What was lake mungo used for

Klejman, The first were relatively broad, flat forms, which were used to protect the bearer from projectile weapons, such as spears, throwing clubs, and boomerangs, thrown by an enemy at a distance. The second type were narrow, compact parrying shields, such as the present work, used to ward off blows from fighting clubs and other handheld weapons during hand-to-hand combat.

Originally gripped by the handle visible at the left and held with the narrow edge at the right toward the opponent, this parrying shield is adorned with a series of engraved zigzag motifs.

There is virtually no historic information on the significance of the patterns on southeastern shields. However, they possibly represent emblematic designs symbolic of the owner's group affiliation or dreamings, the ancestral beings whose actions created the features of the landscape during the Dreaming primordial creation period..

Clubs made by the Paakintji were usually pointed. The idea was to deflect the club off an object on the ground so that it would bounce up under the opponent's shield. Three hand thrown spears. Non-returning boomerangs such as the two on the left were used for hunting and fighting.

These throw away items were rougher than returning boomerangs, however they were still decorated. Returning boomerangs were mainly used for hunting ducks in conjunction with nets. Aboriginal people would use hawk calls to make the ducks fly low - making them easier to catch.

The spear thrower or woomera was used with narrow, flexible spears that were later retrieved. The tips of these spears were made of harder wood such as mulga and belah. Fresh water mussel shells. These formed a significant part of the diet of the Aborigines of the area, being nutritious, plentiful, and easily gathered from the shallow lake.

This mortar would have been used for grinding seeds and other food items. This mortar and pestle would have been used for grinding seeds and other food items.

Mortars and pestles were used for dry pounding and grinding of hard shelled seeds. The stone for this task had to be tough enough to withstand the pounding. The roots of mulga and mallee were also prepared using this process. They were peeled, roasted in ashes, pounded between stones and eaten.

Grindstones were traded throughout the region. The stone for these grinding tools was transported from the Ivanhoe area. Mullers a smaller hand held stone and millstones typically large, fairly flat 'anvils' were used with water to process soft shelled seeds from plants and grasses.

The surface of the stone was often pitted to make grinding easier, but the typical result of many hours of grinding was this very flat surface. Grindstones were essential for grinding seeds to make a dough for baking. I found this fragment of a millstone, apparently of very good quality sandstone, in the general area of the Walls of China. It was very thin indeed, possibly handed down from mother to daughter.

It must have been a sad day when it broke. Stones of this size and quality have to be brought into the Lake Mungo area from elsewhere, probably from the Murray River basin, km away. Photo: Don Hitchcock Additional text: Wikipedia. This tool is most unusual, in that it has many facets, or flakes, taken from it. Most tools at Lake Mungo are very simple, not because the maker lacked skill, but because the 'flint' or silex used was very poor quality. They had only silcrete to work with. Silcrete is a very coarse material, rather like a very very hard sandstone, one in which silica SiO 2 has enriched the rock so that it is very hard.

It is not possible to make fine tools with it, and it is not possible to do the "retouch" of very fine flakes which are typical for fine work in europe. You can see in this photo the very coarse nature of the material. Photo: Don Hitchcock This simple piece, what I think of as a 'point', is much more typical of the sort of tools that were made.

The tool maker had one chance to make a usable tool, and there was little possibility of further work to refine the shape. It should be realised that all the stone in the area had to be brought from twenty kilometres away on the western side of the lake.

If you find a stone, it was transported there 40 years ago by aborigines. There is no local stone, apart from some very small pebbles on the lake edge, of no use for tools, but which were sometimes used in the making of a hearth.

Two photos of the same tool. Many of the tools at Mungo are of this type - what I think of as a "point" or a "finger". The ones found which are very thin and elongated often have been broken off at the tip, as this one has.

I was initially puzzled as to what they were used for, and why, so often, the tip has been broken off, as though the point had been twisted to the point where it sheared off. There are so many that they must have provided a common and useful function. The most likely use is to prise open the mussels which constituted a very large part of the menu when Lake Mungo was full of water. This would explain why so many were made, and why so many of them have the tip broken off.

