Caleb Pitt-Cook, a 24-year-old Ngarluma man, drifts just above the ocean floor, his fingers sifting through the soft sand. He is on a quest to uncover stone tools used by his ancestors thousands of years ago. “If you told me I’d be doing this work two years ago, I would have laughed in your face,” he says. “It’s one of the coolest parts of our job. I’d say it’s my favourite part right now.”
Mr. Pitt-Cook, a ranger with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, is part of a groundbreaking research initiative that has already made history. “There’s only ever been two submerged Aboriginal archaeological sites mapped in Australia,” says John McCarthy, a maritime archaeologist at Flinders University. “Those were found by our team here.”
Hunt for Submerged History
When humans first populated the Australian continent around 65,000 years ago, the sea level was significantly lower. “There’s a huge area of archaeological landscape that’s been lost to sea level change,” Dr. McCarthy explains. “Back then, you could have walked all the way to Indonesia.”
Since 2019, Dr. McCarthy’s team has been searching for artefacts from that era, now submerged off the coast of the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia, known to its traditional custodians as Murujuga. “The initial discoveries made in Murujuga were stone tools. They’re very common — the sort of knives and forks of their day,” Dr. McCarthy notes. “They survive very well through sea-level change because they’re made of igneous rock, which is very hard and durable.”
“Those were found by our team here.” – John McCarthy
Rangers Find Purpose
This year’s underwater surveys mark the first time Indigenous rangers have joined maritime archaeologists in Australia. It is the result of over a year of training for several Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation rangers. Ngarluma ranger Malik Churnside describes the transition from pool dives to open water as a significant leap. “Once you’re out there in the water and there’s actually animals … sharks swimming around, [it] can be quite a scary sight, at first,” he says.
One of the submerged sites Mr. Churnside surveyed was once a freshwater spring, referenced in a Ngarluma cultural song still sung by elders today. “It’s just like evidence and a connection to something they’ve talked about and sung about for such a long time,” he reflects. “It’s purpose and meaning; you get a sense of belonging to this whole landscape and the people that were here before.”
Technology Popular with Elders
Back at camp, Yindjibarndi man and Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation director Vincent Adams dons a virtual reality headset, transporting him from the hot Pilbara afternoon to the silty depths of Murujuga. The headset connects to a live feed from a remote-operated vehicle (ROV), allowing elders to identify artefacts in real time. “It’s like 20 years ago when the mobile phone came out and they were all frightened of it,” he laughs. “This headset? They were frightened of it … [then] you couldn’t get them off it.”
Mr. Adams notes that several artefacts he has helped classify trace back to ancient hunting, crafts, and ceremonies, practices that persist today. “When they bring this up from under water, we can see that this is history from here, culture from here,” he says. It also allows researchers to understand the local lore and rules behind the tools. “If it’s men’s stuff [that] comes up, women can’t see this, kids can’t see it. Only men that have been through law,” Mr. Adams explains.
“We’re paving the way for this to happen.” – Vincent Adams
High Stakes and Quiet Moments
The ROV enables the team to survey larger and more challenging areas quickly, marking a new frontier for cultural heritage protections. This is particularly important in waters frequented by bulk carriers and offshore pipelines. Murujuga intersects with the Carnarvon basin, home to Australia’s largest gas reserves. Geoff Bailey, a world authority on submerged landscapes, emphasizes the need for robust information to ensure industry can navigate the uncharted history off the Burrup Peninsula. “If somebody puts a hole in the seabed … they’re quite likely to expose something that is of relevance and interest to the environmental history of the landscape and the cultural history of that landscape,” Professor Bailey says.
Earlier this month, the Murujuga Cultural Landscape was granted World Heritage status by the United Nations, recognizing its outstanding universal value. UNESCO’s ruling praised the underwater archaeological work as critical to the nomination and called for further study. “This has popped up a lot of times in conversations with elders, saying what about the pipeline?” Mr. Adams notes. “There’s no law, there’s no rule for any of this.”
For Caleb Pitt-Cook, each archaeological discovery feels like validation. “Our culture is an oral-based tradition so it’s all passed down through generations of speaking, songs and teaching,” he says. “A lot of people are really sceptical because we don’t have anything written down on paper. But to actually go out and explore these places where the stories originate from is really special. It’s a whole different world under the water.”
