Cover not available
Part of
Land and Language in Cape York Peninsula and the Gulf Country
Edited by Jean-Christophe Verstraete and Diane Hafner
[Culture and Language Use 18] 2016
► pp. 105–136

Fission, fusion and syncretism

Linguistic and environmental changes amongst the Tangkic people of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria, Northern Australia

| University of Queensland
| University of Queensland
| James Cook University
| James Cook University
A revised model of Tangkic linguistic and cultural history is developed based on a reanalysis of relationships between six Tangkic languages in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria and drawing on recent archaeological and environmental studies. Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Tangkic basic vocabulary was employed to infer the topology of the Tangkic family tree and define structural branching events. Contrary to previous models suggesting progressive colonisation and fissioning from mainland sources, the data support hypotheses that the modern configuration of Tangkic owes its form to pulses of outward movement from Mornington Island followed by subsequent linguistic divergence in both grammar and lexicon of the varieties. We also speculate that an extreme environmental event (c.800–400 BP) may have flooded low-lying coastal areas resulting in abandonment of some areas, a relatively short co-residence involving cultural and linguistic syncretism between neighbouring groups and then recolonization.
Published online: 18 February 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clu.18.06mem
References (87)
8. References
Allen, Jim. 1984. Pots and poor princes: A multidimensional approach to the role of pottery trading in coastal Papua. In Sander Van der Leeuw & Alison Pritchard, eds. The Many Dimensions of Pottery, Ceramics in Archaeology and Anthropology. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. 406–473.Google Scholar
Binford, Lewis. 1983. In Pursuit of the Past: Decoding the Archaeological Record. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
. 2001. Constructing Frames of Reference: An Analytical Method for Archaeological Theory Building Using Ethnographic and Environmental Data Sets. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Blake, Barry. 1990. Languages of the Queensland/Northern Territory border: Updating the classification. In Peter Austin, R.M.W. Dixon, Tom Dutton & Isobel White, eds. Language and History: Essays in Honour of Luise A. Hercus. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. 49–66.Google Scholar
. 1991. The significance of pronouns in the history of Australian languages. In Philip Baldi, ed. Patterns of Change-Change of Patterns: Linguistic Change and Reconstruction Methodology. Berlin: de Gruyter. 219–234. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bronk Ramsey, Christopher. 2009. Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon dates. Radiocarbon 51: 337–360.Google Scholar
Chivas, Allan, Adriana Garcia, Sander van Der Kaars, Martine Couapel, Sabine Holt, Jessica Reeves, David Wheeler, Adam Switzer, Colin Murray-Wallace & Debabrata Banerjee. 2001. Sea-level and environmental changes since the last interglacial in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia: An overview. Quaternary International 83-85: 19–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Justice. 2004. The Lardil Peoples v State of Queensland [2004] FCA 298, Federal Court [Judgment], Brisbane, 23 March, 2004.
David, Bruno. 1991. Fern Cave, rock art and social formations: Rock art regionalisation and demographic changes in southeastern Cape York Peninsula. Archaeology in Oceania 26: 41–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
David, Bruno & Noelene Cole. 1990. Rock art and inter-regional interaction in northeastern Australian prehistory. Antiquity 64: 788–806. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dymock, John. 1993. “Something Deep and Rich” (Indigenous and Post Contact Environment and Heritage Materials Relevant to the Lawn Hill/Riversleigh District of Queensland. Report prepared for the Department of Environment and Heritage Queensland, August 1993.
Evans, Nicholas. 1985. A Grammar of Kayardild. With Historical-Comparative Notes on Tangkic. PhD Dissertation, Australian National University.Google Scholar
. 1990. The Minkin language of the Burketown region. In Geoffrey O’Grady & Darrell Tryon, eds. Studies in Comparative Pama-Nyungan. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. 173–207.Google Scholar
. 1992. Kayardild Dictionary and Thesaurus: A Vocabulary of the Language of the Bentinck Islanders, North-West Queensland. Parkville: University of Melbourne.Google Scholar
. 1995a. A Grammar of Kayardild. With Historical-Comparative Notes on Tangkic. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1995b. Multiple case in Kayardild: Anti-iconic suffix order and the diachronic filter. In Frans Plank, ed. Double Case: Agreement by Suffixaufnahme. New York: Oxford University Press. 396–428.Google Scholar
. 1998. Wellesley Islands Sea Claim: The Kaiadilt Group. [Native Title submission filed in Federal Court] Andrew Chalk and Associates, Solicitors, Sydney.
