Shimona Kealy

Australian National University | ANU · Department of Archaeology & natural history

The palaeogeography of the Wallacea Archipelago is a significant factor in understanding early modern human colonisation of Sahul (Australia and New Guinea), and models of colonisation patterns, as well as archaeological survey and site interpretation, are all heavily dependent on the specific palaeogeographic reconstruction employed. Here we prese...

Wallacea is the transitional biogeographic zone between the continents of Sunda (Southeast Asia) and Sahul (Australian-New Guinea). It consists of a series of island chains unique in the region for never having been connected to either continent. Movement of early modern humans from Sunda to Sahul during the late Pleistocene required dispersal thro...

This paper reviews the zooarchaeological and historical evidence of insular bat hunting in the Asia-Pacific, spanning the late Pleistocene to the ethnographic present. A sample of archaeofauna assemblages (n = 18) examined from both cave and open beach archaeological sites reveal a number of issues, which may have obscured archaeological interpreta...

This study examines a pottery assemblage from Makpan Cave, Alor, Indonesia dating from ∼3300 BP to historic times, constituting one of only a few documented ceramic studies from the Nusa Tenggara Timur archipelago. The assemblage is characterised by idiosyncratic decorative features along with a range of surface finishes not commonly emphasised in...

The crossing of the Wallacean islands and settlement of Sahul by modern humans over 50,000 years ago, represents the earliest successful seafaring of our species anywhere in the world. Archaeological research throughout this vast island archipelago has recovered evidence for varied patterns in island occupation, with accumulating evidence suggestin...

Burial elaborations are a human behaviour that, in recent contexts can inform on social diversification, belief systems, and the introduction of new practices resulting from migration or cultural transmission. The study of mortuary practices in Mainland and Island Southeast Asia has revealed complex and diverse treatments of the deceased. This pape...

Recent discovery of painted rock art on Wetang Island in the Babar Island group, Maluku Province, Indonesia, reflects the central place of boats in the daily lives of island peoples, as well as their paramount ritual and symbolic role in Maluku, and more broadly across Island Southeast Asia. In addition to boats, the Wetang sites contain images of...

The tropical archipelago of Wallacea contains thousands of individual islands interspersed between mainland Asia and Near Oceania, and marks the location of a series of ancient oceanic voyages leading to the peopling of Sahul—i.e., the former continent that joined Australia and New Guinea at a time of lowered sea level—by 50,000 years ago. Despite...

Significance We provide global assessment of the possible link between Pleistocene hominin arrival and island extinction. The existing records on islands around the world do not support a significant and detrimental impact on island biotas following island colonization prior to the Holocene. This suggests that models using island extinctions as evi...

Stone artifacts from Makpan cave on Alor island date from ~40 ka, filling a gap in the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3-2 record of southern Wallacea between Liang Bua on Flores to the west, and Asitau Kuru on Timor to the east. Since Alor is a largely volcanic island, the Makpan stone artifacts are dominated by igneous materials, distinguishing them f...

While fishhook technology is currently known to date back to ca. 22,000 cal. BP, almost all Pleistocene-aged assemblages consist of less than 10 artifacts, restricting the ability of archaeologists to reconstruct the technology. Excavations at Makpan Cave on Alor Island (Indonesia), however, has recovered an extensive assemblage of marine shell mat...

The Wallacean archipelago between the Indian and Pacific Oceans is a critical biogeographic boundary for all kinds of animals, from butterflies to birds. Humans are no exception, and in this paper we offer a three stage model for how our genus overcame this boundary. We review how Lower Palaeolithic hominins were able to colonize the larger islands...

In the last 35 years Indonesia has seen a substantial increase in the number of dated, cave and rockshelter sites, from 10 to 99. Here we review the published records of cave and rockshelter sites across the country to compile a complete list of dates for initial occupation at each site. All radiocarbon dates are calibrated here for standardization...

We report 40 recently discovered rock art sites from Kisar Island in eastern Indonesia and investigate the commonalities between this art and painted art in other islands of Indonesia and in Timor-Leste. Predominantly painted, the art can be broadly divided into three categories: 1) small figurative motifs including humans, animals, boats and items...

Objective This study investigated microstructural changes of the right and left midshaft femur in an archaeological individual afflicted with left-sided hip joint ankylosis to assess whether increased cortical porosity was present as a result of leg disuse. Materials The individual is a middle-aged adult male excavated from the Metal Period (∼2000...

