Researchers are working with a group of First Nations Australians in a race against time, and some of the roughest terrain on Earth, to document ancient art in the bark of Australia's boab trees.
Carvings in the boab trees tell the stories of the King Brown Snake (or Lingka) Dreaming in a remote area of the Tanami desert, which straddles the border of Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
After more than two years of fieldwork, the research team from The Australian National University (ANU), The University of Western Australia and University of Canberra, working alongside five Traditional Owners, found 12 trees with carvings. Researcher Professor Sue O'Connor, from the ANU School of Culture, History and Language, said many of the carved trees are already several hundreds of years old and there is some urgency to produce high-quality recordings before these remarkable heritage trees die.1
- 1. "Unlike most Australian trees, the inner wood of boabs is soft and fibrous and when the trees dies, they just collapse," Professor O'Connor said. "Sadly, after lasting centuries if not millennia, this incredible artwork, which is equally as significant as the rock art Indigenous Australians are famous for, is now in danger of being lost.
Sue O'Connor, Jane Balme, Ursula Frederick, Brenda Garstone, Rhys Bedford, Jodie Bedford, Anne Rivers, Angeline Bedford, Darrell Lewis. Art in the bark: Indigenous carved boab trees (Adansonia gregorii) in north-west Australia. Antiquity, 2022; 1 DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2022.129
Found only in a restricted area of north-west Australia, the Australian boab (Adansonia gregorii) is recognisable by its massive, bottle-shaped trunk, and is an economically important species for Indigenous Australians, with the pith, seeds and young roots all eaten. Many of these trees are also culturally significant and are sometimes carved with images and symbols. The authors discuss the history of research into carved boabs in Australia, and present a recent survey to locate and record these trees in the remote Tanami Desert. Their results provide insight into the archaeological and anthropological significance of dendroglyphs in this region and add to a growing corpus of information on culturally modified trees globally.
