If it happened today, it would be a brutal murder; 4000 years ago, it was a ritual killing.
The discovery of the body of an Aboriginal man from that time who was attacked, set alight and abandoned on a coastal dune is the first archaeological evidence in Australia for death by spearing. The body was found beneath a Sydney bus shelter by a team led by archaeologist Josephine McDonald of the Australian National University in Canberra.
The man seems to have been wounded by at least three spears and an axe, and from the front as well as behind. This, plus the fact he was left unburied, contrary to custom, point to a ritual killing rather than death from a fight, says McDonald.
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Ritual punishments of varying severity, depending on the transgression, are known to have been a part of Aboriginal culture. The first Europeans to reach Australia described barbed 鈥渄eath spears鈥� used for this purpose.
McDonald鈥檚 team found 17 small, flaked stone artefacts around the man鈥檚 body, and three embedded in or between bones. All but two were flat-backed with sharp points. Other research on death spears leads them to think each spear used to kill the man had four or five such stones, attached with resin in a cluster near the tip ().
Around the time the man died, rising sea levels would have been pushing people inland, says McDonald. Production of such weapons peaked around then, possibly to deal with infractions resulting from increased social pressure, she suggests.
