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The Mount William stone axe quarry is an
Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Islands ...
archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...
in
Central Victoria North Central Victoria is a rural region in the Australian state of Victoria. The region lies to the south of the Victorian/New South Wales border as defined by the Murray River, to the southwest of the Hume region, to the west of the Great Div ...
, Australia. It is located northeast of Lancefield, off Powells Track, north of
Romsey Romsey ( ) is a historic market town in the county of Hampshire, England. Romsey was home to the 17th-century philosopher and economist William Petty and the 19th-century British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, whose statue has stood in the t ...
and from
Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
. Known as ''Wil-im-ee Moor-ring'', meaning "axe place" in the
Woiwurrung The Woiwurrung, also spelt Woi Wurrung, Woiwurrong, Woiworung, Wuywurung, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin people, Kulin alliance. The Woiwurrung people's territory in Central Victoria (Austral ...
language, the greenstone quarry was an important source of raw material for the manufacture of greenstone ground-edge axes, which were traded over a wide area of south-east Australia.


Description

The Mount William Aboriginal stone axe quarry comprises the remains of hundreds of mining pits and the mounds of waste rock where Aboriginal people obtained greenstone (diabase), and manufactured stone blanks for axe heads. Chipped and ground stone axes or hatchets were an essential part of Aboriginal toolkits in southeast Australia, with the Mount William greenstone being one of the most prized and extensively traded materials. The stone was quarried from the source outcrops, and roughly flaked into blanks, then taken away for finer flaking and grinding the edge. There are 268 mining pits, 18 of which are several metres deep, surrounded by at least 34 discrete flaking floors, with mounds of debris up to 20 metres in diameter and some featuring a central outcropping rock used as an anvil. Mount William lies within one of six
Cambrian The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized C with bar, Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million ...
greenstone belts in Victoria where several other greenstone quarries have also been found including Mount Camel,
Howqua River The Howqua River, a minor inland perennial river of the Goulburn Broken catchment, part of the Murray-Darling basin, is located in the alpine region of the Australian state of Victoria. The headwaters of the Howqua River rise below Mount Howit ...
, Cosgrove, Jallukar, Berrambool and Baronga on the
Hopkins River The Hopkins River, a perennial river of the Glenelg Hopkins catchment, is located in the Western District of Victoria, Australia. Course and features The Hopkins River rises below Telegraph Hill near , and flows generally south, joined by twe ...
; and Ceres and Dog Rocks near
Geelong Geelong ( ) (Wathawurrung: ''Djilang''/''Djalang'') is a port city in the southeastern Australian state of Victoria, located at the eastern end of Corio Bay (the smaller western portion of Port Phillip Bay) and the left bank of Barwon River, ...
. However, none of the axes at Mount William have been ground and polished into finished hatchet heads. The nearest axe grinding grooves can be found at
Mount Macedon Mount Macedon ( Aboriginal Woiwurrung language: ''Geboor'' or ''Geburrh'') is a dormant volcano that is part of the Macedon Ranges of the Great Dividing Range, located in the Central Highlands region of Victoria, Australia. The mountain has ...
, about 29 kilometres away, where analysis of stone fragments showed they were the same diabase stone as the Mount William greenstone.