A blunted point, and one with the point broken off. The subtriangular cross section of the tool on the right is very common in the Mungo toolkit. This is one of the very few examples I have come across at Lake Mungo of a reworked stone. When the point broke off, the toolmaker took off some flakes to make it usable again. Broken point, of colourful but inferior material. Many of the tools show their origin as small or large pebbles, with the outer layers oxidised to a lighter or darker colour.

A backed blade still embedded in the sand. An eyewitness account The following extract is an observation of an Aboriginal oven hearth being made in the last century. It is then lined with stones in the bottom or clay balls where stones are unavailable , and a strong fire made over them so as to heat them thoroughly, and dry the hole.

As soon as the stones are judged to be sufficiently hot, the fire is removed, and a few of the stones taken, and put inside the animal to be roasted if it be a large one. A few leaves or a handful of grass, are then sprinkled over the stones in the bottom of the oven, on which the animal is deposited, generally whole, with hot stones It is covered with grass, or leaves, and then thickly coated over with earth, which effectually prevents the heat from escaping. On the trip I found more than a dozen hearths.

They used to put stones or clay balls stone was very hard to get, twenty kilometres away on the other side of the lake in the bottom of a pit, get a decent fire going, then take out the coals, line it with grass and leaves, put a few of the stones inside the bird or animal, put hot stones on top of it, more grass and leaves, then cover with more earth or clay, wait several hours, then dig it up and have dinner.

This photo is of a hearth about 50 cm across which has used the clay balls. I found others where they used poor quality stones, possibly from the lake edge, as the lining of the hearth. They may also have brought dilly bags of poor stones from the other side of the lake just for hearths. The clay from termite mounds was also used. This tool, possibly a point used to open mussels, was left beside the hearth above. It is to the far left of the photo above.

This hearth had begun to be dispersed by water and wind. It seems to me that the weather breaks up the clay balls fairly quickly into smaller pieces, after exposure to the elements. Photo: Don Hitchcock Parts of the lunette are being very actively eroded, especially by water. Note the small bush which has been undermined, and is hanging down the sand face. At least the erosion exposes things such as these hearths in the sand face of the photo above, with their clay balls used to help cook game in earth ovens.

Occasionally the hearths were made of poor quality stone, useless for tool making, but better than clay balls for earth ovens, since they presumably retain more heat. The stone in closeup on the right to be found at the immediate foreground of the general shot on the left is typical of the stones I found in earth ovens.

They are usually blackened, often with the white deposit so obvious in this photograph. Hearthstones were usually quite small, often no more than six or seven centimetres in their longest dimension.

This is identified at the Lake Mungo NPWS interpretation centre as a photo of Barbetti's hearth - layered charcoal on a baked clay bed. Scattered clay balls surround it. In Dr Michael Barbetti Barbetti et al, provided the first new dating method of ancient Aboriginal fireplaces.

The study of clay lumps found in fireplaces revealed an amazing phenomenon. The clay lumps act like a compass - recording the direction of the earth's magnetic field at the time of heating and use.

From studies of Mungo's clay lumps, it was discovered that the earth changed its magnetic field about 30 years ago. This event has been termed the 'Mungo Excursion'. Remains of an ancient hearth mound found on the Mungo Lunette. The eroded remains of three varieties of fireplaces found at Mungo National Park are: Ovens : consist of cooking stones or lumps of baked clay balls or broken termite nests arranged on top of a thin layer of ash and charcoal in a shallow depression.

Hearths : are areas of blackened earth without heat retaining stones, resulting from an open fire. Mounds : consist of baked clay heaped above layers of charcoal and ash below. Their purpose is unknown.

Photo and caption: Gillespie Each time strong winds or rain occur in the Willandra region more evidence of the past is uncovered on the lunettes. Some of that evidence is tiny but provides a great story. From the small otoliths or 'ear stones' of the Golden Perch or Murray Cod scientists can tell how much the fish weighed and their exact age at death. The otoliths have microscopic growth bands, much like tree rings.

These bands also preserve details of water chemistry at the time. So not only can we learn about lake temperatures and salinity, we can even know in which season the fish was caught. In I began taking taking photos of the tools in a larger format, and with a camera which permitted high quality close-ups, giving a much better look at the surface of the tools, and allowing an estimate of their granularity.

