Hope Island: salvage excavation of a Kombumerri site

Abstract

This paper reports the salvage excavations of a shell midden at Hope Island, Gold Coast City, southeast Queensland.  Archaeological investigations were carried out in the Gold Coast region during the late 1960s and early 1970s (e.g. Haglund-Calley and Quinnell 1973; Haglund 1975, 1976), but as academic input into the area waned it became something of a folk theory in the mainstream Anglo-Saxon community that nothing worthwhile in the way of archaeological evidence remained in the area.  The Kombumerri people, traditional owners who have never ceded title to their land, knew differently.  This paper follows an extensive site recording program undertaken by the Kombumerri Cultural Centre and the Anthropology Museum, University of Queensland, which has clearly demonstrated the correctness of their view: material evidence of significance to the local Aboriginal community abounds within the Gold Coast City limits and its environs.