Webb: Grinding patches on granite bedrock around Cue, WA 
Aboriginal Land and Sea Council, funded by Edith 
Cowan University (Webb & Gunn 2004). The grinding at 
all those sites is either natural weathering, hurley holes 
or axe sharpening grooves. These features are unlike the 
bedrock patches reported on here. I have also visited 
many granite outcrops in the Southwest that house 
gnammas, lizard traps and rock art (Webb & Gunn 2004). 
Grinding patches were not found at any of them, despite 
careful search. „ 
At present, the southernmost site where grinding 
patches on bedrock have been reported is Kockatea 
Gully, 5 km northwest of Mullewa (Goode 2002). No 
details of the grinding patches are given in the site file, 
however, nor can they be identified in the photograph. 
This site lies just east of the Darling Fault, which marks 
the western edge of the Yilgarn Craton. This huge 
expanse of Late Archaean granite stretches halfway to 
the South Australian border and from north of 
Meekatharra almost to the south coast (Myers & Hocking 
1988). Were grinding on bedrock dictated by geology, 
patches could be expected to occur wherever suitable 
bedrock is emergent; whereas, none are known on the 
southern half of the Yilgarn Craton. 
On the other hand, hundreds of sites with grinding 
have been reported in the Pilbara. The exact number is 
unclear because some sites are known to have been 
recorded (and registered) more than once as different 
sites. Fewer sites are known in the Kimberley and 
Western De.sert. 1 have not studied the files on any of 
these sites, so do not know at how many of them the 
grinding is bedrock patches, rather than portable 
grindstones. Nonetheless, the available data suggest that 
grinding patches on bedrock are a distinctively northern 
phenomenon. The possible reasons for this wilt now be 
explored. 
Cultural evidence for a north-south divide in rock art 
as a guide to understanding the distribution of 
grinding patches in Western Australia 
There is other archaeological evidence for a north- 
south divide. Davidson (1952) argued that the rock art of 
Western Australia could be divided into a number of 
geographical provinces. Stencils predominated in the 
south and west; line drawings, linear forms, surface 
painting and solid forms in the Kimberley. 'Emu tracks' 
were common everywhere except the Kimberley; while 
geometric designs were not found in the Kimberley or 
Southwestern Australia. He thought polychrome figures 
were a feature of northern sites, monochromes typical of 
southern sites; while linear forms were notably more 
complex in the Murchison region and most complex in 
the Kimberley. He said that pictograms and/or 
petroglyphs of animals and anthropomorphic figures 
were common in the north and almost absent in the 
south. He saw the Murchison as a transitional zone 
where handstencils predominated and petroglyphs were 
uncommon. 
Subsequent research around Cue has revised 
Davidson's scheme (Gunn et al. 1997; Gunn & Webb 
2000, 2002, 2003, 2006). Pictograms (chiefly handstencils) 
are widespread throughout the southern half of Western 
Australia, although the artwork of the Southwest is more 
complex than Davidson realised (Webb & Gunn 2004). 
Petroglyphs (pcckings and poundings) arc more common 
around Cue than Davidson thought. Half of all the 
artwork we have recorded is petroglyphic (Gunn & 
Webb 2006). Some of the motifs, pecked animal tracks 
and circles, can clearly be linked to the Panaramitee 
Tradition which is widely distributed across the 
Australian arid zone, and reaches its highest expression 
in the Pilbara (McNickle 1985). Panaramitee petroglyphs 
have been recorded 125 km northwest of Meekatharra 
(Stokoe 1959), 150 km southwest of Cue (Franklin 1992) 
and 70 km northwest of Cue (Gunn & Webb 2003), but 
arc unknown in the Southwest. Gunn & Webb (2002) 
considered the painted, pecked or pounded animal 
tracks, geometric elements and linear designs they 
recorded east of Cue not to be Panaramitee. Instead they 
attributed them to the Yarraquin Tradition, saying that 
pounding seemed to have developed from pecking. They 
concluded that stencilling preceded both those 
techniques. Stencilling also overlapped with both the 
Yarraquin Tradition and the large paintings at Walga 
Rock, 50 km west of Cue, which are related stylistically 
to Western Desert art (Gunn et al. 1997; Gunn & Webb 
2000 ). 
This brief summary of the rock art evidence suggests 
that the area around Cue is linked stylistically to both the 
Pilbara and the Western Desert and should perhaps be 
viewed as a southwestward extension of the traditions 
found in those semi-arid regions. It is also linked to the 
Southwest by stencilling, which is ubiquitous world¬ 
wide. 
The area around Cue may also be linked more 
closely to the Pilbara and Western Desert than to the 
Southwest by the diet and social customs of its 
occupants. Grinding on bedrock seems to be related to 
seed consumption, which played a large part in the 
diet of Aboriginal people living in arid and semi-arid 
Australia (Tindale 1977; Smith 1989). Tindale (1974) 
showed the area where grass seed flour was an 
important element in Aboriginal diet.s, his Panara 
culture, spreading across the inland Pilbara as far 
south as the area around Cue. He said the people of 
the Murchison region, who now call themselves Yamaji, 
'were the southwestern-most people to extensively 
exploit grass seeds and wet-grind them for the making 
of forms of bread' (Tindale 1974). The grinding patches 
on bedrock recently found around Cue support 
Tindale's contention that the Yamaji ground grass 
seeds; suggesting they were more closely linked socio¬ 
economically to people in the Pilbara than they were to 
the Noongar to the south. Noongar people did not grind 
grass seeds; they seem to have relied on tubers as their 
carbohydrate staple (Grey 1841; Meagher 1974). The 
Yamaji also ate tubers, of course (Webb 2000). 
By the time anthropologists began to study the Yamaji, 
they were following Western Desert initiation rites, 
circumcision and subincision, which Tindale (1974) 
thought spread into the Murchison from the Kimberley 
or Western Desert, just before the British arrived in 
Western Australia in the 1820s. These practices separated 
them from the coastal people to their west and the 
Noongar to their south whose initiation rites did not 
include either circumcision or subincision. The division 
between people who followed those practices and those 
who did neither appears to have been profound and 
acrimonious (Gibbs & Veth 2002). 
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