settler at
111
roebourne had been shown by local Aboriginal people 15
skulls of people shot dead during the 1868 flying foam
massacre, including two of children with bullet holes in
them (Gribble 1905; see also Gara 1983, 1993). Likewise,
rowland (2004) convincingly described a case related to the
alleged massacre of between seven and eight Woppaburra
men from the Keppel Islands in which one skull had entry
and exit wounds from a low-velocity bullet (see also Pardoe
and Donlon 1991). this information, when combined with
that from available historic accounts, illustrates how a
compelling case for a massacre must rely on escalating lines
of evidence that in combination form a plausible case,
though it might not be legally acceptable.
Another reputedly common form of killing on the
frontier, particularly after the Myall Creek massacre, was
poisoning. Pastoralists on the frontier routinely faced the
prospect of their provisions being stolen when they were
absent from homesteads. One response was to lace flour
with arsenic or strychnine in the hope that the death of the
thieves would not only prevent them from re-offending, but
that others would learn a lesson (foster et al. 2001: 82).
the likelihood of any evidence for death by poisoning
appearing in the archaeological record is minimal, as the
soft tissue remains of the victims generally have to be well
preserved for the evidence to survive. further, arsenic
requires long term exposure to be incorporated into hair and
nail tissue (Mays 1988). In the Australian context, human
remains from frontier conflict events will almost exclusively
be skeletonised and sometimes preserved owing to the ever-
fluctuating environmental conditions. evidence for
poisoning as the particular cause of death of victims is
therefore unlikely to be witnessed in any remains located
through archaeological investigation.
Treatment of victims after death
A further factor affecting the archaeological record of
massacres is the manner in which victims remains were
treated: in essence, the natural and cultural site formation
processes (Schiffer 1987). If victims were not buried soon
after death, natural processes including scavenging would
cause their bodies to be quickly disarticulated and scattered
across the landscape. While such processes are an important
consideration in any archaeological investigation, rather
than exploring them further here, in this section we instead
focus on cultural transformation processes more specific to
frontier massacres, including burial, in mass or singular
graves, attempts at destruction of evidence (such as
burning), and traditional ceremonial funerary practices.
these processes can alter the predicted evidence and any
subsequent interpretation of recovered skeletal material, but
also will require changes in approach to the investigation of
such events.
As noted earlier, the Myall Creek massacre represented a
major turning point in frontier conflict, and particularly the
treatment of victims after death. the subsequent punishment
of the perpetrators resulted in a more covert form of
violence being adopted on the frontier, with greater attempts
to dispose of incriminating evidence. Since it was now clear
112
that settlers might be punished through the court system,
there was greater impetus especially for civilians though
less so for the nMP to destroy any evidence of killings
having occurred. Burial of victims was one obvious option
for disposing of the evidence, sometimes in mass graves:
I found a grave into which about 20 [Indigenous
people] must have been thrown. A settler taking up a new
country is obliged to act towards them in this manner or
abandon it. (Black as cited in Kiddle 1962:121)
the larger the grave, the greater the possibility of it being
detected using such techniques as remote sensing,
geophysical prospection or geochemistry. While the latter
method is technologically possible, the fact that many
massacres were perpetrated on the pastoral and agricultural
frontiers may cause difficulties when trying to use raised
phosphate levels as an indicator of mass burial or corpse
decomposition (Holliday and Gartner 2007). this is because
any geochemical signature may be affected by the presence
of fertilizers (to improve soil productivity), which could
mimic or mask increased phosphorous levels due to the
presence of burials (Cavanagh et al. 1988: 67).
If graves are located one needs to then ascertain whether
they were of victims of a massacre since, as discussed
above, the mode of killing might not be immediately
apparent. However, even without necessarily locating
ordnance or other evidence of violent trauma as the cause of
death, the discovery of mass graves of Aboriginal people
itself in remote locations would be highly suspicious. there
are some accounts of disease causing the deaths of large
numbers of Aboriginal people however they may not always
have been subject to burial. In Sydney for example, dozens
of bodies of Aboriginal people were observed laying
around following smallpox and other epidemics (Campbell
2002), presumably because of either a lack of kin to claim
and care for the bodies, or fear that anyone handling the
bodies would also meet their death. the number and
patterning of the skeletal remains within any multiple graves
could also be informative as to their origin. Victims of
violence might be expectedly to be interred in a haphazard
fashion (as implied by the term thrown in the earlier quote)
with little care taken.