. 2005. East across a narrow sea: Micro-colonization and synthetic prehistory in the Wellesley Islands, Northern Australia. In Toshiki Osada, ed. Linguistics, Archaeology and the Human Past: Occasional Paper No. 1. Kyoto: Research Institute for Humanity and Nature: 9–39.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, Scott, John Erlandson, Atholl Anderson & Patrick Kirch. 2007. Straw boats and the proverbial sea: A response to ‘Island archaeology: In search of a new horizon’. Island Studies Journal 2: 229–238.Google Scholar
Furby, Edward & Christine Furby. 1977 A Preliminary Analysis of Garawa Phrases and Clauses. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
Gloe, C. & N. Weller. 1949. Water Resources of Mornington Island. Unpublished report to the Queensland Irrigation and Water Supply Commission, Brisbane, 1949.
Hale, Ken. 1973. Deep-surface canonical disparities in relation to analysis and change: An Australian example. In Tom Sebeok, ed. Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. XI: Diachronic, Areal and Typological Linguistics. The Hague: Mouton. 401–58.Google Scholar
Hale, Ken, Ann Farmer, David Nash & Jane Simpson. 1980. A Preliminary Dictionary of Lardil. Massachusetts: MIT.Google Scholar
Hall, Jay & Greg Bowen. 1989. An excavation of a midden complex at the Toulkerrie Oysterman’s lease, Moreton Island, SE Queensland. Queensland Archaeological Research 6: 3–27.Google Scholar
Hall, Jay & Peter Hiscock. 1988. The Moreton Regional Archaeological Project (MRAP) - Stage II: An outline of objectives and methods. Queensland Archaeological Research 5: 4–24.Google Scholar
Hanebuth Till, Karl Stattegger & Axel Bojanowski. 2009. Termination of the Last Glacial Maximum sea-level lowstand: the Sunda-Shelf data revisited. Global and Planetary Change 66: 76–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keen, Sandra. 1983. Yukulta. In R.M.W. Dixon & Barry Blake, eds. Handbook of Australian Languages. Volume 3. Canberra: Australian National University Press. 190–304.Google Scholar
Klokeid, Terry. 1976. Topics in Lardil Grammar. PhD Dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Lewis, Stephen, Craig Sloss, Colin Murray-Wallace, Colin Woodroffe & Scott Smithers. 2013. Post-glacial sea-level changes around the Australian margin: A review. Quaternary Science Reviews 74: 115–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Macknight, Campbell, ed. 1969 The Farthest Coast. A Selection of Writings Relating to the History of the Northern Coast of Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
McConvell, Patrick. 1981. How Lardil became accusative. Lingua 55: 141–179. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNiven, Ian. 1999 Fissioning and regionalisation: The social dimensions of changes in Aboriginal use of the Great Sandy Region, southeast Queensland. In Jay Hall & Ian McNiven, eds. Australian Coastal Archaeology. Canberra: Australian National University. 157–168Google Scholar
. 2003 Saltwater people: Spiritscapes, maritime rituals and the archaeology of Australian indigenous seascapes. World Archaeology 35: 329–349. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Memmott, Paul. 1979. Lardil Properties of Place, An Ethnological Study in Man-Environment Relations. PhD Dissertation, University of Queensland.Google Scholar
. 1982. The South Wellesley Islands and the Kaiadilt: A history and an analysis of the significance of the land and its people. Unpublished report, Aboriginal Data Archive, University of Queensland.
