Taking Consultancy Into the Future: A Consultancy Blog

Posted on: 30 December 2015

For native title claims, it is important for indigenous groups to prove their lasting and unbroken connection to their land. Archaeologists have an important role to play in supporting the native title claims of different tribes and skin groups. Here are some of the pieces of evidence that they record.

Dance and tribal customs

Archaeologists can observe and document native customs and compare current practices to recorded traditions of the dance. As Aboriginal customs have a large story telling focus, they can also take oral histories of the elders in the group, and using these can often establish substantial family trees and kinship groups reaching back decades and longer. Dance can also support the storytelling and history of the tribe, which can be explained to the archaeologists.

 This can help establish the independence and history of this group compared to other groups residing in the local area over time, including European settlers.

Burial artifacts and in situ evidence

One of the questions that is often bought up in native title claims is the extent that the claimants have used the land. Using in situ evidence such as fire sites and traditional campsites, archaelogists can show the full sweep of land used throughout the year by nomadic people. Evidence such as shell mounds that accumulated over centuries of seasonal shellfish hunting, or artworks that has been done over regular visits to caves over many years, can be dated with scientific processes such as carbon dating to show the length of time that sites were used by the tribe. These artifacts can provide evidences of both the duration time spent in location and some of the typical ways that the land (and flora and fauna) was used over this time.

Burial artifacts demonstrate the most valued objects of that tribe, which often relate back to their lifestyle, such as animal skins or hunting implements. These can be used to date the time that the tribe has spent in this area.

Found evidence

Archaeologists can also undertake digs on specifically disputed areas, where they remove some of the dirt laid down over time and look for evidence of human occupation. These can take the place of intentionally discarded items such as broken tools, which are left behind, dropped or lost items such as lost arrow heads and rubbish such as evidence of animals being cooked and consumed by people and collected seed pods. These can be dated and compared to other known artifacts to show evidence of the site being used by indigenous peoples in different times.

If you are looking to bring forth a native title claim it be very useful to employ a specialised archaeology consultancy firm to track and record the evidence of indigenous heritage in your area.