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Publications (82)
The arrival of the dog (Canis familiaris) in Australasia is believed to have had major impacts on the region’s ecosystems as well as human society and organisation. Very little is known about the antiquity of the dog in New Guinea due to a paucity of fossil specimens of secure antiquity, particularly in the Highlands. Here, we report the direct dat...
Dingoes are culturally and ecologically important free-living canids whose ancestors arrived in Australia over 3,000 B.P., likely transported by seafaring people. However, the early history of dingoes in Australia—including the number of founding populations and their routes of introduction—remains uncertain. This uncertainty arises partly from the...
Curracurrang 1 (1CU5) is a rockshelter site located in the Royal National Park (RNP) on the coast south of Sydney. Excavated from 1962 to 1966, the site's rich Holocene cultural deposit has become important for understanding regional Late Holocene developments in Australian lithic and shell technologies. Our comprehensive analysis of 1CU5's faunal...
The dingo, also known as the Australian native dog, was introduced in the late Holocene. Dingoes were primarily wild animals but a number resided in Aboriginal people’s camps. Traditionally, these individuals were taken from wild litters before weaning and raised by Aboriginal people. It is generally believed that these dingoes were not directly pr...
This paper discusses the Australian boab tree and its potential for research as living historical archaeology. Boab trees play an important role in the economy, culture, and cosmology of Indigenous people in northwest Australia and continue to hold a powerful presence in the Kimberley region today. Working with Nyikina and Mangala Traditional Owner...
Found only in a restricted area of north-west Australia, the Australian boab ( Adansonia gregorii ) is recognisable by its massive, bottle-shaped trunk, and is an economically important species for Indigenous Australians, with the pith, seeds and young roots all eaten. Many of these trees are also culturally significant and are sometimes carved wit...
The Kimberley region of northwest Australia is well known for its extensive Aboriginal rock art. The rock art of the recent past is particularly diverse and includes painting, drawing, scratchwork, pecking, engraving, and beeswax applique. Frequently, contrasting techniques are used to augment or mark existing images, suggesting that this is associ...
The extent to which fibre technology was used in the past is difficult to assess because soft organic remains rarely preserve well. The oldest direct evidence for twisted fibre cordage is dated to between 41 and 52 ka in western Eurasia but indirect evidence suggests that it may have a much greater antiquity. The diverse use of string made from fib...
Mainland Australia was connected to New Guinea and Tasmania at various times throughout the Pleistocene and formed the supercontinent of Sahul. Sahul contains some of the earliest known archaeological evidence for Homo sapiens outside of Africa, with a growing record of early complex social, technological, and artistic life. Here we present an over...
Here we describe eight bone artefacts recovered from Pleistocene and Holocene contexts at Riwi, a cave site located in Mimbi country of the south‐central Kimberley. These artefacts reflect a range of activities occurring at the site — including the manufacture of plant‐fibre items, the processing of spinifex resin, and fish or bird hunting. As the...
Mainland Australia was connected to New Guinea and Tasmania at various times throughout the Pleistocene and formed the supercontinent of Sahul. Sahul contains some of the earliest known archaeological evidence for Homo sapiens outside of Africa, with a growing record of early complex social, technological, and artistic life. Here we present an over...
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...
The Holocene is recognised as a period through which a number of climatic fluctuations and environmental stresses occur—associated with intensifying El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climatic conditions from c. 5000 years—contemporaneous with technological and social changes in Australian Aboriginal lifeways. In the Kimberley region of northwest...
Riwi, a limestone cave located in the south central Kimberley, northwest Western Australia, has one of the most accurately dated archaeological sequences in Australia, with human occupation beginning between 46,400 and 44,600 cal bp. Macrobotanical remains are well preserved at the site, particularly in upper stratigraphic units 1 and 2 dated to th...
Carpenter’s Gap 1 is a large rockshelter located within the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia. The site provides valuable archives of late Quaternary palaeoecological information within an area known for a lack of deposits preserving long-term continuous botanical records. Previous studies of the macrobotanic, phytolith and wood charcoal r...
