Enmeshed Inscriptions

NUMBER 78 | JUNE 2014

Australian Archaeology, the official publication of the Australian Archaeological Association Inc., is a refereed journal published since 1974. It accepts original articles in all fields of archaeology and other subjects relevant to archaeological research and practice in Australia and nearby areas. Contributions are accepted in eight sections: Articles (5000–8000 words), Short Reports (1000–3000), Obituaries (500–2000), Thesis Abstracts (200–500), Book Reviews (500–2000), Forum (5000), Comment (1000) and Backfill (which includes letters, conference details, announcements and other material of interest to members). Australian Archaeology is published twice a year, in June and December. Notes to Contributors are available at: <www.australianarchaeologicalassociation.com.au>.

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Front Cover: Excavation in progress, Boodie Cave, Barrow Island (Kane Ditchfield, entered in the AAA2013 Photography Competition).

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© Australian Archaeological Association Inc., 2014

ISSN 0312-2417

Editors

Heather Burke Flinders UniversityLynley Wallis Wallis Heritage Consulting

Editorial Advisory Board

Brit Asmussen Queensland MuseumVal Attenbrow Australian MuseumHuw Barton Leicester UniversityNoelene Cole James Cook UniversityPenny Crook La Trobe UniversityInes Domingo Sanz University of BarcelonaJudith Field University of New South WalesJoe Flatman University College LondonRichard Fullagar University of WollongongSteve Free The Australian National UniversityTracy Ireland University of CanberraJudith Littleton University of AucklandMarlize Lombard University of JohannesburgAlex Mackay University of Wollongong Scott L’Oste-Brown Central Queensland Cultural Heritage ManagementJo McDonald The University of Western AustraliaPatrick Moss The University of QueenslandTim Murray La Trobe UniversityJim O’Connell University of UtahSven Ouzman The University of Western AustraliaFiona Petchey University of WaikatoAmy Roberts Flinders UniversityKatherine Szabo University of WollongongNancy Tayles University of OtagoRobin Torrence Australian MuseumPeter Veth The University of Western AustraliaAlan Watchman Flinders UniversityDavid Whitley ASM Affiliates Inc.

Short Report Editor

Sean Winter The University of Western Australia

Book Review Editors

Alice Gorman Flinders UniversityClaire St George Wallis Heritage Consulting

Thesis Abstract Editor

Tiina Manne The University of Queensland

Editorial Assistant

Susan Arthure Flinders University

Commissioned Bloggers

Jacqueline Matthews The University of Western AustraliaMichelle Langley The Australian National University

June 2014, Volume 78

Editorial | Heather Burke and Lynley A. Wallis iii

Articles 1

Pigment geochemistry as chronological marker: The case of lead pigment in rock art in the Urrmarning ‘Red Lily Lagoon’ rock art precinct, western Arnhem Land | Daryl Wesley, Tristen Jones and Christian Reepmeyer 1

Occupation at Carpenters Gap 3, Windjana Gorge, Kimberley, Western Australia | Sue O’Connor, Tim Maloney, Dorcas Vannieuwenhuyse, Jane Balme and Rachel Wood 10

The geoarchaeology of a Holocene site on the Woolshed Embankment, Lake George, New South Wales | Philip Hughes, Wilfred Shawcross, Marjorie Sullivan and Nigel Spooner 24

Short Reports 33

The first Australian Synchrotron powder diffraction analysis of pigment from a Wandjina motif in the Kimberley, Western Australia | Jillian Huntley, Helen Brand, Maxime Aubert and Michael J. Morwood 33

Re-evaluating the antiquity of Aboriginal occupation at Mulka’s Cave, southwest Australia | Alana M. Rossi 39

Marcia hiantina shell matrix sites at Norman Creek, western Cape York Peninsula | Grant Cochrane 47

Themed Section Guest edited by Anne Clarke and Ursula K. Frederick 53

Signs of the times: An introduction to the archaeology of contemporary and historical graffiti in Australia | Ursula K. Frederick and Anne Clarke 54

Leaving their mark: Contextualising the historical inscriptions and the European presence at Ngiangu (Booby Island), western Torres Strait, Queensland | Jane Fyfe and Liam M. Brady 58

The ‘Outback archive’: Unorthodox historical records in the Victoria River District, Northern Territory | Darrell Lewis 69

‘We’ve got better things to do than worry about whitefella politics’: Contemporary Indigenous graffiti and recent government interventions in Jawoyn Country | Jordan Ralph and Claire Smith 75

