What evidence is there of Aboriginal trade networks?

Evidence of Aboriginal trade networks across Australia is extensive and comes from archaeological discoveries, anthropological research, and oral history. Trade operated across vast distances, with items, ideas, songs, and ceremony moving between Aboriginal nations through established routes that often follow songlines or dreaming tracks across the continent.

Specific traded items have been identified at great distances from their sources. Pearl shell from the Kimberley coast has been found at archaeological sites in central Australia and Cape York Peninsula, thousands of kilometres from the source. Pituri (a native tobacco made from Duboisia plants) was produced in south-west Queensland and traded across central and northern Australia. Ochre from specific mines (including Wilgie Mia in Western Australia and Bookartoo near Lake Eyre) was traded for tools, weapons, and ceremonial objects. Stone axe heads from quarries at Mount William in Victoria and Hardham Quarry in central Queensland were traded across hundreds of kilometres of country.

Trade routes followed water and food. Major routes ran along the coast of Cape York to the Kimberley, across the Centre from the desert to the eastern drainage, and down the river systems of the Murray-Darling Basin. The trade was conducted through ceremonial gatherings called corroborees, family-to-family exchanges along established songlines, and seasonal meetings at specific places. Indigenous trading partners often spoke different languages, requiring multilingualism among traders and the development of trade languages and sign systems.

International trade also operated. Macassan trepangers from Sulawesi (in modern Indonesia) sailed to the Arnhem Land coast for centuries before British settlement (from at least the early 1700s), trading with the Yolngu people for trepang (sea cucumber). The exchanges left lasting cultural impressions on Yolngu language, song, and material culture, with words from Makassarese and Buginese absorbed into Yolngu Matha. Torres Strait Islanders traded with Papuan and other Melanesian neighbours across the strait. These pre-European international exchanges show that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had been engaging with the wider world long before Captain Cook's 1770 east-coast voyage and the First Fleet's 1788 arrival.