Australia was first colonised more than two thousand human generations ago. In this paper we show how, over this period, ancestors of Western Australia's Aboriginal peoples adapted to changing environments, in tropical savannahs, deserts, woodlands, forests and coastlines. Throughout this history, there is evidence for intra-regional genetic and ec...
Systematic archaeobotanical analysis, conducted in conjunction with archaeological enquiry at Australian archaeological sites, is still rare despite recent developments. It is still rarer that previously analysed macrobotanical assemblages are revisited over time. Extending on macrobotanical research conducted by McConnell in 1997, this paper prese...
The manipulation of fire is a technological act. The identification of the archaeological signatures of the controlled use of fire has important implications not only for the estimations of the origins and functions of the first fireplaces but also for our understanding of prehistoric technological development and resource use. At Riwi (Kimberley r...
Aboriginal people occupied Riwi, a limestone cave in the south-central Kimberley region at the edge of the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia, from about 46000 years ago through to the historical period. The cultural materials recovered from the Riwi excavations provide evidence of intermittent site use, especially in climatically wet periods....
The dingo is the only placental land mammal aside from murids and bats to have made the water crossings to reach Australia prior to European arrival. It is thought that they arrived as a commensal animal with people, some time in the mid Holocene. However, the timing of their arrival is still a subject of major debate with published age estimates v...
Here we present the first detailed analysis of the archaeological finds from Carpenters Gap 1 rockshelter, one of the oldest radiocarbon dated sites in Australia and one of the few sites in the Sahul region to preserve both plant and animal remains down to the lowest Pleistocene aged deposits. Occupation at the site began between 51,000 and 45,000...
The presence of Aboriginal people in interior refuges as climate conditions deteriorated with the onset of glacial aridity is now well documented in the Australian arid zone. Further excavation at Yurlu Kankala, a large rock shelter located on an island of high land in the inland Pilbara, demonstrates repeated human occupation from at least 47–43 c...
While some of the oldest Australian examples of marine shell ornamentation are in archaeological sites that were close to the Pleistocene coastline, in the southern Kimberley of northern Australia, shell beads and other marine objects have been found in both Pleistocene and Holocene contexts more than 300 km from the coast. One of the characteristi...
Macrobotanical analyses, which offer important information about human-environment interactions of the past, are underdeveloped in Australia due to limited reference materials, poor preservation of organic remains and inadequate field sampling strategies. Wood, seeds, fibres and resin provide invaluable information on diet, technology and human-env...
Stone points have provided key data for studies of hunter gatherer lifeways in several parts of the world. Point technologies occur widely across northern Australia, appearing around the mid-Holocene and persisting into the European Contact period. These points exhibit high-morphological variation, and include bifacial, unifacial and other forms. I...
Dingoes are a likely contributor to late Holocene Australian archaeological sites and distinguishing bone refuse resulting from either human meals or dingo scavenging is a well-recognised problem. To date, little research has been undertaken to differentiate bone modifications caused by different Australian carnivores in archaeological assemblages....
An extensive series of 44 radiocarbon (14C) and 37 optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages have been obtained from the site of Riwi, south central Kimberley (NW Australia). As one of the earliest known Pleistocene sites in Australia, with archaeologically sterile sediment beneath deposits containing occupation, the chronology of the site is im...
Wood charcoals excavated from archaeological sites provide a useful tool for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, particularly in arid and semi-arid zones, where suitable catchments for palynological archives are often limited. Preservation of organic material in northern Australia is characteristically poor, and wood charcoal analysis provides a vi...
A small fragment of a carefully shaped wooden artefact was recovered from Riwi Cave (south central Kimberley, Western Australia) during 2013 excavations. Directly dated to 670 ± 20 BP, analysis of the artefact’s wood taxon, morphology, manufacturing traces, use wear, and residues, in addition to comparison with ethnographic examples of wooden techn...
Re-excavation of a shelter in Windjana Gorge National Park, Southern Kimberley has extended the known occupation sequence of the site from the mid Holocene to the terminal Pleistocene. The site was previously excavated in 1994 and a non-basal date of ∼7,000 cal. BP was recorded. Significantly, the chronostratigraphic sequence represented in the ear...