Battlefield or gallery? A comparative analysis of contemporary mark-making practices in Sydney, Australia | Andrew Crisp, Anne Clarke and Ursula K. Frederick 84

Shake Well Midden: An archaeology of contemporary graffiti production | Ursula K. Frederick 93

Illicit autobiographies: 1980s graffiti, prisoner movement, recidivism and inmates’ personal lives at the Adelaide Gaol, South Australia | Rhiannon Agutter 100

Enmeshed inscriptions: Reading the graffiti of Australia’s convict past | Eleanor Conlin Casella 108

Table of Contents

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33

47

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June 2014, Volume 78

Thesis Abstracts 113

Book Reviews 123

Archaeology of the Chinese Fishing Industry in Colonial Victoria by Alister M Bowen | Neville Ritchie 123

Mystery Islands: Discovering the Ancient Pacific by Tom Koppel | Matthew Spriggs 124

Prehistoric Marine Resource Use in the Indo-Pacific Regions edited by Rintaro Ono, Alex Morrison and David Addison | Mirani Litster 125

Late Holocene Indigenous Economies of the Tropical Australian Coast: An Archaeological Study of the Darwin Region by Patricia M. Bourke | Sandra Bowdler 126

Secrets at Hanging Rock by Alan Watchman | Claire St George 128

Dirty Diggers: Tales from the Archaeological Trenches by Paul Bahn | Duncan Wright 129

Documentary Filmmaking for Archaeologists by Peter Pepe and Joseph W. Zarzynski | Karen Martin-Stone 130

The Dendroglyphs or ‘Carved Trees’ of New South Wales by Robert Etheridge | Jeanette Hope 131

Consultation and Cultural Heritage: Let us Reason Together by Claudia Nissley and Thomas F. King | Lynley A. Wallis 132

Backfill 135

Obituary: Emmett Connelly 135

Obituary: Gaye Nayton 136

Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities 137

Minutes of the 2103 AAA AGM 137

Big Man and Small Boy Awards 157

AAA Award and Prize Winners 2013 158

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SIGNS OF THE TIMESARCHAEOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY GRAFFITI

THEMED SECTIONGUEST EDITORS: ANNE CLARKE AND URSULA K. FREDERICK

Image: Graffiti rocks, Shake Well Midden, Perth, Western Australia. Photograph by Ursula K. Frederick.

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June 2014, Volume 78:108–112

Enmeshed inscriptions:Reading the graffiti of Australia’s convict past

Eleanor Conlin CasellaUniversity of Manchester, Mansfield-Cooper Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom <e.casella@manchester.ac.uk>

Abstract

Prison graffiti has been traditionally defined as markings created by inmates on the architectural fabric of the institutional site. However, if we instead define the phenomena as an inscription created by a convict upon an element of their material world, a new range of meaningful ‘hidden transcripts’ may be explored through objects ranging from cotton fabric and copper coins to the more familiar limewash, paint, stone, wood and brick. This paper considers themes that commonly appear in graffiti left by those transported from the British Isles to the Australian penal colonies during the nineteenth century. It further argues that the act of inscription (itself both a mental and physical process) intimately links humans to objects, creating an enmeshed relationship that ultimately reshapes both.

When writing fails, it is experienced not as a failure of technology or a mechanical breakdown, but as a crisis of the whole person (Ingold 2007:146).

Inscriptions

Prison graffiti offers ubiquitous markers of institutional confinement (Abel and Buckley 1997; Klofas and Cutshall 1985). How may we interpret their polyvalent meanings? How does this type of ‘artefact’ connect the bodies of convicts to the very materiality of these dark sites of punishment and isolation? Since most institutional graffiti occurs in ‘public’ places (a category that includes cells and dormitories as ambiguously defined public-yet-private spaces within these stark environments), it generates a powerful link between the inmate authors and their (un)intended audiences, a ‘dialogical interaction with visiting readers’ (Palmer 1997:106; see also MacDonald 2003). When we turn to explore a rare subset of institutional graffiti—that related to British criminal transportation to the Australian colonies—what common themes emerge from a comparative analysis of these ‘hidden transcripts’ (Scott 1990)? To what degree do these themes articulate with those drawn from a broader range of historic places of confinement? Previous work has considered similar messages conveyed by tattoos inscribed on the bodies of male convicts transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Bradley and Maxwell-Stewart 1997). Can we read these ephemeral (yet durable) texts as examples of how historically specific experiences of confinement, familial belonging and geographic distances gain particular significance as a result of colonial exile?

