Wearing Wallabies: Twelve Wallaby Teeth That Turned Out to Be Jewelry

To me, the most exciting thing when sorting through a collection of old dusty bones is when I find one that has been shaped. My most exciting find has to be a warthog tooth, later determined to have probably been worn as a pendant or necklace.

Adorning oneself with animal teeth and tusks is a practice seen across the planet, from the icy tundras of Siberia to the arid deserts of Australia. Often, the easiest way to determine whether a tooth was strung on thread, twine, or string is by identifying the hole on which a tooth once hung. But not all teeth are threaded through holes; some are wrapped, and others still are mounted using resins (glue-like adhesive). The problem is that while a drilled hole in a tooth is rather obvious, resins can flake off and eventually become virtually invisible to the naked eye.

That invisibility matters because a tooth without visible clues like holes or glue gets sorted into a bone pile, along with ordinary food waste, and is forgotten. And with it goes the evidence that someone made this otherwise ordinary bone or tooth into something more, as well as the culture and traditions possibly associated with it.

A new study by Lynley Wallis and her colleagues analyzed the remains of seemingly ordinary bones and teeth, scattered across the floor of the Windmill Way rock shelter. The team had all but written the assemblage off as a dingo den when Wallis noticed something: a small ball of resin stuck to the root of a tooth. This was no ordinary dingo den, and this was no ordinary tooth; it was one of a dozen teeth that had likely once been glued to a necklace or headband, the first of its kind found outside a burial in northeast Australia and a rare glimpse at the perishable, personal things that almost never survive.

Adorned with Teeth

Some of Australia's oldest sites have evidence of shell, bone and tooth ornaments, suggesting an ancient tradition possibly brought by the first people to reach the continent in the late Pleistocene. When Europeans arrived centuries later, they recorded how similar items were still being made and worn, with animal teeth in particular used to create necklaces, pendants, headbands, circlets, and even used to decorate locks of hair.

The teeth used in ornamentation include shark, crocodile, Tasmanian devil, and even extinct giant Diprotodon teeth, but the most common teeth are those fashioned from macropods (i.e., kangaroos and wallabies).

Almost every single example of macropod tooth jewelry comes from burials in southeastern Australia, including kangaroo tooth headbands from Kow Swamp and Nacurrie, a necklace of 178 Tasmanian devil canines from the Lake Nitchie burial, and 327 pierced macropod incisors from at least 126 individual animals from a burial in Cooma.

Outside of these burial contexts, tooth ornaments are almost unheard of; the main exception comes from the Nawamoyn rockshelter in Arnhem Land, where a kangaroo incisor with a hole drilled through its root was interpreted as having been strung and an unpierced tooth whose glossy surface suggests it might have once been used in the same way.

That's where Windmill Way comes in; with so few examples of tooth ornaments outside of burial contexts, finding just one additional example is exciting; finding 12 is remarkable.

The Teeth of Windmill Way

Tucked away under a ridge surrounded by eucalyptus woodland and grassy plains is Windmill Way rockshelter, in Quinkan Country in southeast Cape York Peninsula.

Scattered across the shelter are massive quantities of ochre, stone tools, shell, bone, wood and plant fiber string, making it one of the largest and best-preserved collections in the region (despite pig hair indicating the critters had rummaged through the artifacts and mixed up old and new into an incoherent mess).

Thousands of broken bones were discovered in the shelter, many of which had been gnawed on, snapped while still fresh and still carrying dried flesh. The evidence suggested these were the food remains of not people, but of dingoes.

So when Wallis was robotically sorting through the remains (stone, bone, plant, stone again, bone…) she stopped momentarily when she spotted a hint of gleaming enamel, a tooth! Just as she was about to sort it into the fauna pile, she noticed something sticking to the tooth. She handed it over to Traditional Aboriginal Owner and Laura Ranger Sam Lowdown, who grinned as she examined the tooth, noting it was covered in resin.

The team went back to examine the other macropod teeth found during the dig.

Looking Closer

10 teeth had resin visible to the naked eye; another 2 might have once had resin, but a closer look was needed to be certain.

Each tooth was measured, weighed, and identified to species before being examined under microscopes for signs of scratches, polish, and residues. Then the resin itself was put to the test, using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) to try and identify the chemical fingerprint and pin down what plant had been used.

