Some wooden artefacts from the north coast of NSW: new archeological and ethnographic data
Abstract
This paper records and discusses the cultural context of three dated items from the North Coast of New South Wales. All were recovered by chance from waterlogged deposits during dredging or farming activities not found during systematic archaeological investigations. They include one boomerang from the Clarence River at Grafton, and a boomerang and one point from a multi-pronged fishing spear found in swamp deposits at Collombatti on the Lower Macleay north of Kempsey.
Aboriginal technologies as recorded in the immediate contact period depended to a considerable extent on organic raw materials. Many major items in the "extractive tool kit" of hunting weapons as well as basic tools and utensils were made of wood and bark fibres, and so are unlikely to survive in archaeological deposits, even of relatively recent age....