As the sublime form of institutional confinement, imprisonment demands a complete abrogation of one’s sense of self (Casella 2007; Foucault 1977; Goffman 1961). British criminal transportation offered a particularly mobile form of social punishment—while saved by the court from execution, the convict was sentenced to abrupt removal from his/her existing social connections and kinship networks, and subsequent relocation to a distant land of imprisonment, opportunities, longings, memories and new belongings. In this global penal world, any textual expressions of one’s self became uniquely loaded with complex meanings of location, survival, biography, testimony and personal presence—an

inscription of sheer existence. Thus, the process of writing, of handmade inscriptions in particular, ‘places demands on the practitioner that are as much physical and mental, if indeed the two can be distinguished’ (Ingold 2007:146). We can see this process of mental and physical self-expression in surviving convict-related embroidery (as a comparative example of convict textual expressions), such as that created by the female convicts of The Rajah, a transport ship that arrived in Van Diemen’s Land from Woolwich Docks, London on 19 July 1841. Charged with the transport of 180 women under the supervision of 23 year old Kezia Elizabeth Hayter, a protégée of Elizabeth Fry, the ship had been granted the necessary fabric and sewing equipment by Fry’s philanthropic (British) Ladies’ Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners (Alexander 2013:96). Meticulously stitched onto the border of their collective quilt, the threaded message reads:

To the ladies of the convict ship committee, this quilt worked by the convicts of the ship Rajah during their voyage to van Dieman’s Land is presented as a testimony of the gratitude with which they remember their exertions for their welfare while in England and during their passage and also as a proof that they have not neglected the ladies kind admonitions of being industrious. June 1841 (National Gallery of Australia 2014).

A hand ‘written’ heritage object created over the duration of criminal transportation, the embroidered inscription upon the Rajah Quilt offers a diverse set of mental and physical meanings:

• Acquisition of a textile-based technology useful for forthcoming labour assignment within the penal colony;

• Adoption of a key material indicator of middle-class femininity;

• Demonstration of the physical abilities required to thread a needle, produce fine embroidery stitches through complex fine motor hand skills, and visually place a detailed textual pattern;

• Ability to maintain social connection with other charges aboard the transport ship;

• Appropriate improvement of character and use of time during exile; and,

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Eleanor C. Casella

• Adjustment to a particularly paternalistic (maternalistic?) relationship with the middle-class philanthropic ladies who chaperoned these transport ships from the 1840s.

When we turn to explore the surviving handwritings of Australian male convicts (none has yet been recovered for female transportees), what similar complexities and themes of meaning can we begin to interpret?

Themes in Convict Graffiti

Appearing as carvings, inscriptions, frescoes, paintings and pencil drawings (to name just a few possible media), prison graffiti offer a hint at the traumas of everyday institutional life as authored by those confined. While I have previously considered the overlapping motifs that may be read from an extended set of international examples of institutional graffiti (Casella 2009), examples related to the transportation of British felons to the Australian penal colonies can be seen also to articulate with these general themes. Originally drawn from three categories of institutional places—eighteenth and nineteenth century penal sites, twentieth century penitentiaries, and twentieth century internment sites—this earlier study analysed inmate graffiti under six overlapping motifs: testimony, separation, diversion and amusement, dignity under adversity, identity and resistance. Although never intended to be mutually exclusive, these themes enabled a qualitative interpretation of some underlying concepts and concerns that shape institutional graffiti.

Curiously, only five of these six themes seem to appear within the rare subset of prison graffiti specifically related to nineteenth century Australian transportation. While symbols of national, personal and cultural identity commonly appear in twentieth century prisons across Britain, Ireland and Australia (see Casella 2009:180–181), examples of this theme could not be found in the few examples of transportation graffiti I have located to date. Perhaps this difference might suggest an increasing emergence of gender identity, ethnicity, and nationalism as issues of concern (for both inmates and researchers) over the later nineteenth century, after the cessation of Australian transportation—although far more systematic identification and analysis of transportation-related graffiti would be necessary to explore this pattern further. Ultimately, while these highly overlapped themes are not intended as exclusive categories, they do offer a first step towards analysis of this rare international form of materiality left by those transported to Australia.

