Indigenous rangers join West Australian archeologists to uncover ancient artifacts

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Archaeologists have been trying to study an underwater frontier of submerged heritage sites and artefacts off western Australia’s coast. They date back 65,000 years when sea levels were lower and the continent was bigger. Landline's Charlie McLean looks at new technology that's bolstering an area of archaeology that's still in its infancy.

Transcript

00:01At the edge of an ancient landscape, these waters have secrets in their depths.

00:10This crew is headed offshore. Their search is taking them below the waves.

00:16We're going to recover stuff with a GPS and take photographs that will help log our position.

00:23If you told me I'd be doing this work two years ago, I would have laughed in your face.

00:3265,000 years ago, this seabed would have been part of the Australian landmass.

00:39It was drowned at the end of the last ice age, with global sea levels rising as glaciers melted.

00:45But remnants of ancient human civilisation are still here, and they're being recorded for the first time.

00:50Since 2019, Dr John McCarthy has been leading the search.

00:57There's only ever been two submerged subtitle Aboriginal archaeological sites mapped in Australia.

01:05Those were found by our team here.

01:07The traditional custodians of the peninsula call it Moradjuga.

01:12So far, its surrounding waters have yielded a trove of stone tools dating back around 7,000 years.

01:18Not for scraping. It might be for cutting.

01:24And because it's this material, I'd say it'd be skinning.

01:29Or cutting the skin off a hide or something, you know?

01:33Vince Adams is an Injibandi man.

01:36One of five language groups with connections to Moradjuga.

01:39And one of several local knowledge holders who help classify each tool.

01:43We've been practising for years on land, this culture.

01:45Now it's underwater.

01:48This year, the project set another first.

01:53Never before have local indigenous rangers done this kind of survey work.

01:59We spent the last year and a bit sort of training underwater.

02:03First start off with pool dives, and it's a big jump up to actually get out in the water.

02:07Swimming beside the divers is a remote operated vehicle, or ROV.

02:19It's basically a drone that goes underwater.

02:23It's on a tether, so it's on a reel, and can go hundreds of metres distant and deep.

02:29It's one of several pieces of gear helping survey areas the divers can't.

02:35A lot of what we do in our university is we explore emerging and cutting edge technologies.

02:41Things like bathymetric lidar, lasers from planes.

02:45Things like photogrammetry for 3D mapping of sites.

02:48We're using large orthomosaics of the seabed to try and map out stone tools.

02:52The researchers hope that mapping these sites will be the key to protecting them.

03:00The Muradjuga coast intersects with the Carnarvon Basin, home to the country's largest gas reserves.

03:05And Mr McCarthy says it is important any future pipelines or offshore platforms aren't built without knowing what they might be disturbing.

03:12Thank you, Derby.

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