Another element of the treatment of victims after death is
whether Indigenous people interred victims traditionally.
richards (1999), Green (1995: 135) and roberts (2005:
200) all recount instances where the bodies of victims were
recovered and subjected to culturally appropriate burial rites
by their kin, suggesting this may have been common (see
also Oxenham et al. 2008). If this is the case, not only will
the evidence of any massacre be limited, because it will no
longer be in situ at the location of the murder, but the bodies
will appear to be traditionally interred; unless evidence for
non-Indigenous trauma can be found on the bones or strong
oral testimony exists, identifying them as massacre victims
will be near impossible. nevertheless, like with all the cases
studies presented in this discussion, how complicated this
makes the record will be very case-specific. furthermore, it
is strongly likely that survivors, after witnessing such
violence, may not have had the opportunity to recover the
bodies of victims through fear of encountering a similar fate.
And in some places there simply may not have been
sufficient numbers of survivors to provide the appropriate
death rites.
the issue of post-mortem treatment of victims is further
complicated by the possibility that skeletal remains might be
handled decades after death. for instance, Colin Pardoe
(pers. comm. 24 March 2006) described a situation where
young non-Indigenous men used old Aboriginal skulls for
target practice. On first examination such skulls might be
interpreted as clear evidence for death by shooting, though
a specialist should easily discern the difference between a
peri- or post-mortem injury.
While burial was one option available to perpetrators so
as to minimise their risk of exposure, they may have been
disinclined to exert the necessary physical labour required
for such an undertaking and, in very remote locations where
outsiders were unlikely to stumble across the evidence,
burial still might not have occurred. furthermore, the racist
views of some settlers with regard to the non-humanity of
their victims meant they may have not felt it was
appropriate or necessary to afford Aboriginal people the
same treatment in death as they would their Christian
counterparts. In preference to burial, the burning of
Aboriginal bodies, a less labour intensive though more
callous practice as it was not being practiced as a
culturally acceptable ritual by kin, but by perpetrators who
were simply cleaning up with no regard for cultural norms
appears from various historical accounts to have been
common (e.g. Bohemia and McGregor 1992; elder 2003;
Genever 1996; roberts 2005; Smith 2007). Such an
approach to destroying the evidence has several
archaeological implications. Human bones are typically not
fully destroyed by heating and, ironically, cremated bone
survives better in sedimentary contexts than does unburnt
bone (Hunter and Martin 1996: 96; Mays 1998: 207-8).
Hence, while burning reduces the quantity of skeletal
evidence, it also increases the possibility of any remaining
bone surviving archaeologically. for example, concen-
trations of burnt bone are known to occur at the alleged
locations of the Panton (Smith 2007) and forrest river
(elder 2003; fitzgerald 1984; Green 1995) massacres and
were also found at Irvinebank (Genever 1996). However,
despite its potential for survival archaeologically, the ability
to determine the origin (human or non-human) of the bone
that has been calcified is very difficult (Mays 1998: 209-16;
Whyte 2001: 437).
Conclusion
As the above material illustrates, building a case for the
identification of a massacre site will be challenging and
require multiple lines of evidence so as to be convincing.
the general paucity of published information hinders
attempts to systematically review archaeological investi-
gations of massacre sites to date. And although Barker
(2007: 12) has suggested that such studies are too risky to
attempt as they could ultimately fail, because even if
evidence is found, it is unlikely to be of the kind that will be
unequivocal, we argue it is important to make explicit the
complexities of such approaches to avoid their subsequent
misuse by deniers. By critically examining available
historical accounts in combination with a consideration of
taphonomic process, we can better understand what physical
evidence is likely to be incorporated into the archaeological
record and therefore minimise the risk that revisionists will
make uninformed use of such studies.
those massacres with the greatest chance of being
preserved and/or detected archaeologically will be those
which:
involved more rather than fewer victims, killed in a
relatively spatially constrained area, owing to the
consequentially larger concentration of associated
material culture and skeletal remains;
used death by shooting, stabbing or blunt force trauma as
the mode of killing as these are more likely to have
caused physical impact to skeletal remains;
included attempts by the perpetrators to cover up the
crime scene such as through burial or burning, thereby
reducing the possibility of victims remains being
disarticulated and widely scattered over the ground
surface and increasing the chances of their being
preserved;
involved military or other government personnel because
of the increased level of documentation associated with
their activities (even if it does not specifically detail
killings themselves);
were subject to some form of inquiry soon after their
occurrence, on account of this providing the
contemporary researcher with a greater level of primary
source material about the events and landscape in which
they occurred;
occurred either (a) prior to 1838 when perpetrators were
unlikely to have been punished for their crimes and
therefore knowledge of killings were more widely known
and documented, or (b) in the twentieth century (and
therefore by inference most likely in northern Australia)
owing to the greater chance of massacre survivors or their
direct descendants still being alive and able to provide
oral testimony to the location and nature of events, as
well as the shorter period of time that has elapsed since
their occurrence; and,
are in remote areas lacking extensive modern
development, of which local people (either Indigenous or
non-Indigenous) have a excellent knowledge of the local
physical landscape.