Testimony

The most common form of inmate graffiti provides a testimony of the person confined—most frequently his name, initials or nickname. Examples of this motif can be found on both the departure and arrival sides of the transportation route. At the Nottingham Galleries of Justice, amid the panoply of inscriptions on the wall enclosing the exercise yard, Mr Valentine Marshell (spelled Marshall in court records) chiselled his name into the soft bricks (Figure 1). Charged with involvement in the local outbreak of England’s Reform Bill riots, his death sentence was commuted to criminal transportation for life following a local public outcry. Held briefly in Nottingham’s County

Gaol, Mr Marshell finally arrived in Van Diemen’s Land on 19 July 1832 and was subsequently assigned to service as a messenger within Hobart Gaol. Had his mark of presence within the Nottingham exercise yard been inspired by pre-existing testimonies chipped into these the soft bricks? The palimpsest of inscriptions near Mr Marshell’s also included the ambiguously dated ‘PACKER JACK APR 29 TRANSPORTED’ in addition to other recordings of names, dates, origins and sentences—including one particularly poignant anonymous final recording of ‘DEATH’.

This form of graffiti would appear to offer a literal placement of the self within the institution, a need to materially acknowledge one’s presence during and after the dislocation of criminal transportation. During March 2010, excavations of demolition layers inside the Gaol House on Sarah Island, Macquarie Harbour, recovered a number of graffiti-inscribed bricks from the original solitary cellblock. While the vast majority of these inscriptions appeared chipped into the dry limewash (and therefore most-likely related to post-convict era tourists drawn by the dark heritage of this grim penal island), one brick included ‘John D for robbing’—the handwritten name visibly folding back the edges of limewash. As noticed by the project conservationist, this tiny material detail suggested the coating of wash had been wet at the moment of inscription—and therefore more likely done during active maintenance of the structure before its final abandonment in 1846–1847 (Brand 1984). Indeed, the writing had also been overlaid by ambiguous chipped figurative linear markings during a later period of the structure’s use-life (Figure 2).

Examples of this theme of prison graffiti obviously differ in their degree of anonymity. Unlike Valentine Marshell, who had inscribed his name in the sheltered bricks of the north-facing wall of Nottingham Gaol’s exercise yard, a now degraded, and thus anonymised, inscription into a weather-eroded sandstone pillar records a felon ‘TRANSPORTED FOR 7 YEARS ON 12 DAY OF MARCH 1820 FOR STELEN 3 GEL …’. As a motif, testimony can therefore been seen as a continuum of presence, with relative degrees of self-identification resulting from a combination of institutional opportunity (particularly when mapped against locations within the specific penal compound), personal choice by the inmate author, and vagaries of material preservation.

Figure 1 Convict graffiti, ‘Valentine x Marshell’. Nottingham Galleries of Justice, England (photograph by Eleanor Casella, September 2004).

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Enmeshed inscriptions: Reading the graffiti of Australia’s convict past

Separation

A second familiar motif within penal graffiti involves the theme of separation. Frequently associated with issues of dislocation and fear, it has been represented through images of sailing ships, including the one meticulously scratched into the underside of the wooden sleeping pallet of a cell in Ireland’s Wicklow County Gaol (Casella 2005) and directly echoed by another that appears carved into the wooden window shutter in Richmond Gaol, Tasmania (Tas.). Other images within this theme suggest a possible longing for everyday life ‘outside’ the institutional compound, such as the sketch of an anonymous townscape and round tower also depicted in Wicklow County Gaol. Separation may also appear in markers of time, suggesting a physical and mental record of the duration of confinement endured by the inmate. A series of line-drawn scores into the brick wall at Nottingham Gaol offered a count of the passage of days, its meaning possibly echoed by a similar set of scorings into the limewash of an interior brick recovered during excavations at the Gaol House on Sarah Island, Tas.

Diversion and Amusement

Most contemporary and historic institutional sites contain examples of miscellaneous doodles, scribbles and sketches of comedy figures. These include versions of Donald Duck and Bart Simpson recorded at Fremantle Gaol (Kerr 1998:16), in addition to Simpsons characters recorded in 2013 at Spike Island, an historic Irish departure gaol for nineteenth century Australian transportation that continued in various forms of military/correctional operation until final closure in 2004. To a large extent such inscriptions reflect the monotonous boredom of daily institutional life, and also served as a mechanism for the maintenance of gang affiliations within the inmate population (see Casella 2007). Therefore, another genre of inmate graffiti relates to efforts towards the creation of diversions and amusements, activities that help pass time while ‘inside.’ Instances of this category include portable artefacts, particularly gaming tokens, such as the handcrafted bone domino and bone and ceramic playing tokens recovered during excavation of convict-related early nineteenth century underfloor deposits at the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney (Casella 2008). Examples of chequered gaming boards can also be found carved on the underside of a wooden sleeping pallet at Wicklow County Gaol (Ireland) and into the dormitory floorboards at Richmond Gaol (Tas.).

