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Change or Decay? An interpretation of late Holocene archaeological evidence from the Hamersley Plateau, Western Australia
Abstract
Data collected from the Hamersley Plateau over the last four decades are examined for patterns in the archaeological record. Data relating to the timing of the archaeological appearance of backed artefacts, seed-grinding technology and rock art are currently too few to indicate major cultural changes with certainty. Increases in numbers of radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites on the Hamersley Plateau are evident in the late Holocene. This can be interpreted as a pattern of cultural change or natural decay in datable material. I conclude that taphonomic bias is the most important variable in the distribution of the radiocarbon date sample from the Hamersley Plateau. That said, further accumulation of dates and data may show archaeological changes in the Hamersley Plateau that represent local expressions of broader trends in the Australian semi-arid and arid zones.
... Most studies use a few thousand dates (Gamble et al., 2005;Williams et al., 2010;MacDonald et al., 2006;Shennan and Edinborough, 2007). However, some are constrained to much smaller sample sizes, less than 1000 and sometimes less than 100 radiocarbon dates (Johnstone et al., 2006;Kuzmin and Keates, 2005;Fiedel and Kuzmin, 2007;Holdaway et al., 2008;Macklin and Lewin, 2003;Steele, 2010;Liedgren et al., 2007;Marwick, 2009;Williams et al., 2008a). In this study, I have approached the question of sample size by re-sampling the AustArch 1 and 2 datasets to determine the minimum number of dates required to reproduce summed probability plots that match trends shown in the full dataset. ...
... The potential effects of time-decay on radiocarbon summed probability plots has been highlighted in many studies (e.g. Fiedel and Kuzmin, 2007;Marwick, 2009;Michczy nska et al., 2007;Steier et al., 2001) including several recent studies (Surovell and Brantingham, 2007;Surovell et al., 2009;Peros et al., 2010). The most influential is by Surovell and Brantingham (2007) who noted that sum probability distributions in very different fields -archaeology, palaeontology and geologyall revealed a monotonically increasing pattern through time. ...
... Taphonomic corrections, such as those trialled here, essentially impose a theoretical distribution on archaeological data. Application to Australian data shows a good correlation with archaeological trends widely identified in the literature -low levels of human activity throughout the Pleistocene, especially during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (Hiscock, 1988(Hiscock, , 2008Smith, 2006;Veth, 1989); increasing human activity in the early e mid Holocene climatic optimum between w8.0e6.0 ka, which also correlates with increasing exploitation of shell beds (O'Connor, 1994;Przywolnik, 2005;Sim, 1994;Schrire, 1982), increasing use of marginal upland areas (Marwick, 2009;Veth, 2005) and increasing territoriality ; and a step-wise increase throughout the Holocene (Hiscock, 2008;Mulvaney and Kamminga, 1999) e but does not significantly modify trends identified in uncorrected summed probability plots . Both Eq. (1) and Eq. ...
Using a database of Australian archaeological radiocarbon dates (n = 2996), this paper explores three key methodological issues associated with the use of summed probability plots of radiocarbon data: 1) the minimum sample size needed for a statistically reliable plot; 2) the effect of radiocarbon calibration on the structure of these plots; and 3) the application of a taphonomic correction to such time-series data. The results identify several protocols, recommended as best-practice when using summed probability plots: 1) a minimum sample size of 500 radiocarbon dates should be used, and the sample size and the mean of the standard deviations of the radiocarbon dates (ΔT) in the sample should both be reported; 2) a moving average trendline of 500–800 years should be used to offset the effects of the calibration process; and 3) Surovell et al. “Correcting temporal frequency distributions for taphonomic bias” [Journal of Archaeological Science 36 (2009) 1715–1724] is explored, with modifications and temporal limits (<25,000 cal years BP) proposed. Correction of time-series data using theoretical taphonomic correction curves is useful as a heuristic tool but can obscure real trends if applied routinely. Comparison between summed probability plots and other occupation data is presented and shows good correlation. However it is recommended that plots are supplemented by other archaeological indices and the cross-comparison of such multiple proxies will strengthen identification of occupation trends.Highlights► Methodological issues with the use of sum probability plots are explored. ► The paper uses a dataset of 2996 14C dates from >800 sites across Australia. ► Analysis shows sample size, calibration and taphonomic loss all have an effect. ► Protocols for future production of sum probability plots are proposed. ► Comparison of plots and other archaeological indices show good correlation.
... Such views have not gone unquestioned (Attenbrow, 2006;Davies & Holdaway, 2017;Morgan, 2015;Vaesen et al., 2016). Critics argue that consideration needs to be given to the succession of processes that occurred in the past, including the time-averaging effect of near-surface reworking (Bateman et al., 2007;Davies et al., 2016) and time-dependent degradation of inorganic and organic deposits (Marwick, 2009; see also Behrensmeyer, 1988;Jablonkski et al., 2003). Studies elsewhere also point to understanding sites within the context of changing local geography, ecology and history over time, rather than through the lens of sociocultural complexity (Stewart et al., 2020). ...