. 1998. Report on Sacred Sites in the Wellesley Islands [two volumes]. Paul Memmott & Associates, in association with the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre, Department of Architecture, University of Queensland, St Lucia, October (with assistance from Dr Nicholas Evans for South Wellesley Islands.) [restricted access]
. 2010. Material Culture of the North Wellesley Islands. Research Report Series Vol.8, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland, St Lucia. [monograph, 136pp]Google Scholar
Memmott, Paul, Nicholas Evans, Richard Robins & Ian Lilley. 2006. Understanding isolation and change in island human populations through a study of indigenous cultural patterns in Gulf of Carpentaria. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia 130: 29–47.Google Scholar
Memmott, Paul, Richard Robins & Errol Stock. 2008. What exactly is a fish trap? Methodological issues for the study of Aboriginal intertidal rock wall fish traps, Wellesley Islands region, Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia. In James Conolly & Matthew Campbell, eds. Comparative Island Archaeologies. Oxford: Archaeopress. 47–67.Google Scholar
Memmott, Paul, Erich Round & Daniel Rosendahl. 2014. The circulation and exchange of people, things and concepts in the Wellesley Islands, northern Australia: The Yangkaal Aboriginal people as an archipelagic trading broker. Unpublished manuscript. Aboriginal Environments Research Centre, University of Queensland. (Draft 31/11/14)
Mulvaney, John & Johan Kamminga. 1999. Prehistory of Australia. St Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
O’Brien, Michael, Mark Collard, Briggs Buchanan & Matthew Boulanger. 2013. Trees, thickets, or something in between? Recent theoretical and empirical work in cultural phylogeny. Israel Journal of Ecology & Evolution 59: 45–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oertle, Annette, Matthew Leavesley, Sean Ulm, Geraldine Mate & Daniel Rosendahl. 2014. At the margins: Archaeological evidence for Macassan activities in the South Wellesley Islands, Gulf of Carpentaria. Australasian Historical Archaeology 32: 64–71.Google Scholar
O’Grady, Geoffrey, Carl Voegelin & Florence Voegelin. 1966. Languages of the world: Indo-Pacific fascicle six. Anthropological Linguistics 8: 1–197.Google Scholar
Petherick, L., H. Bostock, T. Cohen, K. Fitzsimmons, J. Tibby, M.-S. Fletcher, P. Moss, J. Reeves, S. Mooney, T. Barrows, J. Kemp, J. Jansen, G. Nanson & A. Dosseto. 2013. Climatic records over the past 30ka from temperate Australia – A synthesis from the OZ-INTIMATE workgroup. Quaternary Science Reviews 74: 58–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reeves, J., A. Chivas, A. Garcia & P. De Deckker. 2007. Palaeoenvironmental change in the Gulf of Carpentaria (Australia) since the last interglacial based on Ostracoda. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 246: 163–187. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reeves, J., A. Chivas, A. García, S. Holt, M. Couapel, B. Jones, D. Cendon & D. Fink. 2008. The sedimentary record of palaeoenvironments and sea-level change in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia, through the last glacial cycle. Quaternary International 183: 3–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reimer, P., E. Bard, A. Bayliss, J. Beck, P. Blackwell, C. Bronk Ramsey, C. Buck, H. Cheng, R. Edwards, M. Friedrich, P. Grootes, T. Guilderson, H. Haflidason, I. Hajdas, C. Hatté, T. Heaton, D. Hoffmann, A. Hogg, K. Hughen, K. Kaiser, B. Kromer, S. Manning, M. Niu, R. Reimer, D. Richards, E. Scott, J. Southon, R. Staff, C. Turney & J. van der Plicht. 2013. INTCAL13 and MARINE13 radiocarbon age calibration curves 0-50,000 years cal BP. Radiocarbon 55: 1869–1887. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Renfrew, Colin. 1975. Trade as action at a distance: Questions of integration and communication. In Jeremy Sabloff & Carl Lamberg-Karlovsky, eds. Ancient Civilization and Trade. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 3–60.Google Scholar
Rick, John. 1987. Dates as data: An examination of the Peruvian Preceramic radiocarbon record. American Antiquity 52: 55–73. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robins, Richard. 1982. Report on a Preliminary Archaeological Reconnaissance of Sweers Island. Unpublished report to Queensland Museum, Brisbane.
. 1983. Gulf of Carpentaria Fish Trap Survey Summary. Unpublished report to Queensland Museum, Brisbane.
