Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Seafood

The middens in the caves at Rocky Cape contained fish in all layers before 3,500 years ago. After this time there is no evidence of fish-eating, not only at Rocky Cape, but throughout Tasmania. At the time of first contact and in the early days of colonisation it was commented on by observers that the Tasmanian Aboriginal People seemed to not regard fish as human food. There were no nets or fish-hooks that are known to be used by the Aboriginal People here. It was suggested that the Tasmanian Aboriginal People never ate fish because their isolation from the rest of the world prevented them from learning how to catch fish.

This idea was challenged for the first time when fish bones were discovered in the lower layers of the Rocky Cape middens. In the midden in Rocky Cape South fish are present, 3196 being found in the layers between 8,000 years ago and 3,800 years ago, the lower half of the deposit. A single fish vertebra has been found in the upper half of the deposit.

The fish of Rocky Cape South Cave have been studied by a palaeontologist specialising in fish. The fish studied proved to consist of 31 species of fish from rocky reefs, bays and estuaries, that were probably caught in baited box traps on rocky reefs and by tidal traps that were constructed from boulders, an example of which is seen 6 km to the east at Sisters Beach.

Shellfish continued to be eaten from the earliest to the latest occupation of the caves, warreners were the main type, with some abalone. They were also eating fur seals, elephant seals, probably young ones, and some wallabies and birds, mostly cormorants, and other land mammals.

It has been suggested that these caves were occupied for a week or 2 each year in winter, the season in  which the Aboriginal People were known in historic times to have split up into small groups, moving along the coast living mainly on the plentiful shellfish at this most difficult time of year in such a cold climate where many other foods would have been less abundant.

8 km to the east of Rocky Cape there is another sea cave, Blackman's Cave, on Sisters Creek. The cessation of fish eating is also documented at this cave.

The reason for the change from eating fish to not eating them that occurred all over Tasmania has been unknown for a long time. It has been suggested that a reason could be that the Tasmanian population switched to hunting more concentrated energy foods such as seals and mutton birds, with their high fat content, this being more efficient than expending energy catching fish that were low in fat. In the cold climate of Tasmania it would have made good sense to concentrate on food sources that had higher energy density.

It has been suggested that the fish found in the earlier layers of the occupation sites in Tasmania, that were mostly, if not all, of a small size, may have    been fish that were actually the stomach contents of marine mammals such as seals that were known to be hunted (Taylor, 2010).

A study by Robin Sim of a number of middens at occupation sites on Furneaux Island in Bass Strait has shown that the type of shellfish being eaten changed between 3,500m and 3,000 years ago. Prior to this change the molluscs being eaten were species that could be collected by wading, but after the change the species hunted shifted to many that could only be found below the low tide mark by diving.

Warreners and limpets, and to a lesser extent periwinkles, some mussels and the occasional abalone, were the types being collected prior to about 4,000 years ago, but about 3.500 years ago there is a switch to mainly abalone and crayfish, as seen in the middens.

Sources & Further reading

1. Flood, Josephine, 2004, Archaeology of the Dreamtime, JB Publications.
2. Taylor, Timothy, 2010, The artificial Ape: How technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution, Palgrave Macmillan