Statistical manipulation of large radiometric data sets (big data) is increasingly applied to those grand challenges in archaeology that relate to past human‐behavioural dynamics and includes frequency analysis of radiocarbon ages (summed probability distributions [SPDs]). Australian SPD studies use the radiocarbon database “AustArch” to examine regional‐ and continental‐scale demographic change. We review Australian studies, focussing on sampling bias and taphonomic bias, finding that (i) time‐averaged radiometric data cannot simply be correlated across regions, and (ii) sedimentology imposes genuine constraints upon what can be known. Internationally, flaws in SPD use occur in all main research phases, and most importantly, at the initial phase of defining research questions, logic and general approach. Major problems stem from not planning to obtain a sound understanding of the variability of past sedimentary environments, potential occupation sites and site formation processes. Thus, cultural inferences are too often made from archaeological data without due consideration of the natural processes that may explain the data. Highlighting exemplar studies, we present practical approaches to improve SPD use for exploring changes in demography, aimed at reducing uncertainties and reconnecting archaeological, chronological, geological and sedimentary data. Most important is to increase understanding of physical processes and their control on the archaeological record.
... The post-depositional processes affecting archaeological deposits, surface or otherwise, are sometimes described as a linear or superlinear decay, where the probability of survivorship decreases with the age of the deposit (e.g., Marwick 2009;Rubio Campillo et al. 2012). This depiction is not without justification; time-dependent loss is a wellestablished phenomenon for both natural and cultural materials in geological contexts ). ...
The generative nature of the archaeological record stands in contrast with reconstructive goals of
the discipline. This is particularly evident in discussions of surface archaeology, which is often considered
deficient for reconstructing human behavior in the past when compared with subsurface deposits. We look
at a case study from Rutherfords Creek in arid southeastern Australia, where lithics and combustion
features appear in differing densities across the surface. These have been interpreted variably in terms
of settlement patterns; however, the relationships between accumulation, visibility, and preservation are
complex. This study addresses these relationships in terms of formation dynamics, drawing out patterns
from surface assemblages that bear on the mobility and resilience of the ancestral Aboriginal populations
that occupied Rutherfords Creek during the late Holocene. A different view of the record emerges, one that
foregrounds the notions of reversibility in the patterning to identify the kinds of questions the record might
be most fruitfully brought to bear on, with implications for both surface and subsurface archaeology.
... They were recovered from within the upper 25 cm (spits 1-5). All backed artefacts were recovered from spit 5 (approximately 4,000 years ago) or above, placing them within the known regional age range for this technology (less than 4,500 years ago; see Hiscock 2008;Marwick 2009). Ironstone grinding stone fragments were also recorded from the upper spits, and a broken wooden yandi (coolamon) was recorded as a surface find. ...
An excavation and survey program at West Angelas, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, shows that the poorly watered interior area of the Hamersley Plateau was first occupied soon after the conclusion of the Last Glacial Maximum, and that significant use of this area probably only occurred during the mid to late Holocene. Although current archaeological research shows that Aboriginal groups have occupied areas of the Hamersley Plateau for more than 40,000 years, the permanent and prolonged use of the more marginal or ecologically suboptimal foraging environments of the interior plateau is a comparatively recent development in the region’s long archaeological record.
... The report is, however, commonly cited in the published literature (e.g. Marwick 2009, Slack et al. 2009 in the same Archaeology in Oceania volume) by those who have access to the only publicly available copy held by the Department of Indigenous Affairs in Perth. The purpose of this paper is to present the details of these sites so they may easily be accessed by other researchers. ...
Two spatially close rockshelters at Mesa J in the Pilbara had relatively deep deposits and large numbers of stone artifacts distributed from top to bottom. The basal archaeological materials have been directly dated as (in the case of J24) or are inferred to be (in the case of J23) late Pleistocene in age. In J24 artefacts continued downwards throughout basal Spit 10, indicating that occupation of the rockshelter began before 27,657 cal BP, possibly thousands of years before. The distribution of stone artefacts and radiocarbon dates in J24 indicates that occupation of the rockshelter continued during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), providing further evidence that the Hamersley Plateau provided refuge for Aboriginal people during the cold and arid conditions of the LGM.
... All except two of the 34 tulas recovered were distinctive slugs with 88% manufactured from chert and chalcedony -materials that hold their edge well (Smith 2006:393-395). Other early dates for tulas come from (Gould 1978;Smith 1988); and from 3700 BP at Newman Rockshelter on the Hamersley Plateau (Marwick 2009). These sites are spread across much of arid and central Australia and indicate consistent ages of about 3500-3700 BP for the earliest tulas recovered. ...
The distinctive tool called 'tula' is an endemic adaptation, which was adopted by Aboriginal people across central and western Australia, encompassing some two-thirds of the continent. The tula is a hafted tool used for working hardwoods as well as other tasks including butchery and plant-processing. The geographic spread of tulas appears to have been rapid and no antecedent form has been identified. The sudden appearance of tulas was coincident with the onset of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions. While we do not yet have the data to establish an unequivocal causal link, in this paper we hypothesise that the appearance of this new and specialised tool at c.3700 BP was very likely a human response to the intensification of ENSO. This intensification resulted in increased aridity and climatic variability lasting almost 2000 years. We posit that this technological adaptation, an element of a risk minimisation toolkit, was part of a wider economic and social strategy adopted by Aboriginal people to cope with increasing climatic uncertainty. This possibility has implications for the diversity of innovation processes operating in Australia during the Holocene, which is further explored in this paper with concluding suggestions for future research. We offer this discussion as a platform for these future, and what we believe, are very necessary critical studies.