We report evidence for the world’s earliest ground-edge axe, 44–49,000 years old. Its antiquity coincides with or immediately follows the arrival of humans on the Australian landmass. Ground/polished axes are not associated with the eastward dispersal of Homo sapiens across Eurasia and the discovery of axes in Australia at the point of colonisation...
The Pleistocene continent of Sahul was first settled by people who arrived by watercraft from Island South East Asia about 50,000 years ago. Some of the oldest archaeological sites in Sahul are located in the southern Kimberley, in northwest Australia. This area lies within the southern zone of influence of the tropical monsoon and thus has always...
Why did Palaeolithic people wear shells, and why was the practice so widespread in the world? The authors' own researches in Western Australia show that specific marine shells were targeted, subject to special processes of manufacture into heads and that some had travelled hundreds of kilometres from their source. Whether they were brought in land...
Dogs are perhaps the most widespread domesticated animal and the species that forms the closest bonds with humans. Placental dogs (dingoes) appear in the Australian record in the mid to late Holocene and, at European contact just over 200. years ago, tamed dingoes were observed to be living with Aboriginal people. These dingoes were used as compani...
Enhanced by recent survey, the authors define new kinds of rock art along the Lennard and Fitzroy rivers in Western Australia—black pigment and scratch-work images featuring anthropomorphic figures with elaborate head-dresses. These are shown to belong to the Contact period and represent the response of Indigenous artists to European land-taking by...
In Australia, Indigenous rock art images of European material culture and animals were common responses to European contact. However, in the southern Kimberley of northwest Australia, European motifs are rare. Instead, rock art associated with the first European contact emphasises group identity more than in immediate pre-contact times. A rare depi...
Niche construction theory concerns the modification of environments by all organisms, and gives a new perspective on zooarchaeological records in southwest Australia. Aboriginal people in this region historically used fire to improve habitat and hunt animals, suggesting pre-European traditions of environmental management. Analysis of a new faunal r...
When Charlie Dortch first came to Perth to take a job at the Western Australian Museum, he almost immediately went into the field to excavate at the site of Devils Lair. The site has contributed much to knowledge of human occupation in Pleistocene Australia. Because of mixing in its deepest deposits, however, there has been some confusion about the...
New data from Bunuba country in the southern Kimberley provide more robust dates for point technology in the Kimberley than have been previously available. Direct percussion points have been recovered from three sites in the southern Kimberley associated with radiocarbon dates of ∼5000 calBP, whereas the earliest pressure-flaked points are consiste...
Carpenters Gap 3 (CG3), a limestone cave and shelter complex in the Napier Range, Western Australia, was occupied by Aboriginal people intermittently from over 30,000 years ago through to the historic period. Excavations at CG3 provide only slight evidence for occupation following first settlement in the late Pleistocene. Analysis of the radiocarbo...
This is the first book to focus on the role of Southern Asia and Australia in our understanding of modern human origins and the expansion of Homo sapiens between East Africa and Australia before 30,000 years ago. With contributions from leading experts that take into account the latest archaeological evidence from India and Southeast Asia, this vol...
For all of hominin history the Australian continent has been separated by at least 70 km of water from other coastlines. Its colonisation about 50,000 years ago can therefore be considered the first true hominin ‘migration’ as opposed to the ‘dispersals’ that happened before it. To the hominins that occupied Sunda before Sahul was colonised by anat...
For all of hominin history the Australian continent has been separated by at least 70 km of water from other coastlines. Its colonisation about 50,000 years ago can therefore be considered the first true hominin 'migration' as opposed to the 'dispersals' that happened before it. To the hominins that occupied Sunda before Sahul was colonised by anat...
South-western Australia is a Mediterranean-type region with characteristic hot dry summers and wet winters. There is little evidence for intensification in resource use by Aboriginal people in this region although elsewhere in Australia intensification is indicated by increasing numbers of seed grinding stones and exploitation of other new plant re...
Artifacts are the main kinds of evidence used by archaeologists to interpret the behaviors in the human past. They can be defined as anything that has been modified, made, or used by humans or their direct ancestors. However, because preservation of artifacts is uneven in time and space, the record of past artifact use is incomplete. The deep past...
