Extract from ABC News
In short:
Excavations from a cave in Gippsland, Victoria unearthed two fireplaces and burnt, fat-smeared sticks, dated to 11,000 to 12,000 years old.
The fireplaces and sticks, which are the oldest-known wooden artefacts found in Australia, suggest a ritual was passed down virtually unchanged through around 500 generations of Gunaikurnai people.
What's next?
Traditional owners and researchers plan to excavate other sites in the area, including one with a ceiling of finger-etched markings.
Some 12,000 years ago in a secluded cave in what is now eastern Victoria, a powerful Gunaikurnai doctor or mulla-mullung cast a spell using a fireplace and a stick smeared with fat.
These remnants were covered by soil and remained buried inside the cave until they were unearthed in 2020, along with remains of a slightly younger instance of the same ritual.
In the journal Nature Human Behaviour, a team of traditional owners and archaeologists suggests the specific ritual was practised until the late 1800s, according to European records, with knowledge passing down around 500 generations.
The slightly charred sticks are also the oldest-known wooden artefacts in Australia.
Study co-author Russell Mullett, from the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation, called the discoveries "extraordinary".
Such insights are part of "a broader story about our people, our belief systems, our traditions, and it's important to share that", he said.
"It's all about experience from the deep past, to the present, and into the future."
The cave in which the discoveries were made, called Cloggs Cave after a local settler, is almost 300 kilometres east of Naarm/Melbourne in Gunaikurnai Country/Gippsland.
Current Gunaikurnai knowledge and archaeological finds show that, like similar caves in the area, Cloggs' cool, quiet inner chambers were the domain of mulla-mullungs, medicine men and women who performed rituals away from prying eyes.
"These were doctors, and they were sought after by families to provide cures," Mr Mullett said.
"But they had these other powers, too, that could harm people.
"And so mulla-mullungs were accepted, but they were also feared. Depends on whether you were good or bad."
Such powers and rituals, including one that involved a "wizard" using a fire and fat-smeared stick, were documented by ethnographer Alfred Howitt in the late 1800s:
[The fat-smeared stick is] stuck slanting in the ground before a fire, and it is of course placed in such a position that by-and-by it falls down. The wizard has during this time been singing his charm; as it is usually expressed, he 'sings the man's name,' and when the stick falls the charm is complete. The practice still exists.
Studying sacred sites
Archaeological excavations at Cloggs Cave began in the 1970s without permission from traditional owners.
A recent alliance between the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation and Monash University enabled research at the site to restart and be led by traditional owners.
It was during these fresh excavations that the pair of miniature fireplaces, complete with ash and burnt sticks, were found while researchers carefully dug into sediments in the floor of the cave.
The team dated one fireplace and 40-centimetre stick to around 12,000 years old, while a second fireplace and stick, which was around 20cm long, was closer to 11,000 years old.
The practice remained unchanged in Gunaikurnai Country from at least 12,000 years ago until the Gunaikurnai people were pushed to mission stations, when the transmission of that knowledge was interrupted — but not lost, thanks to the writings of ethnographers such as Alfred Howitt, Mr Mullett said.
A few factors kept the ashy fireplaces and sticks in such good nick over the millennia, study co-author and Monash University archaeologist Bruno David said.
For instance, the sediment that surrounded the sticks was very slightly alkaline, which helped preserve the wood.
They must have been buried quickly, too. Ash that's left in the open air tends to disappear.
But crucially, the soil in the cave remained incredibly dry, even as the outside world emerged from an ice age around 11,700 years ago and more rain began to fall.
Professor David said the team even found entire leaves, perfectly preserved, in older layers of cave sediment.
"It's like they were put there yesterday, but they're more than 12,000 years old. We're talking truly old things."
Rituals with deep history
Caroline Spry, an archaeologist at La Trobe University, who was not involved with the study, called it "exciting and unusual" as it brought together archaeological evidence, traditional knowledge and written accounts.
"Often when we're trying to understand past ritual practices, we may only have one of those strands of evidence available to us," Dr Spry said.
"But in this case, it's possible to weave together multiple strands of evidence that all match."
The calculated ages of the pair of fat-smeared sticks, she added, were "robust".
"They didn't just date the sediment from around the wooden artefacts — they dated the wooden artefacts themselves.
"Sometimes you only have one or the other, but in this case, they had both."
The Cloggs Cave fireplaces are just one example of Aboriginal practices with deep history.
Other examples in south-eastern Australia are carved trees or marara on Wiradjuri Country in NSW, which marked burial sites of Wiradjuri men of high standing, as well as rings of rock and earth, such as those found on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country near Sunbury in Victoria, Dr Spry said.
"They're reported to be locations of ceremony and initiation, and they're very rare these days."
Monash University researchers are still analysing the Cloggs Cave sticks, and will return them to Country when finished.
But Mr Mullett, Professor David and their colleagues are also already investigating yet another cave in the area.
It has more than 20 metres of ancient grooves and designs made by human fingers in the soft rock in the ceiling above.
"We're starting to do the research to tell this [Gunaikurnai] story," Professor David said.
"If it wasn't for telling the story, we wouldn't be doing it."
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