... In Australia, the first use of the technique was explored by Frankel (1991a, 1991b), Holdaway and Porch (1995) and Ulm and Hall (1996), but only in recent years has the approach become commonplace (e.g. Turney and Hobbs, 2006;Holdaway et al., 2008;Williams et al., 2008Williams et al., , 2010Williams et al., , 2013Marwick, 2009;Williams, 2012Williams, , 2013. Through these analyses, a comprehensive database of archaeological radiocarbon dates is now available for Australia (Williams et al., 2014a). ...
... This analysis suggested that there were peaks in inferred population densities of the arid zone at 19,000 years ago, 15,000 years ago, 10,500 years ago, 8,000 years ago, 4,500 years ago, and 1,500 years ago, with variations in particular regions, often depending on local hydrological contexts. The methodology can be criticized because it tends to underestimate taphonomic bias (Marwick 2009;O'Connor et al. 1999;Surovell and Brantingham 2007), and it is susceptible to other bias through the differential attention to the needs of absolute dating by excavators of particular sites (Straus 2005). It also tends both to give the appearance that there are many more data than there really are and to smooth over discontinuities in dating because of the inclusion of the most improbable ranges of dating uncertainty. ...
... No basalt or quartz quarries have yet been identified in this area. Evidence from other Pilbara sites has been interpreted as showing that this was a time when rapid population growth occurred and long-distance socio-economic exchange systems flourished (Marwick 2002(Marwick , 2009. Although artefact numbers at Kunpaja Cave are low, the increasing variety of stone material in the more recent (<4000 cal. ...
Preliminary results of test-pit excavations in Yurlu Kankala and Kariyarra Rockshelter demonstrate the repeated occupation of a topographically distinct 'island of high land', in the northeastern Pilbara by Aboriginal people from 45,000 years ago to historical times. These results are the first Pilbara Pleistocene dates from sites outside the Hamersley Range and confirm occupation of this region prior to that in the central and western Pilbara and, at Yurlu Kankala, through the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). A third excavated site, Kunpaja Cave, provides evidence of inland Pilbara occupation through climatic amelioration following the LGM. All three sites are large, highly visible shelters located on ridges or hills, with commanding views over the surrounding land and access to major water sources. It is suggested that these factors played a key role in the discovery and occupation of Yurlu Kankala and Karriyarra Rockshelter by some of the Pilbara's first settlers, and of Kunpaja Cave as people expanded their territories as the climatic conditions of the LGM changed.
... 50 Supplement (2015): 37-46 DOI: 10.1002/arco.5055 detail or comprehensively published (Brown 1987;Edwards and Murphy 2003;Hughes et al. 2011;Law et al. 2010;Marwick 2009;Slack et al. 2009;Veitch et al. 2005). This project is the first major archaeological investigation in the Chichester Range. ...
A land-use model widely used by consulting archaeologists in the Pilbara depicts rock shelters as ephemeral and atypical sites. We evaluate assemblages from excavated rock shelters in the Chichester Range against predicted characteristics of sites used on a short-term basis by small highly mobile groups. The results show that rock shelters do not clearly conform to the model. Comparison of selected shelter assemblages with neighbouring surface sites suggests that rock shelters are likely to be among the most complex and diverse sites in the study area.
... We have previously modelled how rock art may fit into the general occupation models for both the Western Desert and the uplands of the Pilbara region lying to the west Veth 2006, 2008). This modelling has been based on long-term regional occupation indices (Brown 1987;Marwick 2009;Veth 2005aVeth , 2005b. By contextualising rock art correlates with archaeological phases we have modelled for diachronic change in social identifying behaviour. ...
... A=Bifacial Point, B=Backed Artefact, C=Tula(Hiscock 1994). 's Rockshelter in the Lower Murray at 3500 BP; the site of Kwerlpe in central Australia where they are dated to c.3635 BP(Gould 1978;Smith 1988); and from 3700 BP at Newman Rockshelter on the Hamersley Plateau(Marwick 2009). These sites are spread across much of arid and central Australia and indicate consistent ages of about 3500-3700 BP for the earliest tulas recovered. ...
The distinctive tool called 'tula' is an endemic adaptation, which was adopted by Aboriginal people across central and western Australia, encompassing some two-thirds of the continent. The tula is a hafted tool used for working hardwoods as well as other tasks including butchery and plant-processing. The geographic spread of tulas appears to have been rapid and no antecedent form has been identified. The sudden appearance of tulas was coincident with the onset of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions. While we do not yet have the data to establish an unequivocal causal link, in this paper we hypothesise that the appearance of this new and specialised tool at c.3700 BP was very likely a human response to the intensification of ENSO. This intensification resulted in increased aridity and climatic variability lasting almost 2000 years. We posit that this technological adaptation, an element of a risk minimisation toolkit, was part of a wider economic and social strategy adopted by Aboriginal people to cope with increasing climatic uncertainty. This possibility has implications for the diversity of innovation processes operating in Australia during the Holocene, which is further explored in this paper with concluding suggestions for future research. We offer this discussion as a platform for these future, and what we believe, are very necessary critical studies.
