Flinders University researchers say they have identified ceremonial Moluccan boats in rock art in north-western Arnhem Land, and those craft were most likely linked to trade, fishing, resource exploitation, head hunting or slavery.

A media statement from the university archaeologists said the drawings depicting ships from the Maluku Islands (previously known as the Moluccas, in Indonesia) were likely ‘fighting craft‘, unlike previously identified vessels in rock art.

And the discoveries provided new insight into how Indigenous people related with foreign travellers before colonisation.

“This new evidence of elusive and previously unrecorded encounters between Indigenous people from Awunbarna, also known as Mount Borradaile – in Arnhem Land, and visitors from the Moluccas to the north of Australia,” a media statement said.

Ass Prof van Duivenvoorde said Mount Borradaile’s rock shelters abound with images of European ships, guns, fish, prawns and macropods but since the 1970s, two specific images of boats have stood out as different to archeologists.

In their findings published in the journal History Archaeology, lead researcher Dr Mick de Ruyter said the new findings deepen Australia’s understanding of how its first people interacted with foreigners.

Prof Wesley said they believed boats in the paintings were Moluccan fighting crafts, because of the way they were decorated with pennants and flags and other elements that set them apart from usual trading or fishing vessels previously identified from Macassar, Indonesia that came to trade, and later, the ships of European colonists.

The Moluccan fighting vessels in the paintings are also likely linked to resource exploitation, headhunting or slavery, and the presence of such vessels implies instances of physical violence or at least a projection of power, he said.

“Just these two craft suddenly add another dimension to the sphere of the interaction of northern Australia. That Australia is not just some sort of land that’s on its own, in the middle of nowhere and is cut off for 65,000 years from everywhere else,” co-author Professor Daryl Wesley said.

“The thing that is interesting to us is the detail that the Indigenous artists have been able to capture of these ships – that just doesn’t suggest a fleeting view from the shoreline. They’ve gotten so many things correct about the paddles, the prowl boards, all the pennants and everything in decorative details of the ship.

“The level of detail in the paintings suggests the Indigenous artists who painted the Moluccan ships spent time up close with the boats.”

The researchers say any explanation for the encounters that occurred between the Aboriginal rock art artists in Amburbarna and these Moluccan watercraft isn’t yet clear, and more research using other sources of evidence or different approaches may complete the picture.

Maritime archaeologist and co-author, Associate Professor Wendy van Duivenvoorde, said Dutch explorers in the Moluccas reported as early as the mid-seventeenth century that inhabitants from the islands regularly sailed to the north coast of Australia.

“Dutch traders established agreements with the elders in Maluku Tenggara for products like turtle shell and trepang that may have been sourced during voyages to Australia. Islanders in Maluku Tenggara also had a reputation as raiders and warriors, ranging across the eastern end of the archipelago,” Prof Duivenvoorde said.

”Regardless of the motivation that prompted the painting of these vessels, the presence of these fighting ships provides direct evidence of the ethnic diversity of the mariners from Island Southeast Asia known to Arnhem Land artists and further demonstrates the issues associated with the use of the generic term “Macassan” for depictions of non-European vessels.”

“The presence of Moluccan fighting vessels in Arnhem Land would support a significant departure from the accepted narrative of Macassan coastal fishing and trading and has important implications for understandings of cultural contact with South-east Asia.”