We report archaeological findings from a significant new cave site on Alor Island, Indonesia, with an in situ basal date of 40,208–38,454 cal BP. Twenty thousand years older than the earliest Pleistocene site previously known from this island, Makpan retains dense midden deposits of marine shell, fish bone, urchin and crab remains, but few terrestr...

en Allen and O'Connell published “A different paradigm for the initial colonisation of Sahul” in the first number of Archaeology in Oceania this year (55: 1–14). We invited comments from several scholars and a riposte from the authors. Résumé fr Allen et O'Connell ont publié «Un paradigme différent pour la colonisation initiale de Sahul» dans le p...

Engraving sites are rare in mainland and Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) where painted art dominates the prehistoric artistic record. Here we report two new engraving sites from the Tutuala region of Timor-Leste comprising mostly humanoid forms carved into speleothem columns in rock-shelters. Engraved face motifs have previously been reported from Len...

The chapters in this volume offer some insight into how widespread the phenomenon of fortification was throughout the Wallacean archipelago. Chapter 10, in particular, presents historical information and photographic records for a number of fortified settlements in Maluku, providing details on the number of houses they contained and the way in whic...

The first excavations on Obi Island, north-east Wallacea, reveal three phases of occupation beginning in the terminal Pleistocene. Ground shell artefacts appear at the end of the terminal Pleistocene, the earliest examples in Wallacea. In the subsequent early Holocene occupation phase, ground stone axe flakes appear, which are again the earliest ex...

The resource-poor, isolated islands of Wallacea have been considered a major adaptive obstacle for hominins expanding into Australasia. Archaeological evidence has hinted that coastal adaptations in Homo sapiens enabled rapid island dispersal and settlement; however, there has been no means to directly test this proposition. Here, we apply stable c...

This paper describes recently discovered painted rock art in two archaeological site complexes, Tron Bon Lei shelters 1 and 2 and the cave sites of Ba Lei 1 and 3, located in the south-west of Alor Island, eastern Indonesia. Tron Bon Lei contains panels that include positive hand prints, anthropomorphs, boats and geometric designs, all painted in r...

The species-level systematics of the marsupial family Phalangeridae, particularly Phalanger, are poorly understood, due partly to the family's wide distribution across Australia, New Guinea, eastern Indonesia, and surrounding islands. In order to refine the species-level systematics of Phalangeridae, and improve our understanding of their evolution...

This study explores prehistoric human subsistence adaptations within the context of changing marine and terrestrial environments on the tiny Island of Kisar, beginning during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition around 15,000 years ago (ka). We use zooarchaeological data on faunal remains (vertebrates and invertebrates) recovered from Here Sorot Ent...

In this paper, we look at a situation of long-term continuity to understand the circumstances that mediate against behavioural change. Using newly excavated material from Asitau Kuru, Timor-Leste, we assess continuity in stone tool technology, as well as pigment and bead use over a span of 44,000 years. The sequence is divided into three occupation...

Here we report the results of a pXRF analysis of obsidian stone artefacts from Here Sorot Entapa rockshelter (HSE) on Kisar Island in the Wallacean Archipelago. With the exception of a single flake, all the obsidian artefacts in this site are from a single source. Kisar has a metamorphic geology with fringing uplifted limestone terraces which makes...

The environmental extremes of the Last Glacial Maximum and the subsequent warming and sea-level rise into the Holocene had profound implications for human behavior across much of the world. In northern New Guinea, the Maluku Islands, and the Philippines, shell adzes appear during this period alongside contact between islands. In this paper we prese...

Archaeological records from Australia provide the earliest, indirect evidence for maritime crossings by early modern humans anywhere in the world. As the island archipelago of Wallacea has never been connected to the continental landmasses of Sunda in the west (mainland Southeast Asia) or Sahul in the east (Australia and New Guinea), water crossing...

Archaeological records from Australia provide the earliest, indirect evidence for maritime crossings by early modern humans, as the islands to the north-west of the continent (Wallacea) have never been connected to the mainland. Suggested in 1977 by Joseph B. Birdsell, the two main routes from Sunda (mainland Southeast Asia) to Sahul (Australia-New...

Pulau Kisar is a very small island (ca. 81 km2) in the district of Maluku Barat Daya, Indonesia, approximately 25 km north east of Timor-Leste. While the prehistoric and particularly the Pleistocene archaeological record for Maluku Barat Daya is poorly known, recent research on Pulau Kisar by a joint Australian-Indonesian team has added significant...

Archaeological surveys are essential to the discovery and interpretation of remains left by prehistoric human activities. While remote sensing and predictive models have greatly improved the reach and success of archaeological survey, pedestrian surveys to develop model parameters and ground-truth predictions are still imperative for successful dis...