... We have previously modelled how rock art may fit into the general occupation models for both the Western Desert and the uplands of the Pilbara region lying to the west Veth 2006, 2008). This modelling has been based on long-term regional occupation indices (Brown 1987;Marwick 2009;Veth 2005aVeth , 2005b. By contextualising rock art correlates with archaeological phases we have modelled for diachronic change in social identifying behaviour. ...
One of Indigenous Australia's unique stone tools, the tula adze is traditionally viewed as a hafted woodworking tool of the arid zone. Unlike most stone tools in Australia and around the world, the spread and adoption of the tula adze has been described as rapid and instantaneous. The conditions which underlie this technological change are critically assessed in this study, using risk minimisation and diffusion models. The focus of the paper is a study area with unclear tula distribution-the southern Kimberley of Western Australia. The spatial distribution of these tools is reviewed and new discoveries outlined. Reduction sequences and morphological trends observed elsewhere are examined, and compared to the Kimberley record. Some of the archaeological sites analysed also preserve evidence of woodworking activities, such as wood shavings and wooden tools. We use these records, augmented by the association of hardwood species from macrobotanical records, to associate tulas with hardwood species availability in the late Holocene archaeological record of the Kimberley. We conclude that woodworking craft production proliferated in the late Holocene, as a likely result of both diffusion of information and foraging risk minimisation.
This is the first book-length study of the archaeology of Australia's deserts, one of the world's major habitats and the largest block of drylands in the southern hemisphere. Over the last few decades, a wealth of new environmental and archaeological data about this fascinating region has become available. Drawing on a wide range of sources, The Archaeology of Australia's Deserts explores the late Pleistocene settlement of Australia's deserts, the formation of distinctive desert societies, and the origins and development of the hunter-gatherer societies documented in the classic nineteenth-century ethnographies of Spencer and Gillen. Written by one of Australia's leading desert archaeologists, the book interweaves a lively history of research with archaeological data in a masterly survey of the field and a profoundly interdisciplinary study that forces archaeology into conversations with history and anthropology, economy and ecology, and geography and earth sciences.
The travels of the ancestral beings known as Wati Kutjarra (two lizard men) are central to many Western Desert creation sagas. Their actions, markings and transmogrified forms are often in socially ’open’ domains and cover and connect huge tracts of land. On the central Canning Stock Route there are detailed ethnographic records and ongoing observances of Wati Kutjarra by custodians at a number of ranges and water holes where pigment rock art occurs in shelters and from where people have created contemporary acrylic art on canvas. These are also locales where excavations have yielded ochres and occupational deposits - which suggest these places have acted as aggregation locales through long periods of time. In this paper we examine some of these intersections and explore the dynamics and genesis of socially constituted desert iconography through time.
Archaeologists are increasingly concerned that the non-linear relationship between the calendric and radiocarbon timelines may introduce anomalous structures into radiocarbon-supported temporal frequency distributions (tfds) – time series data describing temporal fluctuations in the frequency of archaeological, paleontological, or other geological deposits. This concern emphasizes a need for improved middle range theory on tfd formation, addressing the interaction between several stochastic processes. This paper outlines a Monte Carlo simulation designed to explore the influence of several variables on tfd morphology, including the nonlinear calendric-to-radiocarbon age relationship. The results indicate that this non-linear relationship entails greater variance between identically generated tfds over some temporal intervals than others but does not predictably lead to tfd peaks over these intervals as previously suggested. Additional variance between identically generated tfds results from small sample sizes and high values in the underlying TFD. Smoothing the tfd is a solution not only to calibration curve interference but also to sample size-dependent sampling error.
Cited By (since 1996):7, Export Date: 26 November 2013, Source: Scopus
Measuring trends in the size of prehistoric populations is fundamental to our understanding of the demography of ancient people and their responses to environmental change. Archaeologists commonly use the temporal distribution of radiocarbon dates to reconstruct population trends, but this can give a false picture of population growth because of the loss of evidence from older sites. We demonstrate a method for quantifying this bias, and we use it to test for population growth through the Holocene of Australia. We used model simulations to show how turnover of site occupation across an archaeological landscape, interacting with erasure of evidence at abandoned sites, can create an increase in apparent site occupation towards the present when occupation density is actually constant. By estimating the probabilities of abandonment and erasure from archaeological data, we then used the model to show that this effect does not account for the observed increase in occupation through the Holocene in Australia. This is best explained by population growth, which was low for the first part of the Holocene but accelerated about 5000 years ago. Our results provide new evidence for the dynamism of non-agricultural populations through the Holocene.
The original model for biogeographical approaches in understanding human adaptations to the Australian arid zone. Argues for dynamic and flexible scenarios rather than conservative and unchanging ones. Boundaries of refuges, corridors and barriers offered as a heuristic device. Subsequent work by the author and others has identified early Aboriginal occupation in sandy deserts with contiguous coordinated drainage, catchments receiving meltwater and LGM coastal zones (e.g. Serpent's Glen, Lake Mungo and Barrow Island). Notions of persistence in refuges and high levels of mobility in lowlands seem well supported by subsequent studies.
