Image Credit: Lee Wilkes/Queensland Museum

Rock Art Site Preserves 1700 Years of String Craft

In the remote heart of Quinkan Country in Cape York Peninsula, Australia, archaeologists have uncovered an extraordinary rock shelter that preserves more than 1,700 years of Aboriginal fibre-craft traditions. The site, known as Windmill Way, lies far from modern roads and was reached through rugged woodland with guidance from Kuku Warra Traditional Owners. Its dry and sheltered conditions created a rare environment where organic materials — normally lost to time — survived intact.
Excavated in 2022, Windmill Way yielded more than 500 fragments of string and string-made objects crafted from plant fibres. Although Aboriginal people continued using the shelter well into the late 19th century, radiocarbon dating shows that the oldest string pieces were created about 1,700 years ago, while charcoal from ancient hearths dates back more than 2,000 years. The finds span generations, ending only when colonisation, disease, police patrols and pastoral expansion devastated local communities in the late 1800s.
Despite fragmentation, many objects could be identified by comparing them with 19th- and early 20th-century fibre artefacts held by the Queensland Museum. Numerous pieces came from dillybags — practical woven carriers used by men, women and children. Others belonged to nets that may have been used to catch birds as well as fish, while rarer fragments appear to be remnants of ceremonial tassel belts or mourning necklaces. Even bundles of prepared bark survive, capturing early stages of string production and suggesting the shelter functioned as a kind of string-making workshop.
The site’s rock art adds another layer to the story. Vivid Quinkan-style paintings depict dillybags, tassel belts, mourning strings and headbands, offering direct visual evidence of the same fibre objects preserved on the floor below. The art and artefacts together demonstrate remarkable continuity in craft traditions that endured for nearly two millennia.
With much of Cape York now protected in national parks and being considered for World Heritage listing, Windmill Way stands as powerful evidence of the region’s cultural significance and the resilience of Aboriginal knowledge passed down across countless generations.

Published on: 20-11-2025

Source: The Conversation