Interestingly, while humorous, sexualised or otherwise grotesque parodies of individual prison guards or fellow inmates frequently appear in the inmate graffiti recorded in twentieth century historic prisons (such as Alcatraz Island and Fremantle Gaol), no such images have yet been recorded in sites related to nineteenth century Australian transportation—unless, of course, one considers the cheeky images that appear within the famous sandstone arches of the Ross Bridge, Tas., under this category. Completed in July 1836 by the convict stonemason Daniel Herbert (transported for highway robbery in 1827), the 186 intricate Celtic-inspired carvings that adorn this iconic structure also included humorous depictions of Sir George Arthur (Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land), John Calvin (French Protestant founder of Calvinism) and a ravenous British lion crushing a lamb under paw (Greener and Laird 1971). Could the Ross Bridge offer a powerful example of convict graffiti hidden in plain sight?

Dignity under Adversity

Institutional life is inevitably characterised by mundane experiences of humiliation and repression. As a result, another significant theme in convict graffiti relates to an expression of triumph of human dignity over these painful influences. This category of inscription offers a conscious maintenance (if not improvement) of the inmate’s sense of self, enacted under his or her terms. In a number of international examples, inmates created frescoes or drawings of domestic scenes within their cells, including bookshelves and picture frames, rows of houses, and village streetscapes (Casella 2009). The best known example of this genre from an Australian convict-related context would be the cell walls of James Walsh, an English forger incarcerated within Fremantle Gaol for two years from 1854. During 1964, accidental removal of a section of whitewash from Cell E33 of 4 Division—by then decommissioned and used as a storeroom—revealed a panorama of illicit artworks. Meticulously decorated with a range of religious and classical figures, inspirational quotations, a landscape depicting a kangaroo hunt and a possible self-portrait, Walsh’s cell suggested a cultivation of educated tastes and aesthetics that was at blatant odds with his stark institutional surroundings.

Resistance

Communicating a profound rejection of carceral life, this final category of inmate graffiti appears in a wide range of forms. Examples of straightforward anger, open defiance and nihilistic rejection of the institution itself appear throughout contemporary prison sites, as do more politicised slogans, poems and mottos (Casella 2007, 2009). Within the context of Australian transportation, the theme of resistance most commonly appears as messages of stubborn endurance throughout convict graffiti. For example, an inscription scratched into the underside of a wooden cell pallet at Wicklow County Gaol (Ireland) dated the tenure of inmate John Goodman to 1800, and declared his pledge to ‘ROLL ON’ (Figure 3). Additionally, in possible visual comment upon his forthcoming penal exile, the flower that completed Goodman’s graffiti was depicted with bare roots—metaphorically ripped from its native soil while maintaining its blossom.

While graffiti is typically understood as messages added to the non-portable fabric of an architectural structure or

Figure 2 Convict graffiti, ‘John D’. Gaol House, Sarah Island Archaeology Project, Macquarie Harbour, Tasmania (photograph by Eleanor Casella, April 2010).

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natural feature, it may also be found inscribed upon portable objects. One of the most poignant examples of resistance in the context of Australian criminal transportation can be found on the face of copper coins. Known today as ‘love tokens’ (Field and Millett 1999), these rare coins functioned as deeply subversive artefacts. Crafted from the soft copper of Victorian ‘cartwheel’ pennies, creation of these tokens involved gentle removal of the formal cast images (including the Queen herself—a strictly illegal act), and their replacement with alternative messages, verses or pictures. Either taken as parting gifts to convicts aboard the hulks, or left behind as a commemoration, these objects provided a material response to the wrenching loss of family and social ties wrought by criminal exile. Variously etched, pecked or scratched into the copper surfaces, inscriptions range from biographic accounts to nostalgic depictions and political commentary. Frequent motifs involve stylised depictions of an arrow pierced heart, or women and children, suggesting a melancholic yearning for, or memorialisation of, absent kin. Other common variants contain set poems—’WHEN THIS YOU SEE REMEMBER ME’ or ‘FORGET ME NOT’—and may have been mass produced for sale to convicts or their loved ones. One early example from Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum suggests an overlap with the theme of testimony, as its face was clearly scratched with the message: ‘THOMAS TILLEY TRANSPORTED 29 JULY 1785 FOR SIGNING A NOTE SENT THE HULKS JANY 24 1786’. On its reverse face, a cockerel or pheasant with a manacle and chain enclosed around its neck was scratched into the soft copper, with obvious connotations of the ‘jailbird’ (Figure 4). Ultimately, as illicitly inscribed portable objects, these tokens offer a statement of resistance in not only their basic manufacture, but in their ability to maintain emotive connections of affection and memory in the face of lengthy exile to distant lands.