Archaeological evidence from western Victoria and southeast South Australia has been used to develop models of late Holocene change. In this paper we reassess some of the primary data, concentrating on radiocarbon dates available from over eighty sites in the area. A general methodological critique and discussion of each different site-type exposes fundamental problems in establishing a basic sequence and demonstrating the nature of change. An argument is put forward that late Holocene developments in this area are the latest in a continuous series, and do not require the special explanation of ‘intensification‘.
Radiocarbon dates can provide an effective overview of regional trends in non-complex societies when treated in a quantitative manner. In spite of intervening biases, numbers of radiocarbon dates should reflect the patterns of occupation across time. Using the date record of preceramic Peru, I illustrate very different radiocarbon trends for highland and coastal zones. These suggest exponential growth, equilibrium, and altitude shift for the occupations of coastal, puna, and highland valley regions. Biases caused by variation in temporal and geographic investigation, and the effects of sea-level rise are considered, but I argue that general occupational patterns overshadow distortions of the date record.
In the early years of the twentieth century, anthropologists recorded evidence for the movement of the circumcision rite into the non-circumcising southwest region of Western Australia. Archaeological and linguistic evidence from central Australia suggests that this may have been a continuation of an expansion of the boundaries of the Western Desert 'cultural group' which began almost 1,500 years ago. This paper considers how the sorts of social mechanisms recorded during the historic period for the push of circumcision into the southwest, what we will characterise here as 'ritual engines', may well inform on much wider processes responsible for the remarkable geographic spread and speed of the transmission of the Western Desert culture group. Introduction Australian archaeologists have frequently alluded to long-term cultural change as an explanation for shifts in artefact types, raw material distributions and graphic vocabularies. It is presumed that these transitions in the archaeological record are in many instances indicative of wider transformations in social, economic and ritual relationships across various kinds of cultural boundaries. However, the reality is that once we stray away from environmental determinism we have almost no genuine examples or models of why or how such changes have occurred in Australia. One of the major and most widely recognised 'boundaries' in Aboriginal Australia is the so-called 'circumcision/subincision line', demarcating the division between major ritual and cultural traditions, namely the inland Western Desert culture bloc versus a number of other culture areas ranged along the coastal fringe (Figure 1). The presence of this border on Tindale's (1974) and other maps has lent it an air of immutability. However, in this paper we will argue that this line represents not a boundary, but a rapidly moving frontier of cultural change. Specifically, we attempt to connect archaeological evidence for the emergence and spread of 'Western Desert' cultural practices over the last 1,500 years to the historically-documented processes of the introduction of the circumcision rite into central and southwest Western Australia within the last 160 years. In particular, we will argue that the remarkable geographic spread and speed of transmission was driven by a set of social imperatives that we will characterise here as 'ritual engines'. The Emergence and Spread of 'Western Desert' Culture From an archaeological perspective, earlier characterisations of the Western Desert culture bloc have
Claims for long‐term conservatism of an Australian desert adaptation are assessed by re‐examining one component of the stone artefact assemblage from Puntutjarpa, a rocksheiter in the Western Desert. It is concluded that significant technological changes occur and especially that adzing tools are absent from the early Holocene levels of the site. This finding confirms recent discoveries of demographic, settlement, and technological change elsewhere in the Australian arid zone; and it necessitates the rejection of perceptions of cultural continuity since the Western Desert was first occupied.
Australian backed artifacts appear in the terminal Pleistocene but “proliferate” to become the dominant retouched form in the southeast of the continent only in the mid-Holocene. This change was triggered by the onset of an ENSO-dominated climatic pattern 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, and increased backed artifact production was one of a number of strategies that reduced risk during the mid-Holocene. Adoption of technologies featuring standardized kinds of artifacts was advantageous at that time, but the parallel response of the different technological systems in southern and northern Australia reveals historical contingency in the evolutionary trends.
Analysis of 28 radiocarbon determinations obtained from the excavation of heat retainer hearths from Sturt National Park in western New South Wales, indicates Aboriginal occupation of the arid margin of Australia during the last 1700 years. The determinations show two phases of hearth construction separated by a period of at least 200 years, and possibly 400 years, when no hearths were constructed. Palaeoenvironmental and archaeological evidence is reviewed in an effort to account for the late Holocene dates from the hearths and the existence of the hiatus in hearth construction. Despite the close match between the hiatus and the so-called Medieval Warm Period, caution is required before extrapolating the results from an archaeological study of a small geographic region to the continent as a whole.
Summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates are used to make inferences about the history of population fluctuations from the Mesolithic to the late Neolithic for three countries in central and northern Europe: Germany, Poland and Denmark. Two different methods of summing the dates produce very similar overall patterns. The validity of the aggregate patterns is supported by a number of regional studies based on other lines of evidence. The dramatic rise in population associated with the arrival of farming in these areas that is visible in the date distributions is not surprising. Much more unexpected are the fluctuations during the course of the Neolithic, and especially the indications of a drop in population at the end of the LBK early Neolithic that lasted for nearly a millennium. Possible reasons for the pattern are discussed.