It is now widely accepted that modern humans dispersed from Africa some time after 100 ka, arriving in Australia before 40 ka via a route known as the southern arc. Along this route modern humans would have encountered new and diverse environments but their dispersal into and settlement of new areas was rapid. Language and other symbolic behaviours...
Feminist knowledge and its impact on other academic disciplines arose in the 1970s, but it has had an uneven impact in different disciplines. We argue that gender as a theoretical concept has challenged both sociology and archaeology but analyses of gender practices and embodiment which challenge the homogenous categories of 'women' and 'men' have...
A division of labour between sexes/genders in which, although there is some overlap, men hunt large game and women collect smaller game, shellfish and most plant foods, is a characteristic of all documented hunter-gatherer societies. We argue that there is no biological reason for this behaviour and that it must be a social construct. These gender...
A bachelor degree with honours in archaeology is still seen as the fundamental level of academic achievement required to gain entry to the profession and to higher degree research in archaeology in Australia. This is despite the recent proliferation of other kinds of similar university awards, such as specialist diplomas and coursework masters prog...
A survey of Western Australian undergraduate students asking them about their knowledge of and interest in archaeology as well as their beliefs in other explanations for the past was undertaken in 2001. The results of this show that most of these students have a fair idea of what archaeologists do but there is much confusion between the disciplines...
Intrasite studies of the spatial arrangements of archaeological materials to interpret structures in activity areas is an important facet of archaeology. As post-depositional processes move these materials from their original position it is imperative that the effect of these processes are evaluated before interpretations about the use of space by...
A study of residues and usewear on 49 provenanced and dated whole or fragmentary groundstone implements excavated from Puntutjarpa Rockshelter in Australia's Western Desert suggest that plant processing and seed grinding were important components of Aboriginal diet well before the Mid to Late Holocene. The analysis revealed the presence of starch g...
Mimbi is the name given by Gooniyandi people to a place about 90km east of Fitzroy Crossing in the southern Kimberley. Its western boundary is defined by the Emanuel Range and the eastern boundary by Lawford Range. Both of these ranges are composed of Devonian limestone. Caves have formed within the limestone and in some, perennial water pools are...
Going into a cave or shelter, one walks where one can stand upright or has to crouch less. That affects which zones objects are trampled on, which zones they may be kicked out of, which zones they may be kicked into. And those effects interact with the usual spatial order - with its activity zones and drop zones - that develops through occupation o...
Earth mounds are pre-European heaps of raised dirt, which consist mainly of charcoal rich sediment with fragments of burnt clay. The two objectives of this paper are to describe the earth mounds which occur in the Macquarie Marshes in northern New South Wales and to advance a speculative hypothesis that the earth mounds in south-eastern Australia c...
Two hundred and sixteen open midden sites from the lower Darling River area of western NSW demonstrate that people have fished for many aquatic resources in diverse hydrological environments since about 30,000 years ago. Some of the earliest of these sites, which have been interpreted as single foraging expeditions, contain evidence of highly organ...
Western New South Wales is well known as one of the largest regional data sets of Pleistocene archaeological material in Australia. Dating of aeolian sediments has been possible through the archaeological accumulation and subsequent preservation of organic remains within dune sequences associated with lakes and waterways. The identifiable stratific...
Seventy two of the 88 radiocarbon determinations available for archaeological sites and the sediments associated with the Darling River, its anabranches and associated lakes between Wilcannia and the Murray River in western NSW, are on shell samples collected from middens. The geographic distribution of the dated sites reflects the past hydrology o...
The economic life of the early colonisers of semi-arid western New South Wales is represented by many small open sites mainly preserved within sand dunes. Preservation of organic materials in this environment has been dependent upon rapid deposition of overlying sediments to protect them from erosion and degradation. Once uncovered, fragile materia...
CHARRED bone from Devil's Lair is mostly the remains of meals eaten by people who lived there. The cave was most intensively occupied between 23,000 and 13,000 years ago when it was never less than 25 km and at times as much as 40 km from the sea. The charred bone sample indicates that large mammals, including kangaroos and wallabies, were importan...