New archaeological findings from a sacred site have proven the Yinhawangka people's existence in WA's eastern Pilbara region date back more than 50,000 years.
Analysis of stone tools, charcoal and bone collected from the Yirra rock shelter at Rio Tinto's Eastern Channar mine, 17 kilometres south-east of Paraburdoo, has proven Yinhawangka people lived in the region for much longer than initially thought.
The excavation project was led and commissioned by Yinhawangka Aboriginal Corporation (YAC) in collaboration with Archae-aus heritage consultants and researchers from the University of Western Australia and received funding from Rio Tinto.
YAC chairperson Halloway Smirke said the evidence helped prove what traditional owners knew all along.
"I'm still in shock myself, to find out everything that we were saying all the time and now there's science to it and [we're in a] better position now to preserve this for future generations," he said.
"It's bloody great, especially where Yirra is now and how those languages have been changed historically since colonisation.
"Now we're in a position where we can start bringing some of those tracks back."
Archae-aus excavation project manager and director Fiona Hook originally excavated the Yirra site with her late husband, Dr Bruce Veitch, in 2000.
"Back then the only way we could date the sites properly was using radiocarbon dating and so that got us to 23,000 [years]," Ms Hook said.
Dating methods becoming more accurate
During the excavation of Yirra in October last year, the team used optically stimulated luminescence dating, a method that Ms Hook said had taken 20 years to refine.
She said this method was more accurate than radiocarbon dating at showing the age of archaeological sites and artefacts.
"That's now revolutionising our evidence for the first people arriving in Australia and also pushing back sites into a much older regime," she said.
"This site is now older than 50 [thousand] … we'll be able to, in the next few months, determine how much older than 50 the site is.
Ms Hook said she knew the site was special since she first excavated it 20 years ago.
"Aboriginal people used this site repeatedly during the height of the last Ice Age … there are no other sites around in the Pilbara that have this degree of evidence," she said.
She said it was "overwhelming" to go back to the site and find evidence it was even older than initially thought.
An emotional experience for returning archaeologist
Dr Veitch's last project he worked on before passing away from motor neurone disease in 2005 was a report into the initial excavation of Yirra.
Ms Hook said being able to go back to the site and get the answers they had been wanting for more than 20 years made her feel "quite vindicated".
"I also got to take my son, Conall, up with us … so to have him there as a memory of Bruce in the site was very special for me."
Ms Hook said it was an emotional experience.
"When we packed up on the last day of the excavation, I was the last person up in the shelter … and I just sat down on a boulder and just kind of had a bit of a cry, that we'd finally done it. The results are in, they've exceeded what we were hoping," she said.
Mr Smirke said he hoped research collaboration into ancient sites and artefacts would continue.