History

William Bradley appears to have been the first to describe the exchange of Mount William stone on 12 November 1838: In 1854
William Blandowski Johann Wilhelm Theodor Ludwig von Blandowski, known as William Blandowski (21 January 1822 – 18 December 1878), was a German explorer, soldier, zoologist and mining engineer of Polish roots, he is most famous for his exploration of the Murray an ...
, the first zoologist at the
Melbourne Museum The Melbourne Museum is a natural and cultural history museum located in the Carlton Gardens, Melbourne, Carlton Gardens in Melbourne, Australia. Located adjacent to the Royal Exhibition Building, the museum was opened in 2000 as a project of t ...
, visited Mount William and provided the first written description: ''The celebrated spot which supplies the natives with stone (phonolite) for their tomahawks, and of which I had been informed by the tribes 400 miles distant.…Having observed on the tops of these hills a multitude of fragments of stones which appeared to have been broken artificially.…Here I unexpectedly found the deserted quarries () of the aboriginals... which extend over an area of upwards of one hundred acres, present an appearance somewhat similar to that of a deserted goldfield, and convey a faithful idea of the great determination displayed by the aboriginals.'' William Buckley, described a hard black stone he called ''Kar-keen'' which was shaped into stone heads. In the 1880s prominent
Wurundjeri The Wurundjeri people are an Australian Aboriginal people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin nation. They are the Traditional Owners of the Birrarung (Yarra River) Valley, covering much of the present location of Narrm (Melbourne ...
leader and custodian of the quarry,
William Barak William Barak, named Beruk by his parents, (1823 – 15 August 1903), the "last chief of the Yarra Yarra tribe", was the last traditional ngurungaeta (elder) of the Wurundjeri-willam clan, the pre-colonial inhabitants of present-day Melbourne, A ...
(who probably witnessed the final operations at the quarry) described the traditional ownership and access conventions to ethnographer, Alfred Howitt. Organised excursions were popular in the early 1900s, as when the District Teachers Association organised an excursion in 1906 and the day was "proclaimed a public holiday in the Shire of Lancefield (sic), so that an opportunity will be afforded to all to be present." In the 1940s, Fred McCarthy identified a south-east Australia route associated with Mount William among his seven trunk-trade routes. In the 1960s and 1970s, Mt William drew the attention of anthropologists and archaeologists (notably including
Donald Thomson Donald Finlay Fergusson Thomson, OBE (26 June 1901 – 12 May 1970) was an Australian anthropologist and ornithologist who was largely responsible for turning the Caledon Bay crisis into a "decisive moment in the history of Aboriginal-Europea ...
and
Isabel McBryde Isabel McBryde (born 16 July 1934) AO is an Australian archaeologist and professor emerita at the Australian National University (ANU) and School Fellow, in the School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts. McBryde is credited with training "at ...
). McBryde's study of trade systems in the 1970s included investigation of the distribution of axes from Mount William and other quarries in Victoria and New South Wales drawing on ethno-historical sources, linguistic and archaeological evidence and petrological studies (using thin section analysis for axes from archaeological sites and stone sources), to reveal distribution trends and social value. McBryde showed Aboriginal exchange networks for Mount William stone extended several hundred kilometres. with distribution determined by the social and political relations between the Kulin and neighbouring groups: sparsely distributed or absent in south-eastern Victoria but more widely distributed in Western Victoria.


Management and conservation

Mount William had long been recognised as a special Aboriginal place when the first attempt was made to provide some formal protection in 1910. The Director of the
Museum of Victoria Museums Victoria is an organisation which operates three major state-owned museums in Melbourne, Victoria: the Melbourne Museum, the Immigration Museum and Scienceworks Museum. It also manages the Royal Exhibition Building and a storage faci ...
, Baldwin Spencer, sought to establish a committee in association with the
Historical Society of Victoria The Royal Historical Society of Victoria is a community organisation promoting the history of the state of Victoria, Australia. It functions to promote and research the history of that state after settlement, and as an umbrella organisation for ...
to purchase a portion of the area to form a reserve. However the landowner declined to sell. In 1917 Allan F. Cameron, Member for Dalhousie in the Victorian Parliament considered that: ''Something like twenty-five acres of land could be procured at a reasonable price, and fenced in, to be held for all time as the great historic landmark of Australia, furnishing the only indication or proof that we have that this country was inhabited for hundreds of years before the white man came here'', In 1918 Cameron sought an appropriation to purchase the land, and again in 1919. Then in 1921 Cameron reported to Parliament that ''a gentleman in Melbourne ffered300 pounds towards the purchase of that land as a reserve. He wished it to be handed over to the State or to some organisation.'' However, Cameron fell seriously ill shortly after and died in December 1923, so that no further action was taken. In 1969, the landowner, a Mr Powell, became concerned about damage to the site, and offered to sell a portion of CA 24 to the Shire of Romsey. The Shire obtained financial support from the Victorian government in 1971 and the title was transferred in 1972. In 1976, an archaeological area was declared under the Archaeological and Aboriginal Relics Preservation Act 1972 over the council-owned land and the adjoining privately owned CA 16A to the north. In 1997 the Shire of Romsey (now Macedon Ranges Shire Council) gifted their land to the Indigenous Land Corporation, which subsequently put the site under the management of the
Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation The Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation, previously the Wurundjeri Tribe Land and Compensation Cultural Heritage Council, is a Registered Aboriginal Party representing the Wurundjeri people, an Aboriginal Australian ...
, It has also been included on the
Register of the National Estate The Register of the National Estate was a heritage register that listed natural and cultural heritage places in Australia that was closed in 2007. Phasing out began in 2003, when the Australian National Heritage List and the Commonwealth Heritag ...
and the
Australian National Heritage List The Australian National Heritage List or National Heritage List (NHL) is a heritage register, a list of national heritage places deemed to be of outstanding heritage significance to Australia, established in 2003. The list includes natural and ...
. On October 23, 2012 ownership of the site was officially returned to the
Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation The Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation, previously the Wurundjeri Tribe Land and Compensation Cultural Heritage Council, is a Registered Aboriginal Party representing the Wurundjeri people, an Aboriginal Australian ...
.