Temporal frequency distributions of archaeological sites and radiocarbon dates are commonly used as proxies for prehistoric population levels based on the assumption that more people create a stronger archaeological signal. While this assumption is certainly correct, we question whether relative frequencies of sites or dates observed from prehistoric contexts are necessarily linked to human demography. In this paper, we demonstrate that the typical positive curvilinear frequency distributions observed in archaeological contexts also regularly occur in paleontological and geological contexts and are thus likely caused by the operation of time-dependent destructive processes, what we call “taphonomic bias.” Using a simple model, which assumes a constant rate of site loss over time, we show how taphonomic bias can produce positive curvilinear frequency distributions through time even in cases of population stasis, decline, and fluctuation. We conclude that caution must be used when attempting to infer demographic trends from frequency distributions alone.
In this thesis I describe the results of my analysis of archaeological material and sediments excavated from fourrockshelters on the northeast Hamersley Plateau, Western Australia and synthesise previously reported archaeological evidence from the inland Pilbara to answer two questions about Aboriginal occupation.
This article presents the initial results from the S2AGES data base of calibrated radiocarbon estimates from western Europe in the period 25,000–10,000 years ago. Our aim is to present a population history of this sub-continental region by providing a chronologically-secure framework for the interpretation of data from genetics and archaeology. In particular, we define five population events in this period, using dates-as-data, and examine the implications for the archaeology of Late Glacial colonization. We contrast this detailed regional approach to the larger project which we call the cognitive origins synthesis that includes historical linguistics in the reconstruction of population history. We conclude that only archaeology can currently provide the framework for population history and the evaluation of genetic data. Finally, if progress is to be made in the new interdisciplinary field of population history then both disciplines need to refrain from inappropriate agricultural thinking that fosters distorting models of European prehistory, and they should also pay less, if any, attention to historical linguistics.
With comments from L.G. Straus, J.-P. Bocquet-Appel, P.A. Underhill & R. Housley and followed by a reply from the author.
In this paper we present an overview of the radiocarbon chronology of pre-European Aboriginal occupation of southeast Queensland. Analysis of these data provides the basis for evaluating cultural chronologies proposed for southeast Queensland which emphasise time-lags between sea-level stabilisation and permanent occupation of the coast and late prehistoric structural change in settlement and subsistence strategies linked to intensifying regional social alliance networks. This synthesis of the radiocarbon chronology demonstrates that significant increases in the number of occupied sites and the rate of site establishment does not occur until after 1,200 cal BP, and is restricted to the coastal strip. While sea-level change may have significantly influenced the representation of earlier sites, the pattern over the last 1,000 years cannot be explained solely in terms of differential preservation due to geomorphological processes. While these results indicate significant structural change in the archaeological record of southeast Queensland in the late Holocene, the nature of that change requires closer examination through further detailed studies of local and regional patterns.
Shell mounds ceased to be built in many parts of coastal northern Australia about 800-600 years ago. They are the subject of stories told by Aboriginal people and some have been incorporated in ritual and political activities during the last 150 ears. These understandings emerged only after termination of the economic and environmental system that created them, 800-600 years ago, in a number of widely separated coastal regions, Modern stories and treatments of these mounds by Aboriginal people concern modern or near-modern practices. Modern views of the mounds, their mythological and ritual associations, may be explained by reference to the socioeconomic transitions seen in the archaeological record; but the recent cultural, social and symbolic statements about these places cannot inform us of the process or ideology concerned with the formation of the mounds. Many Aboriginal communities over the last half a millennium actively,formed understandings of new landscapes and systems of land use. Attempts to impose historic ideologies and cosmologies on earlier times fail to acknowledge the magnitude and rate of economic and ideological change on the tropical coastline of Australia.
Two languages can resemble each other in the categories, constructions, and types of meaning they use, and in the forms they employ to express these. Such resemblances may be the consequence of universal characteristics of language, of chance or coincidence, of the borrowing by one language of another's words, or of the diffusion of grammatical, phonetic, and phonological characteristics that takes place when languages come into contact. Languages sometimes show likeness because they have borrowed not from each other but from a third language. Languages that come from the same ancestor may have similar grammatical categories and meanings expressed by similar forms: such languages are said to be genetically affiliated. This book considers how and why forms and meanings of different languages at different times may resemble one another. Its editors and authors aim (a) to explain and identify the relationship between areal diffusion and the genetic development of languages, and (b) to discover the means of distinguishing what may cause one language to share the characteristics of another. The introduction outlines the issues that underlie these aims, introduces the chapters which follow, and comments on recurrent conclusions by the contributors. The problems are formidable and the pitfalls numerous: for example, several of the authors draw attention to the inadequacy of the family tree diagram as the main metaphor for language relationship. The authors range over Ancient Anatolia, Modern Anatolia, Australia, Amazonia, Oceania, Southeast and East Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The book includes an archaeologist's view on what material evidence offers to explain cultural and linguistic change, and a general discussion of which kinds of linguistic feature can and cannot be borrowed. The chapters are accessibly-written and illustrated by twenty maps. The book will interest all students of the causes and consequences of language change and evolution.
