Trees of the Sky World

In the Central Tablelands of southeastern Australia’s Wiradjuri Country, the tough exterior bark of a yellow box tree, a type of eucalyptus, has been chiseled away to create a smooth canvas into which geometric patterns have been etched. Undulating parallel lines emanate outward from a diamond shape that wraps around a portion of the tree. Marked or carved trees such as this one are called marara by the area’s Wiradjuri people. Marara are part of a broader tradition of modifying trees for practical and symbolic purposes practiced by Australia’s Indigenous peoples. This particular carving, or dendroglyph, was likely engraved at some point after the early 1800s by members of the Wiradjuri, the largest Aboriginal language group in the state of New South Wales and the second largest in Australia.

Ilana Herzig is a senior editor at ARCHAEOLOGY.