Type: Hafted Retouched Flake
Location: Cape York, Queensland
Age: Late Holocene
Material: Chert
MoST ID: 5337
Pedestal Link: https://une.pedestal3d.com/r/wyPwowzGIm
Model Author: Emma Watt
This chert retouched flake with adhering hafting resin is from Windmill Way shelter on Cape York, Queensland. The artefact is probably less than 2000 year old. The artefact is presently curated at the Griffith Centre of Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, catalogue no. LITH20009.
The Traditional Owners of Windmill Way request that this 3D model only used for educational, research, and non-profit purposes, with attribution to Laura Rangers.
This tool consists of a think, angular chert flake with retouch along one lateral edge. The opposite edge does not appear to be retouched, but it is mostly encased in resin so it is difficult to determine this. An unidentified plant resin was applied as a thick blob over the one edge and across both faces of the tool. The resin was either coated in red ochre, or red ochre was incorporated into the resin. The resin has a crumbly appearance near the edges from the addition of sand as a loader to hold the resin together. The irregular surface is caused by finger indentations and fold lines created in moulding the relatively dry, partly-melted resin to the stone flake.
See the annotations for technological details about this stone tool.
This artefact was excavated from Windmill Way, a sandstone rockshelter in Quinkan Country, near Laura in southeast Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. The site is approximately 2000 years old and contains an exceptional assemblage of organic remains alongside stone artefacts such as these which have retained evidence of hafting. Windmill Way was excavated in 2022 as part of the Agayrr Bamangay Milbi Project.
If the artefact were discovered without the adhering resin—which is almost always the case—it would likely be classified as a Burren Adze by archaeologists because of the straight retouching on the lateral edge. Burren adzes are conventionally thought to have been attached to handles and used in woodworking. As one edge grew dull, it was reversed in the haft and the opposite edge retouched. The worn-out tool was discarded as an adze slug and a new one was attached to the handle. Sometimes the retouching was on only one edge.
However, this artefact—and the others from Windmill Way—are among the only Burren Adzes known to archaeologists with remnants of the hafting resin still in place. None of the Windmill Way tools have clear impressions of a wood handle, as might be expected from the conventional interpretation of Burren Adzes. Instead, they appear more similar to hand-held tools called tjimari by people in Central Australia. These tools are retouched flakes with resin hafting applied to one margin, just like the Windmill Way tools.
The famous anthropologist Norman Tindale observed tjimari-like flakes being hafted in this way by a Tjapukai man in 1938 at Mona Mona, about 325 km southeast of Windmill Way. The Tjapukai craftsman called the tool babulai, and he used native bees wax for the hafting rather than plant resin. They were still being used at that time to cut body scars called cicatrices. The Windmill Way tools may be part of a long-standing tradition of tjimari-like toolmaking in the southern Cape York region, perhaps extending to elsewhere in eastern and central Queensland where Burren Adze slugs are frequently found.