A Spatial Analysis Of Raw Material Sources And Ground Edge Hatchets In The Hunter Valley Of New South Wales

Abstract

Ground-edged axes, or hatchets as they are frequently called, were made from a variety of stone, which was often not available in the country of individual Aboriginal communities. For members of these communities, suitable stone in the form of blanks, or finished hatchets, was obtained either through exchange systems linked through social networks (down-the-line exchange) or accessed directly from a geological source, as indicated by previous sourcing studies. Non-destructive portable X-ray florescence (pXRF) technology has been used to determine matches between 140 ground-edge artefacts (GEAs) from the New South Wales Hunter Valley, with potential geological sources in, and adjacent to, the Sydney Basin. Sixty-five matches have been identified, with the largest number (19) linked to the Nepean River gravels at several places where cobbles are present in the Sydney Region, for example, at the junction of the Nepean and Grose Rivers and at Castlereagh and Yarramundi. The Popran Creek-Peats Ridge-Glenworth Valley precinct, located in the New South Wales Central Coast, was the next largest source with 10 matches. There are also two potential matches to Lake Moondarra (Mt Isa) and one to Mount William, each of which require further assessment. The transition from stone to metal by Aboriginal people is discussed within a profile of the Hunter Valley landscape. To place these 140 hatchets in context, how hatchets were used-and by whom. Aboriginal exchange and travelling routes, the location and relations of the major Aboriginal language groups, recorded through the observations of anthropologists, settlers and explorers are examined. The impact of the introduction of metal hatchets by Macassan visitors in northern Australia is also considered.