As can be seen here, the residents here had very poor materials to work with. Fine work was impossible. All that could be accomplished was the production of strictly utilitarian tools which did the job, not works of art.

This was originally a point, now with the point broken off, probably used for opening shells. These tools form the majority of types in some areas of the lunettes. Some, like this one, had little care lavished on their production.

These sub-triangular remnants of tools are very common, and were obviously the easiest to manufacture for a range of uses. Many are possibly the remains of broken points for opening mussel shells. Various scrapers, knives, and flakes. Scrapers Photo: Don Hitchcock It is unusual to find a pebble such as this, of apparently tool quality stone, but unchanged in form. It may have been in the toolkit as a core ready for use as necessary.

The area has been badly degraded by erosion. The landscape alternates between broad, flat, hard surfaced bare areas like this, and "badlands" areas with heavily furrowed slopes.

This stone is of such poor quality its only use would have been as part of a hearth. This is an unusually shaped stone, shown at left in situ. It appears to have a bulb of percussion with a fringing flat area, presumably as the wave front of the blow which created it reached a cleavage plane deeper in the core. Such good quality stone is rare. My heart bleeds for the knappers of Mungo. They would have been overjoyed to get good quality flint to work with.

As it was, they made the best of what they had. When the Overland Telegraph Line was put in across Australia in , a km telegraph line that connected Darwin with Port Augusta in South Australia, the builders had a lot of trouble at first with the Aborigines taking the ceramic insulators to use for stone tools.

They also took lengths of wire from the line to fix stone axe heads to handles. This fine scraper was nearby, again made from relatively good quality white silcrete, or at least as good as was available.

This is a well-worn point, no doubt worn from opening hundreds or thousands of mussel shells. It has lost all its sharp edges, but would still have been a useful tool. An enigmatic tool, a pebble with only a few flakes struck from it, as though the knapper decided it was not worth persisting with, yet it seemed to me to be no worse than most materials used for tools.

This is the best blade I have found at Mungo. The knappers were capable of good work when they had half way decent materials to work with. This piece of silcrete is about as good as the raw material ever got. Note that there is no evidence of retouch on the blade. With silcrete, you typically get one chance only to make a good tool, and retouch to improve the shape or utility of the tool is rarely attempted. Typically the landscape has a standard cross section from the top to the lake bed.

Some trees and bushes at the top of the lunette Extensive bare and planar but tilted areas across much of the lunette, interrupted by small bare hillocks of clay Grading into erosion channels and gradually increasing vegetation Until the well vegetated lake floor is reached.

A roughly made though serviceable point. This piece demonstrates the same lack of homogeneity of fracture displayed in the "bulb of percussion" piece I have described above. In this case a utilitarian scraper has resulted.

Scraper showing the oxidised outer surface of the original silcrete pebble used for the tool. Trace amounts of iron give the red colour to the stone when exposed to the elements for long periods. Poor materials and a poor tool, only useful because of its relatively large size.

The cortex shows that the original pebble spent a lot of time exposed to the elements or to scarifying ground waters. In fact, it looks more like an original pebble demonstrating wear when used to prise apart fresh water mussels than a properly knapped tool.

This scraper shows more flakes knocked off it to make a useful tool than is normal in the Mungo toolkit. A pretty and delicate little point. There may have been very little of this desert plant, if any, at the time when Lake Mungo was full.

It produces a thermoplastic resin which is very useful for attaching tools to handles, especially when combined with twine. Trees struggle to survive in these difficult conditions, and one that has succumbed can be seen beside this tree valiantly struggling against the odds.

This photo on top of the lunette shows the appearance of fresh green shoots. They may be only annuals, and introduced weeds at that, but at least they stop the soil blowing away for a time.

Eventually the lunette will be revegetated, so long as the feral animals can be kept in check, but it is a long slow process. These tools, shells, bones and location shots are from the northern part of the lunette, where the road comes back across the lunette from its route behind the sandhills, and drops down to the lake.