Infrared analysis works by shining infrared light onto a material and measuring how chemical bonds absorb light; these measurements produce a "fingerprint" that can then be compared with the chemical fingerprints of known resins. Meanwhile, LC-MS works in two stages; first, chemical compounds are separated, and then each compound is weighed at a molecular level, which can help identify the specific plant the resin came from.

Finally, two of the 12 teeth were sent for radiocarbon dating; they came back with ages of around 1,170 to 1,290 years.

Decorated with Pearly Whites

All 12 teeth were lower incisors of macropods (which, if you haven't seen one before, are long, sharp and incredibly cool-looking!). Six teeth came from the agile wallaby species, three from hare wallabies and two from the northern nail-tail wallaby, with only one broken tooth too damaged to identify, but it likely also came from an agile wallaby (fun fact: wallaby is a catch-all term for basically any macropod smaller than a kangaroo and bigger than a quokka, and according to Bush Heritage Australia, there are around 30 species).

And what about the resin? Every single tooth turned out to have had at least some resin, and all of it came from grass trees; nine in particular could be traced to one species, Xanthorrhoea johnsonii. Just one tooth carried something extra: traces of ironwood resin alongside the grass tree, which might mean it was repaired or reused, or that the two were deliberately mixed.

Organics like these resins only rarely survive in Australian archaeological sites, even where conditions are relatively good. That's what makes Windmill Way so exceptional; it has also already produced more than 500 pieces of plant fiber string on top of these resin-tipped teeth. The unusually good preservation offers a rare look at perishable materials used by people before European contact.

Similar plant-based glues were used across Australia, with the three main sources being beefwood, ironwood and grass tree, the latter of which required no additional processing. Simply collect the naturally occurring lumps around the plant's base, heat them, mold them, and use them.

But why attach resin to a bunch of wallaby teeth in the first place? There are a number of reasons, such as tool use, including kangaroo tooth scrapers, wooden tools with wallaby teeth bound to them and even entire wallaby jaws with incisors still in place used to sharpen spear tips, cut grooves, scrape and engrave.

But these incisors weren't used as tools; their shape, the neatly attached resin ball and lack of any tool wear indicate they were used for something else, and the researchers speculate it was for ornamentation.

Macropod tooth ornaments are common in other parts of Australia, but were rarely used in Cape York, where shell was usually the material of choice.

Only one other example made in a similar manner to the Windmill Way teeth is known, located in the Pitt Rivers Museum, though it is completely unprovenanced, meaning we have no idea where it came from or how old it is. Regardless, it suggests the Windmill Way teeth may have been mounted similarly, and that the technique was rare or local.

Rock art lends further support, with paintings elsewhere in northern Australia sometimes interpreted as depicting tooth necklaces, including two in Biniirr National Park about 45–50 km away: one showing a decorated human head with a row of upright tooth-like shapes across a band on the forehead, the other appearing to show a tooth necklace.

So, what were they? The best guess is probably a necklace or a headband, possibly held together with a plant-fiber string. But plenty remains unknown: whether they all came from the same necklace or headband, and whether the wallabies were hunted or simply scavenged.

But had no one noticed that curious bit of resin, they might never have been identified at all, which is exactly why the researchers argue that other teeth from digs and museums should be checked. How many other teeth just like these may already be sitting in dusty old boxes, or scattered on shelter floors?

These teeth show us the continuity and resilience of Australia's First Nations cultures, and the commonality of the human experience across the world. People create clothes, jewelry, and artifacts whose materials, colors, and methods reflect their cultural identity, just like these teeth.

Why do you think similar resin-mounted teeth are so rare? Is it a matter of preservation, overlooking, or a combination of the two?

Let me know what you think, and if you'd like to support this blog and the person writing it, you can chip in once, monthly, or yearly. Only if you'd like to.

References

Bush Heritage Australia. (2019). Wallabies - Bush Heritage Australia. Bush Heritage Australia. https://www.bushheritage.org.au/species/wallabies

Wallis, L. A., Vernon, K., Matheson, C. D., Burke, H., Musgrave, C., George, R., … Wood, K. (2026). An assemblage of resin-mounted macropod incisors from Quinkan Country, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. Australian Archaeology, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2026.2694015