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Bifacial Flintknapping in the Northwest Kimberley, Western Australia

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Abstract

The combination of bifacial percussion and pressure flaking to make stone tools was repeatedly invented in prehistory. Bifacial percussion and pressure technology is well documented in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, but a separate and poorly understood center of innovation occurred in the Kimberley Region of Northwest Australia. Stone points first appeared there ca 4.5 kya and bifacial Kimberley Points emerged by ca 1.4 kya. Aboriginal flintknappers made Kimberley Points using traditional methods until the recent past. This study analyzes stone artifacts from 335 sites in the remote Northwest Kimberley and documents a sophisticated bifacial technology that involved seven “tactical sets”—four of them exclusive to manufacturing these points—applied in five strategic phases. It is proposed that bifacial thinning ultimately arose in response to social forces operating across Kimberley Aboriginal societies in response to demographic pressures from neighboring Aboriginal groups. The repeated invention of bifacial flaking in prehistory may be related to the messaging made possible by the manufacturing approach itself—both in virtuoso technical performance and the flexible way bifacial performances could be distributed across the natural and social landscape.

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Notes

  1. “Bifacial” is used here in the conventional sense of flaking a stone on both sides from one edge (after Inizan et al. 1999:130), and “unifacial” refers to flaking on one side from one edge. This differs from some Australian studies, where “bifacial” is also used for points that have unifacial flaking to opposite sides on opposite edges (i.e., “reverse-edge trimmed”; Attenbrow et al. 1995:112; Flood 1970:43).

  2. “Kimberley Point” is used in some studies to refer to points with invasive pressure flaking and serrated edges. This study will show that a key aspect of late prehistoric Kimberley Point technology is blank preparation by invasive bifacial percussion thinning; the typological label refers to these variants.

  3. The term “technique” is variably defined by archaeologists to refer to individual flake removals (e.g., hard-hammer percussion technique) or multiple integrated sets of flake removals (e.g., Levallois technique). “Method” can also refer to sets of flake removals to achieve limited goals but is often used interchangeably with “technique”. In this study, technique refers to individual flake removals.

  4. An analyst refers to their own technical knowledge to pattern-match stone artifacts and to infer the plan of action. A nonknapper/analyst’s technical knowledge is literal and derived from publications and perhaps videos, and a knapper/analyst’s technical knowledge also includes kinesthetic know-how gained through experience. An analyst’s technical knowledge is not equivalent to ancient technical knowledge because analysts do not work within past activity systems; conversely, the analytical process cannot recreate the technical knowledge of ancient craftspeople. Indeed, although analysts reconstruct some aspects of ancient technical knowledge, they do not recreate it in an “emic” sense nor is that usually considered a goal of lithic analysis (however, see Tostevin 2011).

  5. According to Love (in Akerman 1979b:171), all stone flaking was the responsibility of Kimberley men although women ground the cutting edges on stone axes (e.g., Love 2009:84–85) and hafted them. An axe was considered a woman’s tool in the Kimberley (Kaberry 1939:141).

  6. Falkenberg (1962) refers to male preinitiation age-grade statuses universal among Aboriginal groups east of the Kimberley near Port Keats. Very young girls and boys were not socially differentiated, but boys were recognized as “a male being” at about age six when “he begins with boys’ games, practices spear-throwing, and tries to imitate adult men” (1962:179–180). In the Kimberley, very young boys were provided with toy spears made by a parent or mother’s brother (Kaberry 1939:66), perhaps reflecting a similar pattern there.

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Acknowledgments

The Northwest Kimberley project was a collaboration between the Wunambal Gaambera Aboriginal Corporation, Kandiwal Aboriginal Corporation, Kimberley Land Council, Uunguu Rangers, University of New England, Macquarie University, and the University of Wollongong. Fieldwork was supported directly by the Australian Research Council (ARC; LP0991845) and the Kimberley Foundation Australia, and in-kind support was provided by Heliwork and the Western Australia Department of Environment and Conservation. The analysis reported here was funded by the ARC (DP1096558). Field logistics and survey assistance were provided by June Ross, Mike Morwood, John Hayward, Kim Newman, Isabelle Balzer, Yinika Perston, and Robin Maher. Aboriginal participants included Albert Bundamurra Jr, Greg Goonack, John Goonack, Gavin Goonack, Myron Goonack, Cathy Goonack, Joseph Karadada, and Terrence Marnga. Moya Smith facilitated the inspection of ethnographic flintknapping tools and Kimberley Points held in the Western Australian Museum. Kim Newman and Yinika Perston helped prepare the figures. I thank Kim Akerman for his generosity and encouragement over many years; this study was greatly improved by comments by Kim, John Whittaker, and an anonymous reviewer. The author and field crew acknowledge the inspiration and support of the late Professor Mike Morwood.

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    Mark W. Moore

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Moore, M.W. Bifacial Flintknapping in the Northwest Kimberley, Western Australia. J Archaeol Method Theory 22, 913–951 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-014-9212-0

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