Organizing the manufacture of Bondi points at Balmoral Beach, Middle Harbour, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

Abstract

Analysis of the stone artefact assemblage excavated from a stratified midden in a sandstone rockshelter at Balmoral Beach in Middle Harbour, Sydney, has revealed various strategies were adopted in manufacturing asymmetric backed artefacts, also known as Bondi points. The irregular morphology of many Bondi points and the small size of most in this assemblage suggest a need to economize and improvise, which we propose was due to the relatively limited availability of suitable stone materials in coastal Sydney. It was not only a question of distance to source and access but of abundance--there are few sources of suitable stone close to Balmoral Beach. The documented technological organization shows that people at Balmoral Beach were creatively backing flakes in several different ways to produce Bondi points with standardized width and thickness--length of the complete Bondi points was seemingly not as important. This observation, combined with the evidence that some broken Bondi points were re-worked, is discussed in the context of reliability and maintainability, design principles that may have been adopted for their manufacture.

Keywords: Balmoral Beach, Sydney, hacked artefacts, manufacturing, reliability, maintainability

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Excavations in an Aboriginal shell midden at Balmoral Beach in Middle Harbour, Sydney, revealed an abundant flaked stone assemblage in which backed artefacts were a dominant tool type. Much archaeological debate in Australia has focused on backed artefacts--particularly where and when they were first made, their naming, characteristics and distribution (e.g. Wieneke and White 1973; Pearce 1977; Hiscock and Attenbrow 1998, 2004; Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999:234-35; Hiscock 2002). Other studies have described general manufacturing technology (e.g. Flenniken and White 1985) or more detailed strategies in stone rich areas such as the Hunter Valley (Hiscock 1986, 1993; Moore 2000). In addition, the concept that the late Holocene proliferation of backed artefacts was associated with reducing 'risk'--when colonizing new environments or at times of climatic/environmental change--has been examined (Hiscock 1994; Attenbrow 2004:238-41).

Our study investigates whether the manufacture of backed artefacts at Balmoral Beach was influenced by the choice of particular design principles. The study was prompted by the initial examination of the backed artefacts here which indicated that many had irregular morphologies and that on average they were relatively small in size compared to other assemblages of backed artefacts in the Sydney region.

The geographical distribution, quality, accessibility and abundance of stone is said to have influenced the way people organized themselves in a particular environment (Bamforth 1992:131-33), and there was thus a fundamental link between the availability of stone and the way it was worked. If so, this should be apparent in stone artefact assemblages in coastal Sydney, which could be described as a relatively stone-poor environment (see below). (In this study, we define the coastal zone as that part of the country that includes the ocean and estuarine shorelines; this includes land that extends back from the coastline for a distance of ~30 km.) The influence of raw material availability may be evident in the strategies and techniques employed, as well as the adaptability and creativity seen in the use of the stone--in whatever form it was available--to make backed artefacts, in particular Bondi points. In this paper, we explore the technological strategies behind the manufacture of backed artefacts, as well as the design principles (also referred to as design variables and design criteria) that may have influenced their morphology, and the known sources of raw materials used for making flaked stone tools at Balmoral Beach 2. In the analysis, we focus on establishing how cores were worked and how backed artefacts were manufactured. Before doing so, however, we describe the site and the flaked stone assemblage.