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Article Dans Une Revue Nature Human Behaviour Année : 2024

Archaeological evidence of an ethnographically documented Australian Aboriginal ritual dated to the last ice age

Bruno David
Russell Mullett
  • Fonction : Auteur
Nathan Wright
Birgitta Stephenson
Jeremy Ash
Joanna Fresløv
  • Fonction : Auteur
Matthew Mcdowell
Jerome Mialanes
Fiona Petchey
Lee Arnold
Ashleigh Rogers
Joe Crouch
  • Fonction : Auteur
Helen Green
  • Fonction : Auteur
Chris Urwin
Carney Matheson

Résumé

Abstract In societies without writing, ethnographically known rituals have rarely been tracked back archaeologically more than a few hundred years. At the invitation of GunaiKurnai Aboriginal Elders, we undertook archaeological excavations at Cloggs Cave in the foothills of the Australian Alps. In GunaiKurnai Country, caves were not used as residential places during the early colonial period (mid-nineteenth century CE), but as secluded retreats for the performance of rituals by Aboriginal medicine men and women known as ‘mulla-mullung’, as documented by ethnographers. Here we report the discovery of buried 11,000- and 12,000-year-old miniature fireplaces with protruding trimmed wooden artefacts made of Casuarina wood smeared with animal or human fat, matching the configuration and contents of GunaiKurnai ritual installations described in nineteenth-century ethnography. These findings represent 500 generations of cultural transmission of an ethnographically documented ritual practice that dates back to the end of the last ice age and that contains Australia’s oldest known wooden artefacts.
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Dates et versions

hal-04631249 , version 1 (02-07-2024)

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Bruno David, Russell Mullett, Nathan Wright, Birgitta Stephenson, Jeremy Ash, et al.. Archaeological evidence of an ethnographically documented Australian Aboriginal ritual dated to the last ice age. Nature Human Behaviour, 2024, ⟨10.1038/s41562-024-01912-w⟩. ⟨hal-04631249⟩
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