Here we see again the typical erosion surface so evident at the Walls of China. The top of the lunette, though eroded, has some vegetation. The isolated erosion artefact and the rest of the hard 'pavement' has little or none. Knife with some evidence of coarse retouching to give a somewhat denticulate, sawing edge.

As always, the quality of the stone precluded fine work. This piece, found close by the tool above, shows much more obvious retouching to give a coarse denticulate edge. It would be good to talk to these ancient toolmakers about the problems they faced, and the methods they used to get workable tools.

What is certain is that they knew what good material was. There is evidence from early white contact times that there were thriving trade routes between groups of tribes, and there was trade from the very north of Australia to the very south of the main continent. One presumes that they accepted that for workaday materials, they had to use what nature had provided. Certainly there were compensations. A long chain of large, permanent, fresh water lakes far from the coast is a luxury which is worth enduring some minor privations to have.

Better a highly productive area of fish, shellfish, marsupials, food plants, reptiles and birds but with poor stone tools than the finest stone materiel nature can provide combined with desert conditions, few food plants and poor hunting.

They almost certainly had 'status' stone knives of superb quality. These are known to have been traded from areas where fine quality flint or quartz was readily available to places with poorer materials.

Burin with a tip blunted from use. Many of these have a square or rectangular plan view. Point, blunted with use. Blackened hearth stones as well as some tools. Small hill showing furrowing by rain. The shadow shows the roughly rectangular shape of the tool. Although this tool is of potentially much better material, quartzite rather than silcrete, unfortunately it has poor cleavage patterns, making it almost useless as a tool.

This is a very odd tool indeed. Possibly a scraper, every single edge seems to have become rounded, as though it had been made of butter and sat in the sun too long. It cannot be water worn, there are no streams to roll in, and silcrete is immune to pretty much any environment.

It is a very puzzling tool, any guesses as to its present rounded shape are welcome. Donna Cannon pers. Looking out over the dry Lake Mungo. Just a slight difference in slope makes all the difference to the landscape. From a highly eroded and apparently unrecoverable dune to the well vegetated lake bottom is a matter of only a few metres. This point, probably used for opening mussel shells, has been only minimally altered for the task, and may not have been altered at all, but has simply worn at the tip from use.

National Library of Australia, ans Language, creativity and culture flourished after people arrived in Australia. There were hundreds of different Indigenous groups, each with their own languages to describe the landscape, pass on laws and share knowledge and stories. Across Australia, many languages were lost after European settlement.

Speaking these languages helps to keep these cultures alive. Lake Mungo is home to the earliest modern human remains found in Australia, and possibly the world. Mungo Man had been buried and covered with red ochre. Mungo Lady was cremated more than 40, years ago. It is also one of the richest fossil footprint sites ever found. A group of people left footprints in the clay along the edge of Lake Mungo in the last ice age.

Normally, footprints would be washed away by water, eroded by wind or rain, or walked over by other people or animals. On this rare occasion, a layer of sand blew over the clay, preserving the footprints as the clay dried and hardened.

Archaeologist John Mulvaney far right , pictured working at Lake Mungo in the early s. Apart from local Indigenous knowledge, much of what we know about Lake Mungo comes from research by archaeologists who study ancient bones, stone tools, fireplaces and middens found in the area.

Professor Mulvaney is known as the father of Australian archaeology. He helped identify human remains found at Lake Mungo by geologist Jim Bowler. The suitcase used by archaeologist John Mulvaney to transport the remains of Mungo Lady to Canberra in The remains were at risk of being destroyed by sheep grazing at the lake.

National Museum of Australia. Returning ancestral remains to their country is important for local Aboriginal communities. The remains of Mungo Lady were returned in Mungo Man's remains, taken to the Australian National University in Canberra to be studied in the s, are still awaiting their return. Primary source study: John Mulvaney's suitcase. When people first arrived in Australia, they found unique plants and animals.

It must have been like entering a new world. There were giant marsupials mammals that carried their young in a pouch, such as kangaroos , giant monotremes mammals that lay eggs, such as echidnas and different types of birds including emus and brolgas. There were also other giant animals that no longer exist. We call these extinct giant animals megafauna. Unlike Africa and Asia, where the top predators were mammals, in Australia, giant reptiles ruled.

