Aboriginal archaeology has a central role to play among the myriad government agencies and professional disciplines involved in land and water of the Murray River Basin. This is Australia's food bowl that today produces one third of our food supply while using four fifths of the water supply. We are beyond policy that seeks to restore the health of the Murray River floodplain. The Darling River has been killed. Can we save the small-bodied fish at least?

Villages and Environmental Water: using Archaeology for Conservation on the Murray River

Large settlements are to be seen beside rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin. Those of the Barapa on the Mille or Murray River result from capitalising on the flush of resources generated by spring floods. We mapped the relation between seasonal water flow and residential patterning at the Pulitj, a small swamp in Koondrook State Forest. A total of 154 earth mounds are distributed in an area 4x3 km, including the 1.6 km diameter swamp. Mounds are the by-product of housing and cooking. The village life of this archaeological record is a distillation of 3,000 years of Barapa traditional knowledge and land management practices. This picture of people living in large groupings – villages and hamlets – around water bodies provides some insights to local environmental variation.

Following our success in using small amounts of environmental water, delivered in a more or less traditional manner, we set out a case for the modification of environmental water delivery from large area forest flooding for the benefit of trees to smaller water bodies that form ecological hot spots throughout the forest. Such sites form one of the micro-environments of the riverine forest that were, and might be again, centres for migratory bird and small fish breeding as well as the associated wetland plants and invertebrates. The basis for identification of these ecological hot spots that may not otherwise be apparent is the archaeological signature of large human populations resident for several months of each year. Our success in conservation measures at Pollack Swamp bolstered the case for modification of environmental water delivery from large area forest flooding to targeted smaller water bodies.

Aboriginal archaeology has a central role to play among the myriad government agencies and professional disciplines involved in land and water of the Murray River Basin. This is Australia's food bowl that today produces one third of our food supply while using four fifths of the water supply. We are beyond policy that seeks to restore the health of the Murray River floodplain. The Darling River has been killed. Can we save the small-bodied fish at least?

In this talk I will show some of our successes, our plans for further water bodies identified by surrounding villages, and some possible application to Lake Burley Griffin.

Presenter

Dr Colin Pardoe
Colin Pardoe is a biological anthropologist and archaeologist. He studies the links between people from the biology of bones and the culture of trade in ground-stone tools. He spends most of his time on archaeology of the Murray-Darling Basin. Since retiring from commercial archaeology Colin helps with ‘Archaeology in the service of Conservation’. He is a member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Studies, and life member of the Australian Archaeological Association and of the Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists.