326 EXPLORATION OF ABORIGINAL ROCK-SHELTERS, 



very low (except at the extreme edge it is impossible to stand 

 upright) and it, is not so large as the second gunyah (B) on 

 Cabbage Tree Creek, but the contents prove it to have been once 

 a permanent camp — as far as any aboriginal dwelling can be 

 considered permanent — and not, like the others examined, shelters 

 used only whilst shell-fish were plentiful near at hand. 



Not that shells are scarce in this Little Jibbon gunj-ah, for, on 

 the contrary, a list of the shells heaped up here would, I think, be 

 a list of all the edible shell-fish of Port Hacking. Shells which are 

 extremely scarce in, or altogether absent from, the other gunyahs 

 are here in abundance. 



The floor of this shelter is further differentiated from the others 

 in that it contains an immense number of bones of fish, birds, 

 and small marsupials scattered amongst the shells. All the 

 larger of these bones exhibit plainly the markings of teeth, and 

 some also show cuts evidently made with some sharp instrument 

 such as a stone knife, perhaps by the women in an effort to 

 obtain a little meat from the usually well-picked bones thrown 

 them by their partners. This floor, as the preceding two, had 

 been disturbed.* That this first exploration was not thorough 



* Note. — And I wish here to protest against the unsystematic way in 

 which some explorers excavate these deposits. It is quite easy to open at 

 one end of the shelter and work onwards, throwing the material back on 

 the ground previously examined — or if the deposit be very large and the 

 time at the disposal of the explorer short, then a face may be opened at 

 the outermost edge in the most likely spot and a cutting reaching to the 

 floor made right through to the back wall, the material removed being 

 thrown well outside, so that two faces are left clear for future operations. 

 Human remains are not to be expected in the lowest layer, but implements 

 such as stone hatches, knives, &c., may be met with even on the rock floor. 

 Neither of these methods was adopted by the first explorers of the shelter 

 I now refer to, but holes a foot or two in diameter have been sunk here 

 and there and shallow trenches run along the floor, the material rejected 

 being heaped above the portions not examined. In addition to greatly 

 increasing the work of the more thorough explorer, such a method as this 

 has other serious disadvantages. For instance, it is always desirable to 

 carefully uncover the whole skeleton and study the nature of the interment 