It should be remembered that because of the factors we
have outlined in this paper, massacre events are unlikely to
be found through random chance, and archaeological
evidence alone is unlikely to provide a line of evidence
sufficiently robust to silence critics who doubt the
ubiquitous nature of such violence. We underline the
113
importance in presenting a case adopting multiple lines of
evidentiary support a hierarchy of documentary sources,
oral histories, material cultural evidence and skeletal
remains themselves that may allow for a massacre location
to be determined at a possible, probable or highly likely these events into the archaeological record is large, and
level. Providing a detailed understanding of why evidence
of a forensically acceptable level is unlikely to be preserved
archaeologically may persuade some critics to accept a
lower threshold for evidence of a massacre than would be
required in a contemporary legal setting. Of course there
will be many instances where the archaeological evidence
may be lacking entirely, though given an understanding of
site formation processes as we have outlined in this paper,
any such absences of evidence cannot be taken as support
for proving a massacre did not occur.
Interestingly, some archaeologists have more recently
entered into a discussion over whether or not genocidal
moments are marked by archaeological silences in
Australia. Harkins (2009) has argued that an absence of
evidence of post-contact materials in fact might be
indicative of the near-total decimation of Aboriginal groups
in some regions. this concept of a lack of evidence in
studies of Australian frontier conflict was pre-empted and
supported linguistically by Harris (2003: 92) who remarked
that languages decline for a variety of reasons but sudden
and catastrophic loss of languages as seen throughout
Australia is typically related to aggression. He described
the marked extinction and sudden decline in several
Indigenous languages including those of tasmania, as well
as Kwaimbal (nSW), Kurnai (Vic) and Yeeman (QLD)
suggesting that these languages died as suddenly as did their
speakers. furthermore, he proposed that when Indigenous
people took part in extended guerrilla warfare a gradual
rather than sudden loss of language would occur, such as
was witnessed in the slower disappearance of the Wakay
(nt) language (Harris 2003: 92). the relevance of an
absence of evidence, with an understanding of how difficult
it will be to both distinguish and to relocate archaeological
evidence, cannot be ignored and in fact adds an extra
dimension to studies of frontier violence in Australia.
Owing to spatial constraints, we have entered into little
discussion of the ethical and legislative considerations of
archaeological investigations of frontier massacre sites,
though this is not to downplay their critical importance; we
direct readers to Harkins (2009), Litster (2006) and
McKewin (2006) for explorations of these matters. As
Barker (2007) has pointed out, we also recognise that there
are many other types of sites that can potentially contribute
to an understanding of life on the frontier (e.g. pastoral
stations, native police encampments, missions, ration
outposts, civilian fortified architecture) (see, for example,
Burns 2009; Grguric 2008, 2010) and encourage greater
investigatory focus on such sites.
How archaeology can contribute to a more multi-facetted
understanding of frontier conflict history is becoming more
frequently discussed by Australian archaeologists. this
paper adds to these debates through highlighting the
inherent difficulties associated with such events becoming
114
incorporated into the record and acknowledging their
potentially restricted archaeological signature in Australia,
in contrast with the situation in north America. Moreover,
the number of variables contributing to the incorporation of
clearly does not afford a clear, singular model of approach
for archaeological investigations. nonetheless, with an
acknowledgment of this, such investigations do not run the
risk of potentially refuting that frontier massacres occurred,
and in fact, are increasingly being pursued at the request of
Aboriginal organisations. When handled systematically,
ethically and sensitively, with the approval and involvement
of the local Aboriginal community, they have the potential
to provide a valuable light on this disputed and controversial
aspect of Australias colonial history.
Acknowledgements
this paper emerged from research partially completed for
the Honours thesis The Potential Contribution of
Archaeology to Australian Frontier Conflict (Litster 2006)
at flinders University, and also through informal
discussions with numerous colleagues about the topic.
Wallis would like to gratefully acknowledge the financial
support offered to her and the Woolgar Valley Aboriginal
Corporation in their studies of the Woolgar massacre of
1881 by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and torres
Strait Islander Studies. We would like to thank the
archaeologists and anthropologists who offered their expert
advise and guidance on the honours topic including: Shane
Baker, Shaun Canning, Denise Donlon, neale Draper, Mark
Dugay-Grist, Stephen free, Steve Hemming, Colin Pardoe,
Douglas Scott, Claire Smith, Pamela Smith and Larry
Zimmerman. thanks also to Luke Godwin, Alice Gorman
and Peter Veth for commenting on an early version of this
paper, as well as to an anonymous reviewer and Peter White.
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Cases
Polyukhovich v Commonwealth
r v Douglass [1838] nSWSupC 112 (10 December 1838)
r v Kilmeister [1838] nSW SupC 110 (5 December 1838)
117