A comparative study of early shell knife production using archaeological, experimental and ethnographic datasets: 46,000 years of Melo (Gastropoda: Volutidae) shell knife manufacture in northern Australia

We investigate archaeological evidence for the early production of Melo (or commonly named ‘baler’) shell knives recovered from Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene deposits in Boodie Cave, Barrow Island. The site is in the Country of Thalanyji people in northwestern Western Australia. The oldest shell knife fragments were recovered from units dated to 46.2–42.6 ka, making this one of the oldest Homo sapiens sapiens shell tool technologies currently described. We situate this early and ongoing tradition of shell tool manufacture within recent discussions of the early development of shell industries from both Island Southeast Asia and globally. Although shell knives have been previously reported from Pilbara and Gulf of Carpentaria surface middens in northern Australia, systematic analysis of the manufacturing process and associated debris, and especially from pre-Holocene contexts, has not been previously conducted. This research explores the shell knife chaîne opératoire through the integration of three data sets derived from archaeology, ethnography, and experimental archaeology. This study highlights the significance of shell tool industries in the northwest of Australia, and globally, from the Pleistocene and into the Late Holocene in areas with limited access to hard rock geology where shell reduction represents a unique technological strategy.