Message sticks: Reconstructing a long-distance communication system in Indigenous Australia

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Writing is a defining invention in the history of humanity. Our discovery that language could be represented by means of visible marks opened up extraordinary new possibilities, from information storage to long-distance correspondence and modern applications such as computer code. Yet writing is by no means the only method of graphic communication available to us, and a surprising range of symbolic codes have both pre-dated and coexisted with it. On every continent, small-scale societies have devised non-linguistic sign systems with a variety of applications, such as keeping accounts, facilitating ritual recitations or aiding speakers in recalling oral messages. To date, the importance of these information technologies and the role they play in human communication has been overshadowed by the global dominance of writing.The use of message sticks in Indigenous Australia represents a rich but understudied example of graphic communication in a ‘non-literate’ setting. Within this tradition, messengers would travel vast distances to deliver information with the aid of carved wooden sticks. Engraved with sequences of motifs, the sticks were designed to complement a verbally produced message such as an invitation, a declaration of war, or news of a death. By the time message sticks became a subject of anthropological interest in the late 19th century, the practice was already in steep transition over most of the continent, and many questions concerning their full scope and function remain unanswered.My study will address the following core question: What is the history, function and significance of Australian message sticks? To this end I will apply a range of methods from historical ethnography and linguistic anthropology to reconstruct the practice of message stick communication, drawing on original fieldwork, over 1000 conserved artefacts in museums worldwide, and surviving commentaries on their former use. The analysis of this data will be used to confront five significant and interrelated knowledge gaps about message sticks: 1. their status as a category of Australian material culture; 2. their origin, diffusion and variation; 3. their functions, conventions and pragmatics; 4. their post-contact cultural history (1788–present); and 5. their relationship to other systems of graphic communication. Proceeding from the premise that all systems of communication are responses to the variable needs and interests of their users, the resulting study will seek to relativise frameworks and discourses around graphic codes that have assumed language-based writing as a default typological comparator. Moreover, the message stick system will be historicised as a dynamic practice that continues to adapt and change. For the first time, Australian message sticks will be situated in their most relevant cultural and linguistic contexts, and interpreted with the aid of a comprehensive dataset.