Indigenous Heritage

Aboriginal people have occupied the lands of the Northern Territory for upward of 60,000 years. Throughout this time Aboriginal people have left many traces of their culture and occupation across the landscape. These traces reveal how Aboriginal people lived in these lands and responded to its challenges from the arid centre to the tropical north.

The Northern Territory contains a rich and diverse range of Aboriginal cultural heritage places, many of which are highly significant to contemporary Aboriginal culture.

The Heritage Conservation Act 1991 seeks to conserve these places by providing a system for the identification, assessment, recording, conservation and protection of places and objects of prehistoric, protohistoric, historic, social, aesthetic or scientific value, including geological structures, fossils, archaeological sites, ruins, buildings, gardens, landscapes, coastlines and plant and animal communities or ecosystems of the Northern Territory.

Under the terms of the Heritage Conservation Act 1991:
"Archaeological object" means a relic pertaining to the past occupation by Aboriginal or Macassan people of any part of Australia which is now in the Northern Territory, being–

1. an artefact or thing of any material given shape to by man;
2. a natural portable object of any material sacred according to Aboriginal tradition;
3. human or animal skeletal remains; or
4. such objects, or objects of a class of objects, as are prescribed; but does not include an artefact made for the purposes of sale or an object, or objects of a class of objects, excluded by the Regulations from the ambit of this definition;

"Archaeological place" means a place pertaining to the past occupation by Aboriginal or Macassan people that has been modified by the activity of such people and in or on which the evidence of such activity exists, and includes such places, or place of a class of places, as are prescribed, but does not include a place, or a place of a class of places, excluded by the Regulations from the ambit of this definition.

Examples of other prescribed archaeological places or objects may include, but are not limited to, stone quarries, knapping floors, shell middens, rock art sites, rock shelters, stone arrangements, ground stone artefacts and manuports.

Heritage Branch administers the NT Archaeological Resources Database. This database includes information from the Archaeological Site Catalogue that was originally maintained by the Museum and Art Gallery of the NT. There are now over 6000 archaeological sites listed on the database. The information has been obtained from varied sources including archaeologists, anthropologists, Aboriginal people and organisations and members of the public.

 

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