Robins, Richard, Errol Stock & David Trigger. 1998. Saltwater people, saltwater country: Geomorphological, anthropological and archaeological investigations of the coastal lands in the southern Gulf country of Queensland. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Cultural Heritage Series 1: 75–125.Google Scholar
Rosendahl, Daniel. 2012 The Way it Changes Like the Shoreline and the Sea: The Archaeology of the Sandalwood River, Mornington Island, Southeast Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia. PhD Dissertation, University of Queensland.Google Scholar
Rosendahl, Daniel, Sean Ulm, Helene Tomkins, Lynley Wallis & Paul Memmott. 2014a. Late Holocene changes in shellfishing behaviors from the Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 9: 253–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosendahl, Daniel, Kelsey Lowe, Lynley Wallis & Sean Ulm. 2014b. Integrating geoarchaeology and magnetic susceptibility at three shell mounds: A pilot study from Mornington Island, Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia. Journal of Archaeological Science 49: 21–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosendahl, Daniel, Sean Ulm, Craig Sloss, Lincoln Steinberger, Fiona Petchey, Geraldine Jacobson, Errol Stock & Richard Robins. 2015. Mid-Holocene Aboriginal occupation of offshore islands in northern Australia? A reassessment of Wurdukanhan, Mornington Island, southern Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia. Quaternary International 385: 145–153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ross, Malcolm. 1996. Contact-induced change and the comparative method: Cases from Papua New Guinea. In Mark Durie & Malcolm Ross, eds. The Comparative Method Reviewed: Regularity and Irregularity in Language Change. New York: Oxford University Press. 180–217.Google Scholar
. 2001. Contact-induced change in Oceanic languages in north-west Melanesia. In R.M.W. Dixon & Alexandra Aikhenvald, eds. Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance: Problems in Comparative Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 134–166.Google Scholar
. 2007. Calquing and metatypy. Journal of Language Contact 1: 116–143. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roughsey, Dick. 1971a. [Draft chapters of his book (Moon and Rainbow), and other notes and miscellaneous writings.] Fryer Library, University of Queensland, m/s.
. 1971b. Moon and Rainbow: The Autobiography of an Aboriginal. Sydney: Reed.Google Scholar
Round, Erich. 2009. Kayardild Morphology, Phonology and Morphosyntax. PhD Dissertation, Yale University.Google Scholar
. 2010. Syntactic reconstruction by phonology: Edge aligned reconstruction and its application to Tangkic truncation. In Rachel Hendery & Jennifer Hendriks, eds. Grammatical Change: Theory and Description. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. 65–81.Google Scholar
. 2011. Word final phonology in Lardil: Implications of an expanded data set. Australian Journal of Linguistics 31: 327–350. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. Kayardild Morphology and Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 2014. A description of Ganggalida grammar. In Cassy Nancarrow (compiler). Gangalidda Dictionary and Thesaurus: A vocabulary of the Yugulda language of the Gangalidda people, North-West Queensland. Burketown: Carpentaria Land Council.Google Scholar
. Forthc. Apical obstruents in pre-proto-Tangkic and the origins of the non-zero absolutive. Berkeley Linguistics Society 32.
. In prep. The Eastern Tangkic hypothesis. University of Queensland, St Lucia [manuscript].
Round, Erich & Paul Memmott. 2014. South across a shallow sea: An integrated model of the Tangkic language family in the late Holocene. Paper presented at AAA Conference, Cairns, December 2014.
Rowland, Michael & Sean Ulm. 2011. Indigenous fish traps and weirs of Queensland. Queensland Archaeological Research 14: 1–58.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. 1972. Stone Age Economics. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton.Google Scholar
Sullivan, M. 1996. Northern Australian landscapes. In Peter Veth & Peter Hiscock, eds. Archaeology of Northern Australia. St Lucia: University of Queensland. 1–8.Google Scholar
Tindale, Norman. 1960. Bentinck and Mornington Islands, Queensland. [Journal of Field Trip], South Australian. Museum.
. 1962a. Some population changes among the Kaiadilt people of Bentinck Island, Queensland. Records of the South Australian Museum 2: 297–319.Google Scholar
. 1962b. Geographic knowledge of the Kaiadilt People of Bentinck Island, Queensland. Records of the South Australian Museum 2: 259–296.Google Scholar
. 1963. Journal of a visit to Gulf of Carpentaria. South Australian Museum.
