When the Foreign Becomes Familiar: The Glass Bead Assemblage from Madjedbebe, Northern Australia
Litster, Mirani, Wallis, Lynley, and Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation (2024) When the Foreign Becomes Familiar: The Glass Bead Assemblage from Madjedbebe, Northern Australia. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 34 (3). pp. 421-438.
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Abstract
By investigating the materiality of colonial encounters, specifically the consumption of introduced commodities by Indigenous peoples, archaeologists can explore questions concerning value, agency, consumer choice and localization. This has the significant capacity to broaden understandings of intercultural encounters and challenge colonial narratives. Glass beads represent one of the earliest foreign material culture introductions to the Indigenous peoples of Australia. The rock-shelter site of Madjedbebe, best known for yielding the oldest evidence to date for human occupation in Australia, also contains one of the largest assemblages from an Indigenous site context in Australia—51 glass beads and associated fragments. We present here an analysis of these objects—through attribute and microwear analysis—in concert with the archival record, to reveal the ways in which Bininj (Aboriginal people) incorporated glass beads into their own lifeways.
| Item ID: | 81721 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1474-0540 |
| Keywords: | Madjedbebe; glass beads; cross-cultural encounters |
| Copyright Information: | Copyright © 2024, Cambridge University Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. You are not required to obtain permission to reuse this article. |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Apr 2024 03:39 |
| FoR Codes: | 45 INDIGENOUS STUDIES > 4501 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, language and history > 450101 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander archaeology @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 21 INDIGENOUS > 2104 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage and culture > 210401 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artefacts @ 100% |
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