Enmeshings

Returning to Ingold’s (2007) analysis of writing, the act itself is obviously a mental process, generating messages that can be classified under various possible overlapping themes, as considered above. Australian convicts possessed varying degrees of literacy and numeracy. Female exiles enjoyed a higher degree of ability than their working class contemporaries in Ireland and England, most likely due to the dedicated training delivered by Elizabeth Fry’s protégées and the philanthropic ladies’ societies that operated across

both the British Isles and the Australian colonies (Brown 1972; Oxley 1996). For male convicts, literacy was a more complex question, related to issues of class, occupation and educational background. While the copper-plate hand inscriptions of Valentine Marshell (Nottingham) and John D (Sarah Island) would suggest an educated background, one obviously shared by Daniel Herbert (and his complex images in the Ross Bridge arches), many other male convicts were notoriously illiterate, and signed their presence with an ‘X’ on convict records.

Writing is also a deeply physical practice, involving a set of motions that require tools, material fabrics (cotton, brick, wood, sandstone, copper) and human engagement with those tools, surfaces and substances. Writing itself obviously shapes human activity. The presence of graffiti is well-known to encourage further graffiti, producing a palimpsest (or conversation) of transcripts over time. And, perhaps just as significantly, the very act of inscription transforms both materials and humans in relation to each other. The surface of the coin becomes scraped, the limewash is folded over, the quilt fabric weave is pierced and pulled, the sandstone is carved away, and of course the nail, chisel, needle, pencil and file are all abraded as they work across and into these fabrics. Humans are simultaneously influenced through the act of inscription—psychologically by the urge to leave one’s mark on the carceral world, and physiologically by the embodied skills and exertions required to produce these marks. The first phalange of my right fourth (ring) finger sports a residual callus and very tiny bend, a bodily inscription of where the pen sits while I write. The muscles in my right hand are slightly more robust than my left, again a testimony to the finer motor skills and strength I have gradually developed in that favoured hand.

The intimacy of these relations between people and objects has been described by Hodder (2012:89) as a form of entanglement, noting:

… [T]hings exist in a world that is to some degree their own. Things have lives, vibrant lives and temporalities, and they

Figure 3 Convict graffiti, ‘John Goodman’. Wicklow County Gaol, Ireland (photograph by Eleanor Casella, August 2004).

Figure 4 Convict ‘love token’, modified copper coin, reverse face. Powerhouse Museum of Sydney (photograph by Eleanor Casella, October 2005).

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depend on each other and on humans. This separate world of things draws humans in. The social world of humans and the material world of things are entangled together by dependences and dependencies that create potentials, further investments and entrapments.

Thus, as a mutually-dependent inscription on both the human and material(s), graffiti can be understood as enmeshed phenomena. Like a used pair of shoes, these messages hold the ghostly motions of their owner/creator as much as they have created particular blisters, calluses, and fine motor skills upon these imprisoned and exiled bodies.

An illicit form of communication within the carceral worlds of Australian transportation, convict graffiti served to shape the body of the inmate, shape the material world of colonial exile, and shape the places of confinement themselves. Communicated through a diverse range of media, these hidden transcripts materially connected convict bodies not only to the objects (cell furniture, brick walls, stonemasonry, quilt fabric and smuggled copper coins), but to the very places and moments of confinement with a durable statement of ‘I was here.’

References

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Bradley, J. and H. Maxwell-Stewart 1997 Embodied explorations: Investigating convict tattoos and the transportation system. In I. Duffield and J. Bradley (eds), Representing Convicts, pp.183–203. Leicester: Leicester University Press.

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National Gallery of Australia 2014 The Rajah quilt. Retrieved 18 March 2014 from <http://nga.gov.au/rajahquilt/>.

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