A replica Zygomaturus trilobus on display at the Western Australia Museum, Photo: Brian J McMorrow. Zygomaturus fossils have been found at Lake Mungo. This wombat-like creature was a diprotodon; the largest known marsupial ever to have lived. It was roughly the size of a small rhinoceros, probably ate grasses and spent a lot of time in the water since its remains are often found in what were wetland areas.

Other megafauna that existed when people arrived in Australia included the Procoptodon, a short-faced kangaroo. Weighing more than kilograms, it was twice as heavy as any kangaroo today. Illustration by Nobu Tamura. Genyornis was a flightless bird which was bigger than an emu. Scientists believe it was more closely related to ducks and geese than emus. Emus are flightless and appear similar to ostriches, but are a different species, unique to Australia.

Photo: Vcarceler, Wikimedia Commons. Cast of a skull from the world's largest terrestrial lizard, Megalania , on display at the Museum of Science in the United States. From Mildura take the road to Wentworth and past the Buronga limits turn rignt into Arumpo Road which is unsealed.

From Balranald head north via Penarie and Bidura. There are two turnoffs to the park from the Wentworth-Pooncarie road - they are both south of Pooncarie. All roads have sections of gravel and can be closed when it is wet. The best time to visit is during autumn, winter and spring. It has a lot of information about the cultural heritage of the site; it has a meeting place outside with picnic tables and barbecues; and it has a large model of a diprotodon, a representative of the megafauna which once roamed the area.

It is necessary, if you are self guided, to understand the archaeology and geomorphology of the lake. Otherwise the experience is reduced to walking over a lake and up the Walls of China - and that is a very small part of the entire experience. It is recommended that an hour should be spent before venturing out onto the dry lake bed. These tours usually involve the Foreshore Walk where the rangers not only recount the archaeology and the history but also introduce visitors to Aboriginal life in terms of fauna, flora and bush tucker.

The tours can be booked on 03 Although it is only 20 metres above the floor of the lake it offers a view which stretches 10 km across the lake and includes most of the lunette known as the Wall of China. It is a sensible point to get a perspective on the entire lake.

It includes 15 stops each of which has detailed sign posted information. It is a good, comprehensive overview of the lake and its history. The signposts are particularly informative and provide a detailed picture of both the Aboriginal and pastoral history of the lake.

The track is a loop through cypress pines, mallee eucalypts and a vegetated dune crest. It is particularly interesting to take this walk with an Aboriginal ranger who will point out things that you would otherwise miss. It includes, obviously, grassland as well as bluebushes, copperbushes, Belah, Cypress Pine and Wilga. There are signs along the way explaining the plants and wildlife in the region. Signage on the route is excellent and the visitor learns about the soldier settlement of the area after World War I and has an opportunity to inspect the Mungo Woolshed.

It is now recognised that Albert Barnes, who owned the property from , was acutely aware of the woolshed's historical importance and did his best to maintain it as a heritage building. Over the decades it has exposed a vast number of fossils of megafauna including a giant kangaroo, a huge bettong, dingoes, hairy nosed wombats and Tasmanian tigers.

It is best to take a tour of the Walls of China accompanied by a ranger or a tour operator because there is so much to see It is metres along a boardwalk and offers views north along the Mungo lunette and west across the dry bed of Lake Mungo.

It has impressive views down the deeply eroded ravines. It was a reliable source of water and when Europeans started moving through the area they used it to water horses and bullocks. The well was dug in the s by Roy Vigar. It is said that since Europeans arrived it has only dried up once.

The Complex History of Lake Mungo Lake Mungo is a relic of life in Australia 30,, years ago when the area was defined by a series of large, deep, interlocking lakes "teeming with large fish. The now dry bed of Lake Mungo would have been 20 kilometres long and 10 kilometres wide, with a depth of some 15 metres. On its eastern side sand dunes provided sheltered campsites by the lake shore" is the way archaeologist Josephine Flood described the area in Archaeology of the Dreamtime.

Aboriginal hunters and gatherers, accustomed to walking from water hole to water hole, settled on the shores of the lakes and established semi-permanent campsites where they could rely on the freshwater lakes for fish and crustaceans.