TRACING OCHRE
Researchers are tracing ochre used in rock art and traditional ceremonies back to WA’s historic Wilgie Mia ochre mine.
AG SOCIETY-supported scientists are improving techniques to identify ochre that came from central Western Australia’s Wilgie Mia mine, and nearby Little Wilgie mine. Wilgie Mia – one of the largest traditional ochre mines in Australia – provided ochre used by people across WA for ceremonial decoration and rock art for many thousands of years.
Roughly 19,600 cubic metres of rock, weighing about 40,000t, was removed from the mine, including red, yellow and green ochre. Some of this decorative material has been documented as far as 1600km away at the Nullarbor Plain, South Australia. It travelled via the most extensive precontact ochre trade network known.
A team of geologists, archaeologists and chemists from the University of Western Australia (UWA), CSIRO and Griffith University are working with Wajarri people to develop non-destructive techniques, such as X-ray fluorescence, to test ochre in rock art along the routes it followed.
Project coordinator Viviene Brown at UWA says these techniques have great potential for use at remote, culturally sensitive, sites and with fragile samples in museum collections. Despite Wilgie Mia’s significance, the mine has been poorly documented, she says. “While previous visits by geologists and geochemical analyses have identified a unique chemical fingerprint for Wilgie Mia and Little Wilgie, previous studies required bags of material be removed for laboratory analysis.” With refined techniques the experts hope to answer questions about the distance ochre travelled and when it became a valuable trade commodity.