Following a decade of debate about the timing and nature of occupation of desert dunefields (e.g. Smith 1993, 1996; Smith et al. 1998; Veth 1993, 1995, 2000b) and the increasing evidence for Pleistocene occupation of sites which lie at the margins of the Western Desert (O'Connor and Veth 1996; O'Connor et al. 1998; Smith 1989; Smith et al. 1997; Thorley 1998a, 1998b) a systematic program of excavation of sites within core areas of these dunefields is clearly warranted. This paper reports on one such excavation at the site of Kaalpi located within the Calvert Ranges of the Little Sandy Desert, south of Lake Disappointment, WA. These ranges contain numerous rockshelters with evidence for occupation and very abundant suites of rock paintings and engravings. The Calvert Ranges are a small isolated outlier of uplands, containing apparently permanent water, in a vast field of red siliceous dunes. Â
This monograph addresses aspects of continuity and change in the prehistory of one region of Aboriginal Australia, southeast Cape York Peninsula. It is divided into two major components, the first of which summarises the results of excavations undertaken in the region. The study aims are to determine the nature of change in the archaeological record. Do these changes represent real socio-cultural trends, or are they merely the products of post-depositional taphonomic processes? It concludes that unprecedented socio-cultural changes took place c.3500-2500BP, involving major increases in stone artefact, bone and ochre deposition rates and sedimentation rates. In addition, new site types began to be created, and these involved changes in settlement-subsistence strategies. -from Authors
For at least a thousand years various areas within western Arnhem Land have been associated with a relative abundance of freshwater food resources. Aboriginal groups were thus able to subsist within the confines of territories that are much smaller than in many other parts of the Australian continent. As a consequence, the first Europeans to visit the area observed numerous regional language boundaries, many of which were associated with particular bands, clans and/or families. My recent research has found a strong correlation between forms and sub-styles of recent rock paintings, linguistics and mythology associated with Ancestral Beings, the landscape and events of the past. This relationship adds a new dimension to interpreting the prehistory of the region. I outline many of the most significant trends in the rock art body and then rock paintings and myths are examined to throw light on major events of the prehistoric record that are further removed in time. I conclude that there are implications for other areas of Australia.
Appraised are two palaeodemographic models proposed for Late Quaternary Aboriginal cultural history in Western Australia's South-west. Both are grounded on two ideas: (1) wetter conditions regionally lead to replacement of open vegetative associations by forest unsuited for foraging populations; (2) large-scale shifts in stone artefact 'discard rates' recorded in occupation deposits indicate regional population changes. The original model proposes regional Middle Holocene depopulation. The second model, partly based on the same archaeological evidence, is a large-scale construct calling for variations in population sizes in the South-west and elsewhere before and after the last glacial maximum, followed by Holocene population rise. In this construct, population fluctuations are caused by changes in Late Quaternary physical conditions outlined in a global climatic model, though this model disagrees with more generally accepted continental palaeoclimatic modelling, and with regional faunistic and vegetative records. Interpretation of artefact discard rates in the stone industrial sequences of three of four principal occupation sites on which both models are based disregards relevant stratigraphic, chronological and other site-specific factors. Proposed is an alternative regional model of population mobility and fluctuating occupation patterns explaining variations in amounts of archaeological material discarded in occupation sites as well as variations in these sites' distributions.
The full glacial climate was marked by enhanced aridity, suggesting that there would be no human occupation of the interior of the continent at the glacial maximum. However, evidence from Puritjarra Rockshelter shows that the Central Australian Ranges continued to be occupied between 22,000 and 13,000 BP. The repeated use of Puritjarra, together with its location away from any natural corridor for travel into the region, indicates the presence of a resident local population. The archaeological evidence is complemented by a model of human ecology in Central Australia at 18,000 BP, showing that there is no a priori reason for expecting the region to have been totally abandoned during the last glacial maximum.
Many archaeologists have argued that backed artefacts, or backed ‘blades’, were used in Australia only during the last 4500 years. We show that those arguments are theoretically flawed and present case studies which demonstrate the manufacture of backed artefacts in the early Holocene. Implications of early Holocene backed artefacts are explored.
In the Holocene the Pama-Nyungan language family expanded to cover most of Australia, replacing languages previously spoken in many regions. Most phases of this expansion in the west of the continent have occurred in the last 3000 years as a result of migration, and can be correlated with archaeological evidence of new activity. Intermeshed with the migration of peoples and language expansion are cultural diffusion events which can be assigned a chronology relative to each other and to the migration events by linguistics. These relative chronologies have the potential to become absolute chronologies with the assistance of archaeological evidence. Even without many such clues, however, the method of ‘backtracking’ described here allows us to construct detailed chronologies for the late Holocene. Known stages of expansion and cultural diffusion are sequenced making reasonable inferences about the time needed between each stage and ensuring that sequences in different regions which link together also connect chronologically, leading to an estimate of 6000 BP for Proto-Pama-Nyungan. Particularly in focus in this paper is the chronology of diffusion of the western section and subsection forms of social categorisation in the last 2000 years, and how this interacts with the later phases of Pama-Nyungan expansion.
