When you’re swaying in a beachside hammock on a lazy summer day, take a moment to thank the Indigenous cultures that invented it.

Native to South America and the Caribbean, hammocks were traditionally woven by women, who were frequently fiber-workers in Indigenous cultures, said Binghamton University Associate Professor of English John Kuhn, who recently co-authored an article on the topic.

“The oldest preserved specimen is 4,000 years old, but they may actually be much older,” said Kuhn, who also directs the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at Binghamton. “We just don’t know; textiles don’t preserve well in the tropics.”

Co-authored by Marcy Norton at the University of Pennsylvania, “Towards a history of the hammock: An Indigenous technology in the Atlantic world” recently appeared in postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies.

Portable, versatile and easy to clean, hammocks are a comfortable way to sleep in a hot climate. They also protect the user from insects, especially when compared to the ground-based bedding common to European colonizers.

“Colonists basically adopt them right from the jump,” Kuhn said. “They learn to use them because the hammock was a major component in hospitality rituals that are being extended to them by Indigenous groups who are seeking alliance and friendship.”

The technology proved useful for military expeditions in the Americas and was adopted by figures such as English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh. As colonial settlements began to develop, their use was adopted by a wider population, from elites to slaves.

Hammocks are also connected to Indigenous culture with deep webs of meaning. In addition to sleep, the bed-slings were used as private spaces to chat, manufacture objects or play music. In short, they were a way to define an individual’s personal space in an otherwise communal culture.

“We know from one Kalinago-French dictionary compiled in the early colonial period that the word for hammock was linguistically linked to the word for placenta,” Kuhn said. “It’s kind of poetic: You’re in one kind of container and then, because hammocks are given to babies right away, you move to another one after you’re born.”

Not only did individuals enter the world in a hammock, they left it in one, too; hammocks were also used as burial shrouds. They even played a role in religious life, as a vessel for healing rituals and trance states in which shamans would commune with spirits.

The spread of hammock use among colonizers belies the common belief that European technology was far superior to that of Indigenous people. It’s far from the only example of cultural borrowing; take chocolate and tobacco, which originated as stimulants developed by Indigenous cultures.

Kuhn is currently working on a book about another Indigenous technology: birchbark canoes, which North American colonists immediately adopted for their own use.

“Sometimes people have this idea that Indigenous cultures were just destroyed, and they aren’t necessarily seen as huge technological contributors to the Atlantic world that emerges out of colonization,” Kuhn said. “The next time you see a hammock, just take a minute to marvel at the ingenuity of the cultures that it sprang from!”

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A new study highlights how Indigenous leadership, science and business can unite to protect coastal ecosystems while building long-term environmental and cultural knowledge. Published in Ocean & Coastal Management, the study found the 300 hectares of mangrove forest on the Barron River estuary around Cairns Airport – on the doorstep of the Great Barrier Reef – stores more than 2,000 tonnes of carbon annually, making ongoing care and monitoring of these and other coastal wetlands important for slowing climate change.

About 170 years ago a large bundle of stone tools was deliberately buried close to a waterhole in the hard dirt of the remote outback.

Who buried them and for what purpose?  Why were they never retrieved? 

Archaeologists from Griffith University, who discovered the hoard, are searching for answers.

Dr Yinika Perston, from the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, noticed a handful of stones poking out of the soil in an area just north of the town of Boulia, far West Queensland.

She investigated further and discovered a pile of 60 large Aboriginal stone “tulas”, special flaked stone tools that were hafted onto a handle and used for woodworking. 

They were important tools, used across most of the continent to make objects such as boomerangs, wooden coolamon dishes, shields and clapsticks.

The research team moved fast to complete the excavation.

“This region’s climate is harsh.” Dr Perston said.

“Even while we were excavating, bushfires raged to the north, preventing some of the team from joining us.

Once we found the cache, we knew were in a race against time to recover the tools before they were washed away in the next flood”.  

The team used scientific methods to analyse the tools, working closely with the Pitta Pitta, who hold Native Title for the area where the collection was found.

“Innovation and connection helped the Pitta Pitta people survive the region’s harsh climates.

If they could not find resources locally, they bartered along vast trade routes. 

It’s possible this cache was a bundle of specially-made artefacts that were intended for trading.” Dr Perston proposed.

The team attempted to figure out when, how and possibly why these tulas were buried.

Quartz grains in the soil can be dated using a method called optically stimulated luminescence, or OSL.

This technique uses decay rates in quartz to calculate when the grains were last exposed to sunlight.

Using this method meant the team had to collect samples from the centre of the cache on a dark and moonless night.

Dating revealed a 95% probability the tulas were buried sometime between 1793 and 1913.

The nearby town of Boulia was established around 1879, and the Burke River police camp operated from 1878 to 1886.

“We think the Pitta Pitta ancestors were likely planning to trade the tools in these caches when the time came, but for some reason never retrieved them.” said Dr Perston.

“One possible reason for this may be due to disruption caused by European arrival – but the dates aren’t precise enough to be sure.

“What we can say, is that this cache reveals how planning, resource management and collective cooperation allowed Aboriginal people to not only survive, but thrive, in this harsh environment.”

About 170 years ago a large bundle of stone tools was deliberately buried close to a waterhole in the hard dirt of the remote outback.

Who buried them and for what purpose?  Why were they never retrieved? 

Archaeologists from Griffith University, who discovered the hoard, are searching for answers.

Dr Yinika Perston, from the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, noticed a handful of stones poking out of the soil in an area just north of the town of Boulia, far West Queensland.

She investigated further and discovered a pile of 60 large Aboriginal stone “tulas”, special flaked stone tools that were hafted onto a handle and used for woodworking. 

They were important tools, used across most of the continent to make objects such as boomerangs, wooden coolamon dishes, shields and clapsticks.

The research team moved fast to complete the excavation.

“This region’s climate is harsh.” Dr Perston said.

“Even while we were excavating, bushfires raged to the north, preventing some of the team from joining us.

Once we found the cache, we knew were in a race against time to recover the tools before they were washed away in the next flood”.  

The team used scientific methods to analyse the tools, working closely with the Pitta Pitta, who hold Native Title for the area where the collection was found.

“Innovation and connection helped the Pitta Pitta people survive the region’s harsh climates.

If they could not find resources locally, they bartered along vast trade routes. 

It’s possible this cache was a bundle of specially-made artefacts that were intended for trading.” Dr Perston proposed.

The team attempted to figure out when, how and possibly why these tulas were buried.

Quartz grains in the soil can be dated using a method called optically stimulated luminescence, or OSL.

This technique uses decay rates in quartz to calculate when the grains were last exposed to sunlight.

Using this method meant the team had to collect samples from the centre of the cache on a dark and moonless night.

Dating revealed a 95% probability the tulas were buried sometime between 1793 and 1913.

The nearby town of Boulia was established around 1879, and the Burke River police camp operated from 1878 to 1886.

“We think the Pitta Pitta ancestors were likely planning to trade the tools in these caches when the time came, but for some reason never retrieved them.” said Dr Perston.

“One possible reason for this may be due to disruption caused by European arrival – but the dates aren’t precise enough to be sure.

“What we can say, is that this cache reveals how planning, resource management and collective cooperation allowed Aboriginal people to not only survive, but thrive, in this harsh environment.”