Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, 90(3), September 2007 
found on the patches described here. Keeley (1980) 
showed that gloss visible to the naked eye develops very 
rapidly and is durable. It is also unmistakable. 1 did not 
see it on any of the bedrock patches found around Cue. 
These patches were all quite hard to see, except under 
oblique lighting, being mainly detected by touch. Lantzke 
(1990) did not mention finding striae or silica gloss on 
any of the grindstones he studied from around Shark 
Bay, either. While gloss was not the focus of his research, 
had it been present, he could hardly have failed to notice 
it and ought to have mentioned it. 
Gorecki & Grant (1994) suggested that the need to 
transfer the paste produced by wet milling into a 
container where it could be moulded into damper 
restricts the shape and location of grinding patches on 
bedrock: some sort of lip is required at one end of the 
patch to enable the grinder to scoop up the paste. None 
of the patches described above have such features; they 
are simply smoothed areas, sometimes barely 
distinguishable from the surrounding bedrock. If Gorecki 
& Grant (1994) are correct, the patches reported on here 
were probably not used for wet milling grass seeds, but 
for the other tasks for which grindstones are known to 
have been used (Gould 1969, 1980; Yohe ef al. 1991; 
Balme et al. 2001): pounding hard seeds, pulverising 
small animals or grinding ochre. 
Conclusion 
The grinding patches on bedrock discussed above 
seem to document a southward extension of an aspect of 
Aboriginal life that is well-documented in the Pilbara and 
further north. This link between the area around Cue 
and the Pilbara is paralleled by some other types of 
evidence, especially rock art and the presence at one site 
of petroglyphs flanking the grinding patches. It is 
concluded that the people living around Cue were more 
closely linked culturally to those occupying inland 
northern Australia than they were to those living on the 
Indian Ocean coast or in the Southwest. 
Acknowledgements: R.G. (ben) Gunn drew the original site plans and took 
the photographs during fieldwork we undertook jointly between 1999 and 
2004 with funds provided by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and 
Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra (grant nos. 6175, 6542, 6544 and 
6804) to Thoo Thoo Warninha Aboriginal Corporation in Cue. Both 
organisations are thanked for their support of our research. Ben is not 
responsible for the arguments advanced above, however. Alana Kossi 
redrew most of the figures. Jodee Smith drew Figure 8 from data supplied 
by Tanya Butler (Department of Indigenous Affairs). The final version of 
this paper benefitted greatly from critical comments made on earlier drafts 
by Caroline Bird, Sylvia Hallam and two anonymous referees. 
Figure 9. Two grindstones (photos RG Gunn): one with two 
grooves, one much deeper than the other, the other flat with a 
secondary dish. 
be argued that the deeper groove in Figure 9 (top) had 
been abandoned for the shallower one, which is 20 mm 
deep. 
Gorecki & Grant (1994) noted that some of the bedrock 
patches they recorded in northwestern Queensland had 
striae and carried traces of silica gloss, compatible with 
grass seed processing. If the people living around Cue 
were grinding grass seeds, silica gloss might have been 
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