Stretching between the continental shelves of Sunda (mainland Southeast Asia) and Sahul (Australia-New Guinea) is the biogeographic region of Wallacea. Notable for their continued isolation from both continents, the islands of the Wallacean Archipelago are of significance to archaeologists as they represent the first serious sea-crossing challenges...

Kisar is the smallest of the Wallacean islands, known to have a Pleistocene occupation record. The archaeological site Here Sorot Entapa rockshelter (HSE) was first settled in the Terminal Pleistocene (15500 cal. BP) and occupied through until the late Holocene. Due to its steep coastline, Kisar’s land area would have changed little during the cou...

Survei arkeologi sangat penting untuk penemuan dan interpretasi sisa-sisa yang ditinggalkan oleh aktivitas manusia prasejarah. Saat ini penginderaan jarak jauh dan model prediktif telah meningkatkan jangkauan dan keberhasilan survei arkeologi, namun survei pejalan kaki untuk mengembangkan parameter model dan prediksi kebenaran dasar masih penting u...

The occupation of small islands presents particular challenges for people largely related to limited terrestrial resources and susceptibility to natural disasters. Nevertheless, the challenges and risks inherent in maintaining stable populations on small islands can be offset or overcome through the use of maritime technologies and exchange network...

We report new finds of two painted rock art sites in Lembata Island in Indonesia, one depicting a 'boat', the other an anthropomorph. The style of the anthropomorph is quite distinct from the small dynamic painted anthropomorphs common elsewhere in eastern In-donesia. Based on similarities with figures on Moko drums we hypothesise that this paintin...

Fish-hooks discovered among grave goods associated with an adult female burial at the Tron Bon Lei rockshelter on the island of Alor in Indonesia are the first of their kind from a Pleistocene mortuary context in Southeast Asia. Many of the hooks are of a circular rotating design. Parallels found in various other prehistoric contexts around the glo...

Painted rock art occurs throughout the islands of the Western Pacific and has previously been argued to have motif and design elements in common, indicating that it was created within the context of a shared symbolic system. Here we report five new painted rock-art sites from Kisar Island in eastern Indonesia and investigate the commonalities betwe...

Background The order Dasyuromorphia is a diverse radiation of faunivorous marsupials, comprising >80 modern species in Australia and New Guinea. It includes dasyurids, the numbat (the myrmecobiid Myrmecobius fasciatus) and the recently extinct thylacine (the thylacinid Thylacinus cyncocephalus). There is also a diverse fossil record of dasyuromorph...

Engraving sites are rare in mainland and Island Southeast Asia and few examples have been identified in the Indonesian islands. Here we report three new engraving locales in Alor Island, Indonesia. The engravings are executed on boulders and in shelters and include figurative and geometric motifs, some combining cupules. Motifs incorporating cupule...

The thousands of islands east of Huxley’s Line have never formed a single land mass or been connected to Sunda or Sahul. The earliest records of hominins in this area are stone tools recovered from Pleistocene deposits on Flores and Sulawesi. Subsistence by these hominins as well as the later subsistence patterns exhibited by Homo floresiensis sugg...

The Wallacea Archipelago provides an extraordinary laboratory for the study of human colonisation and adaptation, yet few detailed archaeological studies have been conducted in the region that span the earliest phase of human settlement. Laili Cave, in northern Timor-Leste, preserves the oldest human occupation in this insular region with a cultura...

Caves have been an important source of vertebrate fossils for much of Southeast Asia, particularly for the Quaternary. Despite this importance, the mechanisms by which vertebrate remains accumulate and preserve in Southeast Asian caves has never been systematically reviewed or examined. Here, we present the results of three years of cave surveys in...

The palaeogeography of the Wallacea Archipelago is a significant factor in understanding early modern human colonization of Sahul (Australia and New Guinea), and models of colonization patterns, as well as archaeological survey and site interpretation, are all heavily dependent on the specific palaeogeographic reconstruction employed. Here we prese...

Scientific Reports 6 : Article number: 26911 10.1038/srep26911 ; published online: 27 May 2016 ; updated: 07 September 2016 The original version of this Article contained the genus and species name of an unpublished taxon ‘Whollydooleya tomnpatrichorum’.

A new specimen of the bizarrely specialised Malleodectes mirabilis from middle Miocene deposits in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area provides the first and only information about the molar dentition of this strange group of extinct marsupials. Apart from striking autapomorphies such as the enormous P3, other dental features such as stylar cusp D...

Here we describe a painted art site in an uplifted limestone marine terrace bordering the coast west of Kupang in West Timor, Indonesia. The site comprises panels of hand stencils, anthropomorphs and ‘sun-ray’ motifs which are similar to motifs recorded from Timor-Leste and the Kei islands to the east. We suggest that these motifs fit within a corp...