A place of ancient engravings and flint mining
Far below the Nullarbor Plain in Australia lies an extraordinary gallery of rock art. Exploration and research in Koonalda Cave has revealed much about these ancient markings, as well as mining and the early occupation of Australia, as Keryn Walshe, April Nowell, and Clem Lawrie reveal.
Australia’s Nullarbor Plain is the world’s largest semi-arid karst system and, as such, contains thousands of subterranean caves. Some are adorned with stalactites and stalagmites, some have cave spiders, and a few contain Aboriginal archaeology, including rock art. This imagery consists mostly of hand stencils rather than figurative art, but the singularly spectacular Koonalda Cave preserves a vast array of engravings deep beneath the Nullarbor Plain. In recognition of the site’s significance, it was granted (Australian) National Heritage status in 2014 – some 55 years after being first reported as a site of possible archaeological interest.
Koonalda Cave is located on the South Australian portion of the plain, approximately 30km north of the Nullarbor Cliffs, which drop precipitously into the sea. The cave is internationally recognised for having the world’s most impressive display of ‘finger flutings’, which are a particular form of engraving made on soft cave sediments. Such markings are formed by deliberately drawing fingers across a surface, leaving traces of the movement. Examples of this technique are not just found in Australia. Instead, comparable impressions have been identified in Palaeolithic caves across southern France and northern Spain.
The engravings are sufficient in themselves to merit the National Heritage status for Koonalda Cave, but the site is also known for the evidence it preserves of prehistoric flint mining. The term ‘mining’, as used here, relates to the intentional extraction of flint to make tools. Large nodules of flint naturally stud the upper walls of the main chamber and passageways. These nodules are subject to ‘crystal wedging’, which eventually causes them to fracture, resulting in large chunks landing on the floor of the cave. Once there, the flint was readily available for tool-making by Aboriginal people, an activity that took place either inside the cave or above ground.
In 1937, a kangaroo-skin package containing some 40 flint-blade blanks was procured by museum officers from an Aboriginal man living about 100km west of Koonalda Cave. We now know that for many millennia, Nullarbor flint was a desirable item that was traded via long-distance routes, the scale of which is well illustrated by the ability to transport pearl shell from Broome in north-west Western Australia to the Nullarbor Plain – crossing some 3,000km of intersecting trade routes along the way. However, in 1937 archaeology was not a formal discipline in Australia, and Aboriginal people were not thought to have been on the continent for longer than a few thousand years. Twenty years later, all of this was to change, with Koonalda Cave playing a pivotal role in both the understanding of Aboriginal occupation and the founding of Australian archaeology as its own unique discipline. Alongside all of this, the cave has made a significant contribution to the study of ‘finger-fluting’ engravings.
Hungarians on the Nullarbor
Prior to 1949, Dr Alexander (Sandor) Gallus was Head of the National Museum in Budapest, Hungary. After 1949, he joined the flow of post-war European immigrants into Australia, only to find that their ‘old world’ credentials did not retain the same value. On arrival, he was the most highly qualified and experienced archaeologist in Australia, but struggled to gain an institutional appointment. Instead, he volunteered his expertise on archaeological-related activities, and earned a living by tutoring in various European languages. Despite Gallus’s lack of formal status, it was he who was sent the first photographs ever taken of the engravings in Koonalda Cave. He instantly knew what he was looking at and used his small circle of support to organise an expedition to the site.
Koonalda Cave lies approximately 1,200km from the nearest capital city (Adelaide), and in the late 1950s was situated just north of an unsurfaced highway that was notorious for potholes the size of a passenger car and corrugations that rattled the mirrors off any vehicle that survived the treacherous cavities. Nevertheless, this post-war Hungarian archaeologist took himself and a small team of enthusiasts westward to establish whether the cave did indeed hold evidence for Aboriginal use. Verification was immediate and his first excavation followed in late 1958, with work continuing sporadically over the next 25 years – always facing the challenge of infrequent and insufficient funding. Gallus relied entirely on volunteer teams, composed mostly of university students, who went so far as to raise their own funds by passing around a hat and begging local manufacturers in Adelaide to supply their food and equipment. Despite many difficulties, Gallus and his enthusiastic volunteers opened up three trenches – the last of which was excavated to a depth of 4m – and removed tonnes of flint for analysis in Adelaide. They also investigated the expansive display of finger flutings and other engravings, which covered some 350m² of cave wall in an absolutely dark chamber.
Gallus was not the only Hungarian on the Nullarbor Plain at that time. Ljubomir Marun was researching there as well, surveying thousands of square kilometres and seeking caves and rockshelters containing archaeological material. Remarkably, Marun undertook numerous and often extensive excavations in Nullarbor caves, and produced a heft of raw data for his doctoral thesis. He, too, failed to secure an institutional appointment, and his extensive findings were not published. However, his unpublished reports and research thesis continue to offer a highly valuable baseline for investigating Nullarbor archaeological sites. Without these two very intrepid and determined Hungarians, archaeological research on the Nullarbor Plain may never have taken place, as it was they who inspired others to pursue similar efforts in this challengingly remote and arid zone. But it was Gallus, in particular, who managed to inspire an altogether unusual occurrence at Koonalda Cave.
Another team appears
In 1967, Gallus and his team were joined by another lead archaeologist – Richard V S Wright. Wright was a graduate in prehistoric archaeology from the University of Cambridge, who by then also held an appointment with the University of Sydney. He brought his own team, which included a bevy of specialists to investigate the rock art, prehistory, sediments, flints, fauna, and flora. In 1971, Wright compiled what is still the only substantial publication on Koonalda Cave. With a far higher level of funding and also direct access to the country’s key radiocarbon laboratory, he set about rigorously dating sediments from the deepest excavation trench. Gallus had previously managed to have some sediments dated and his results were truly surprising in light of the prevailing assumptions about the commencement of Aboriginal occupation of Australia.
Both Gallus and Wright agreed that the cave had never been a place for habitation. Instead, it was a flint source and venue for mark-making in total darkness. When it came to the question of how long Aboriginal people had been using the cave, however, Wright found no evidence that stretched beyond the period from 22,000-15,000 years ago. This stood in stark contrast to Gallus’s proposal of activity from 31,000 to 8,000 years ago. Gallus also estimated that the lowest floor associated with archaeological material dated to c.45,000 years ago. Although such a date would be unsurprising today, given the raft of published dates for human activity from 50,000 to 45,000 years ago in northern Australia, in the 1960s it was shocking to suggest anything earlier than 20,000 years ago. That said, the question of when precisely Aboriginal people first used Koonalda Cave – and when activity there ceased – has continued to haunt researchers, for a variety of reasons. In particular, uncertainty is caused by the small ratios of quartz used for dating in the layers of sediment, and the impact of sudden heavy rainfall, which can result in mixing of the deposits. However, drawing on a combination of both the previous research and independent dating undertaken in nearby sites containing deep deposits makes it clear that Aboriginal activity in Koonalda Cave equates more closely to Gallus’s estimation than to Wright’s.
This is an extract of an article that appeared in CWA 133. Read on in the magazine (Click here to subscribe) or on our website, The Past, which offers all of the magazine’s content digitally. At The Past you will be able to read each article in full as well as the content of our other magazines, Current Archaeology, Ancient Egypt, and Military History Matters.
