Mining giant Rio Tinto was alerted six years ago that at least one of the caves it blasted in Western Australia’s Pilbara region last month was of “the highest archaeological significance in Australia”.
Key points:
- Reports on the site describe one of the caves as the “only one in the Pilbara to contain such aspects of material culture”
- Rio Tinto was advised of the heritage significance before the $15 billion expansion of its Pilbara mines
- Traditional owners opposed the destruction of the caves in a 2015 documentary funded by Rio Tinto
The cave sites were among the oldest in Australia, with evidence of continuous human habitation going back 46,000 years.
Advice delivered to Rio Tinto and the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura (PKKP) Indigenous people of the region six years ago was never publicly released.
The ABC has been given a summary of the contents of the report, as well as earlier archaeological survey work and excavations at the sites dating back to 2004.
The documentation of the 2014 report by archaeologist Dr Michael Slack confirmed one of the sites that was blasted, the Juukan-2 (Brock-21) cave, was rare in Australia and unique in the Pilbara.
“The site was found to contain a cultural sequence spanning over 40,000 years, with a high frequency of flaked stone artefacts, rare abundance of faunal remains, unique stone tools, preserved human hair and with sediment containing a pollen record charting thousands of years of environmental changes,” Dr Slack wrote.
“In many of these respects, the site is the only one in the Pilbara to contain such aspects of material cult