Geographical location

* Mount William * Mount William south west * Mount William north east .


See also

*
Langdale axe industry The Langdale axe industry (or factory) is the name given by archaeologists to a Neolithic centre of specialised stone tool production in the Great Langdale area of the English Lake District. (For accompanying material seSupplement 1of same ...
*
Wurundjeri The Wurundjeri people are an Australian Aboriginal people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin nation. They are the Traditional Owners of the Birrarung (Yarra River) Valley, covering much of the present location of Narrm (Melbourne ...


Notes


References

* *Brough Smyth, R. (1876). "The Aborigines of Victoria: with notes relating to the habits of the natives of other parts of Australia and Tasmania" and compiled from various sources for the Government of Victoria. Melbourne: John Currey, O’Neil *Coutts, P.J.F. & Miller, R (1977). The Mt. William archaeological area. Melbourne: Victorian Archaeological Survey, Government Printer *Goodison, P (1996). Mount William Axe-Stone Quarry: management resource document. Unpublished document produced for the Heritage Services Branch, Aboriginal Affairs Victoria * * *McBryde, I & Harrison, G (1981). Valued good or valuable stone? Consideration of some aspects of the distribution of greenstone artefacts in southeastern Australia. In B.F. Leach and J. Davidson (eds), Archaeological Studies of Pacific Stone Resources, pp. 183–208. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. *McBryde, I & Paton, R (n.d.) Submission to the Australian Heritage Council in relation to the assessment of the Mount William Greenstone Axe Quarry nominated for the National Heritage List. Unpublished report. *McBryde, I. (1978). Wil-im-ee Moor-ring: Or, where do axes come from?: Stone axe distribution and exchange patterns in Victoria. Mankind 11(3):354-382. *McBryde, I (1984a) Exchange in south-east Australia: an ethnographic perspective. Aboriginal History. Vol. 8, no. 2:132-153 *McBryde, I (1984b). Kulin greenstone quarries: The social contexts of production and distribution for the Mount William site. World Archaeology 16(2): 267-285. *McBryde, I (2000). Continuity and discontinuity: Wurundjeri custodianship of Mt William quarry. In S Kleinert and M Neale (eds.) The Oxford companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture (pp. 247–251). Melbourne: Oxford University Press *McBryde, I & Watchman, A. (1976). The distribution of greenstone axes in southeastern Australia: A preliminary report. Mankind 10(3):163-174. *McBryde, I., Paton, R. & Potezny, V. (1993). Mount William Quarry Surveyed plan June 1993. Unpublished survey plan * *Mulvaney, D.J. & Calaby, J.H. (1985). So much that is new: Baldwin Spencer, 1860-1929: a biography: Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press *Mulvaney, D.J. & Kamminga, J. (1999). Prehistory of Australia. Crows Nest, Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd *Paton, R (2005). Trading places: changing social values of the Mt William Aboriginal stone quarry. In Macfarlane, I, Mountain, M and Paton, R (eds.) Many Exchanges: archaeology, history, community and the work of Isabel McBryde. Canberra: Aboriginal History Inc (271-286) *West, A.L. (1972). An Aboriginal axe-grinding rock near Mount Macedon, Victoria. Victorian Naturalist vol. 89: 198 – 200. {{Prehistoric technology Archaeological sites in Victoria (Australia) Paleoanthropological sites Australian National Heritage List Australian Aboriginal cultural history