. 1974. Aboriginal Tribes of Australia. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Torgersen, T., M. Hutchinson, D. Searle & H. Nix. 1983. General bathymetry of the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Quaternary physiography of Lake Carpentaria. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 41: 207–225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trigger, David. 1992. Whitefella Comin’. Aboriginal Responses to Colonialism in Northern Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ulm, Sean. 2011. Coastal foragers on southern shores: Marine resource use in northeast Australia since the late Pleistocene. In Nuno Bicho, Jonathan Haws & Loren Davis, eds. Trekking the Shore: Changing Coastlines and the Antiquity of Coastal Settlement. New York: Springer. 441–461. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. 'Complexity' and the Australian continental narrative: Themes in the archaeology of Holocene Australia. Quaternary International 285: 182–192. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ulm, Sean, Nick Evans, Daniel Rosendahl, Paul Memmott & Fiona Petchey. 2010. Radiocarbon and linguistic dates for occupation of the South Wellesley Islands, northern Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 45: 39–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ulm, Sean, Fiona Petchey, Geraldine Jacobsen & Daniel Rosendahl. In prep. Pre-bomb marine radiocarbon reservoir variability in the eastern Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland, Australia. Queensland Archaeological Research.
Ulm, Sean & Jay Hall. 1996. Radiocarbon and cultural chronologies in southeast Queensland prehistory. In Sean Ulm, Ian Lilley & Anne Ross, eds. Australian Archaeology ’95: Proceedings of the 1995 Australian Archaeological Association Annual Conference. St Lucia: University of Queensland. 45–62.Google Scholar
Williams, Alan, Sean Ulm, Ian Goodwin & Mike Smith. 2010. Hunter-gatherer response to late Holocene climatic variability in northern and central Australia. Journal of Quaternary Science 25: 831–838. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Williams, Alan, Sean Ulm, Chris Turney, David Rohde and Gentry White. 2015. Holocene demographic changes and the emergence of complex societies in prehistoric Australia. Plos One 10(6): e0128661. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (10)

Cited by ten other publications

Lambrides, Ariana B. J., Kane Ditchfield, Sean Ulm & Peter Veth
2024. A Moving Feast. In The Oxford Handbook of Island and Coastal Archaeology, DOI logo
Rowland, Michael J., Ariana B. J. Lambrides, Ian J. McNiven & Sean Ulm
2024. Great Barrier Reef Indigenous archaeology and occupation of associated reef and continental islands. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
McCarthy, John, Chelsea Wiseman, Katherine Woo, David Steinberg, Michael O’Leary, Daryl Wesley, Liam M. Brady, Sean Ulm & Jonathan Benjamin
2022. Beneath the Top End: A regional assessment of submerged archaeological potential in the Northern Territory, Australia. Australian Archaeology 88:1 ► pp. 65 ff. DOI logo
Rowland, Michael, Ben Shaw & Sean Ulm
2021. Maritime Coastal and Island Societies of Australia and New Guinea. In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea, ► pp. 773 ff. DOI logo
Mackenzie, Lydia, Patrick Moss & Sean Ulm
2020. A late-Holocene record of coastal wetland development and fire regimes in tropical northern Australia. The Holocene 30:10 ► pp. 1379 ff. DOI logo
Moss, Patrick T., Sean Ulm, Lydia Mackenzie, Lynley A. Wallis, Daniel Rosendahl & Lincoln Steinberger
2019. Robust local vegetation records from dense archaeological shell matrixes: a palynological analysis of the Thundiy shell deposit, Bentinck Island, Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 11:2 ► pp. 511 ff. DOI logo
Brigg, Morgan, Paul Memmott, Philip Venables & Berry Zondag
2018. Gununa peacemaking. Social & Legal Studies 27:3 ► pp. 345 ff. DOI logo
Sloss, Craig R, Luke Nothdurft, Quan Hua, Shoshannah G O’Connor, Patrick T Moss, Daniel Rosendahl, Lynda M Petherick, Rachel A Nanson, Lydia L Mackenzie, Alison Sternes, Geraldine E Jacobsen & Sean Ulm
2018. Holocene sea-level change and coastal landscape evolution in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia. The Holocene 28:9 ► pp. 1411 ff. DOI logo
Mackenzie, Lydia, Henk Heijnis, Patricia Gadd, Patrick Moss & James Shulmeister
2017. Geochemical investigation of the South Wellesley Island wetlands: Insight into wetland development during the Holocene in tropical northern Australia. The Holocene 27:4 ► pp. 566 ff. DOI logo
Twaddle, Robin W, Craig R Sloss, Kelsey M Lowe, Patrick Moss, Lydia L Mackenzie & Sean Ulm
2017. Short-term late Holocene dry season occupation and sandy-mud flat focused foraging at Murdumurdu, Bentinck Island, Gulf of Carpentaria. Queensland Archaeological Research 20 ► pp. 9 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.