Secret societies, involving restricted and hierarchically organised initiation rituals, are conspicuous in the chronicles of many past and present societies. These rarely leave a substantial written record and yet archaeology can provide vivid insight into past performances, for example in relation to Roman ‘mystery cults’. Far less research, however, has focused on Australia and the Pacific Islands. This article presents archaeological evidence for ceremonies practised on Woeydhul Island in the Western Torres Strait, exploring initiation rituals at the cusp of contemporary memory. By doing so, it provides a detailed and long-term history for Torres Strait Islander secret societies and ritual activities involving dugong bone mounds, stone arrangements and worked stingray spines.

Signatory states of the Convention on Biological Diversity must ‘protect and encourage the customary use of biological resources in accordance with traditional cultural practices that are compatible with conservation or sustainable use requirements’. Thus the management of traditional hunting of wildlife must balance the sustainability of target species with the benefits of hunting to traditional communities. Conservation policies usually define the values associated with wild meats in terms of income and nutrition, neglecting a wide range of social and cultural values that are important to traditional hunting communities. We elicited the community-defined benefits and costs associated with the traditional hunting of dugongs Dugong dugon and green turtles Chelonia mydas from communities on two islands in Torres Strait, Australia. We then used cognitive mapping and multidimensional scaling to identify separable groups of benefits (cultural services, provisioning services, and individual benefits) and demonstrate that traditional owners consider the cultural services associated with traditional hunting to be significantly more important than the provisioning services. Understanding these cultural values can inform management actions in accordance with the Convention on Biological Diversity. If communities are unable to hunt, important cultural benefits are foregone. Based on our results, we question the appropriateness of conservation actions focused on prohibiting hunting and providing monetary compensation for the loss of provisioning services only.

As there are so many Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait astronomies and cosmologies, commonalities are unusual. However one of the ‘things belonging to the sky’ that seems common to all groups across the continent is the open star cluster of the Pleiades. Yet interpretations of this cluster vary. So far I have tentatively identified four different cultural areas, the first being most of mainland Australia; the second being the islands south of mainland Australia known as Tasmania; the third being the cultural area of north-eastern Arnhem Land; and the fourth being the cultural area of the Torres Strait Islands. Within these areas, versions of the stories vary as contemporary circumstances change.

Reading seasons and environments has been a long-held practice for Torres Strait Islanders through their close relationships with their islands and seas. This research project worked with elders on Erub (Darnley) Island, in the eastern group of islands in the Torres Strait, to document and synthesise their knowledge of seasonal patterns and indicators, and climate change. This knowledge varied from details on the migration and nesting patterns of the main totem birds, to the movement of the Tagai star constellation, to the onset of wind patterns indicating certain planting or fishing cycles. The importance of documenting and transferring such knowledge is that it continues the task of generating interest among the younger generation to ‘read’ their landscape, which is especially pertinent given the projected impacts of climate change. The ability of islanders to identify indicators and ‘read’ their country is an important tool in monitoring and adapting to environmental change, as well as maintaining culture, livelihoods and environment. This article outlines this knowledge, and documents the process of utilising this knowledge to develop a seasonal calendar, which was also transposed into a larger mural at the local primary school. The school children were involved in assembling the mural, and its contents will now form part of the teaching curriculum. It is hoped that by documenting and sharing such knowledge, younger generations can see its value, for instance in monitoring the impacts of environmental change, and in turn it will be valued by them.

Did the banana, yam and taro arrive in Australia at the hands of Europeans or come across the Torres Strait 2000 years before? Reviewing the evidence from herbaria histories and anthropology, the authors propose a ‘hierarchy of hypotheses’ and consider a still earlier option, that these food plants were potentially grown in Australia at least 8000 years ago, while it was still joined to New Guinea. This hypothesis, first proposed by Jones and Meehan in 1989, locates early horticultural experiments among peoples too often seen as inveterate hunter-gatherers.

The Torres Strait is often in the research literature – unsurprisingly since it is not only a key area for early settlement but one where ancient and modern practice resonate. Rock art is a prominent archaeological source for the region – but not the only one. In this study the author shows how rock art interconnects with imagery on portable artefacts and scarification – scarring patterns on skin – to define cultural zones of the last few centuries in territories occupied by both horticulturalists and hunter-gatherers.

A team of Elders and community officials from the island of Mua in the Torres Straits got together with archaeologists from Australia to study an episode which occurred on the island before the coming of Christianity in 1871. Oral tradition located the burial place of the father of an ancestral islander named Goba, and the investigation of a rock shelter nearby gave a dated sequence of occupation and a fresh sighting of rock paintings, all relating to the period. Each type of evidence gave context to the other, and the project offered a vivid example of how history is fashioned.

With the advent of relatively inexpensive image-handling computer programmes, digital image enhancement is more readily available to archaeologists. This paper describes the principles behind image enhancement and its application to rock-art in particular. Its use at a site in Torres Strait shows how it can be used successfully to reveal faded rock paintings.