Voyages to Kaju Jawi: First Dated Evidence for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Asian Voyages to Northern Kimberley, Australia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In recent centuries, Southeast Asian commercial trepang (sea cucumber) traders established seasonal outposts on the shores of the coasts and offshore islands of northern Australia. This southernmost extremity of a network of maritime trade and travel connected Australia and Aboriginal Australia to people from Southeast Asia and indirectly to emerging global marketplaces. The archaeological evidence for these events has been documented for the Northern Territory and Gulf of Carpentaria; but the vast Kimberley region of northwest Australia has never been archaeologically dated. This presentation describes fieldwork (2019, 2021) at Napier Broome Bay and Niawalarra Island, the first excavations at three Asian trepanging sites, and provides the first regional dating sequence for Asians on the Kimberley coast. These dates reveal that Asian fleets were present here prior to and concurrent with European (Dutch, French, and British) explorers. The forms of encounter between Aboriginal people and these visitors is poorly known, however this project allows us to propose a model for the forms of cultural encounter and exchange. The “Coastal Connections” project was funded by the Australian Heritage Grant and an ARC Future Fellowship, and involved the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions; Western Australian Museum; and Ballangarra Aboriginal Corporation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36386.0