Some observations on the material culture of Aboriginal fishing in the Moreton Bay area: implications for archaeology

Assessments of suites of material culture items have often been used to characterize various aspects of human behaviour and cultural development. This has particularly been the case with regard to assessments of prehistoric fisheries (e.g. Anell 1955, Reinman 1967, Kirch 1982, Colley 1983:4-7). This paper presents some observations on the material culture of Aboriginal fishing in and around Moreton Bay, southeast Queensland, which derive from written and oral history relating to the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They allow implications to be drawn about the way the fishery may have operated in the prehistoric period.