Re-analysis of the artefact assemblage from Capertee 3, an Australian rockshelter excavated by F.D. McCarthy in the 1950s and 1960s, yields a revised image of chronological changes in backed artefact production. A technologically-defined sample of backed retouched flakes gives a new depiction of the vertical distribution of backed artefacts in this site. Analysis of artefact weathering indicates most specimens were probably altered in situ, with minimal large-scale vertical displacement. Calibration of radiocarbon dates provides refined age-depth estimates for the site. The result is identification of backed artefacts up to 6000 to 7000 years old, documentation of many backed specimens prior to 3500 cal b.p., and observation of only a relatively brief period, between 1500 and 3500 cal b.p., in which backed artefact production rates were extremely high. Changes in production rates are similar to those previously reported from Upper Mangrove Creek.
The widespread alliance systems of Australian Aboriginal society had an economic and survival value in harsh environments, but in resource-rich areas such as South-east Queensland it is more a question of strategies for increasing regional carrying capacity. Recent archaeological results in the area, with evidence of increases in site numbers and artefact deposition rates and diversification of subsistence resources to include small-bodied species, show the development of new patterns of technology, economy and demography following major environmental changes in the post-Pleistocene period. Widespread changes in Australian prehistory around 4000 years ago may have been triggered in certain key areas such as South-east Queensland.
In February and March 1994, McDonald, Hales and Associates conducted on behalf of Hancock Prospecting Propriety Limited (subsequently Hope Downs Management Services) a series of archaeological evaluations within the proposed Hope Downs Iron Ore Project area, located approximately 75 km northwest of Newman, Western Australia (Fig. 1). These evaluations formed part of an on-going programme of Aboriginal heritage research and consultation initiated in March 1992 and only recently completed (McDonald, Hales and Associates 2001). During the course of the archaeological evaluations, some 23 potential archaeological deposits were test-pitted. Of these, only one, named 'Malea' by participating members of the Aboriginal community, was found to contain a significant depth of cultural deposit. Malea faces west across a small north-west/south-east running gully dominated by rocks of the Marra Mamba Iron Ore formation. Situated at an elevation of approximately 15 m above the base of the gully, Malea is quite small, measuring 7 m (N-S) by 4 m (E-W) internally, giving a total floor space of approximately 28 sq.m. The roof of the shelter rises from less than 0.5 m at the rear to a height of more than 2 m at the dripline. The front of the shelter is partially enclosed by a low ridge of large to massive pieces of roof fall, which is believed to have acted as a natural trap for wind-blown sediments, resulting in substantial sediment accumulation within the main portion of the shelter. For the purposes of evaluation, a 0.5 m? test-pit was excavated in the more enclosed northern half of the shelter, immediately rear of the dripline. Owing to the quantity of material recovered, together with concerns over safety and access, the initial test-pit was progressively expanded to 2 m x Figure 1 Map showing the location of Malea Rockshelter.
It has been proposed that the minimum age of rock engravings can be established from dating organic carbon associated with desert varnish, a naturally occurring coating on rocks in arid regions. In this study, five radiocarbon ages were obtained from organic carbon in previously undated varnishes from the Pilbara, Western Australia. Four varnish samples were scraped from dull black coatings and one from patchy, shiny black varnish. All radiocarbon ages were younger than 2800 years . Ages were younger at the rock/varnish interface than in overlying varnish, a reversal of expected stratigraphic relations. These results highlighted a number of difficulties associated with the interpretation of varnish radiocarbon ages, including the potential absence of a link between organic carbon age and varnish deposition. Age linkages are complicated by the time-transgressive nature of varnish formation, its weathering over time, and the probable mixed ages of dated organic carbon. Engraving chronologies based solely on radiocarbon ages of varnish should be treated with extreme caution.
The Holocene climatic history of tropical northern Australia is re-examined using the recently published pollen record from Groote Eylandt to corroborate and refine previous climatic inter pretations. We identify a four-stage Holocene comprising: (1) a continuous increase in effective precipitation (EP) from the beginning of the Holocene to about 5000 BP; (2) a mid-Holocene EP maximum from about 5000 to about 4000 BP; (3) a marked decline in EP somewhere between 4000-3500 Bp; and (4) an EP recovery in the last <2000 years. The mid-Holocene EP maximum is 1000 years later than Holocene EP maxima from temperate Southern Australia and suggests that the records are decoupled at this time.
We focus on pollen evidence of environmental change at c. 4000 BP, which marks a break between a continuously ameliorating (increasing EP) climate but with small mean variation in the earlier Holocene and a steady (no directional trend) but highly variable later Holocene. We believe that this break represents the first evidence from the monsoonal lowlands of northern Australia for the onset of 'modern' ENSO-dominated ocean-atmosphere interactions in the Holocene. A simple conceptual model of trans-Pacific teleconnections is presented to explain this onset and as an hypothesis for testing.
The volume of beer froth decays exponentially with time. This
property is used to demonstrate the exponential decay law in the
classroom. The decay constant depends on the type of beer
and can be used to differentiate between different beers. The
analysis shows in a transparent way the techniques of data
analysis commonly used in science - consistency checks of
theoretical models with the data, parameter estimation and
determination of confidence intervals.
The relationship between people and their environments in Australia has a deep history probably dating back well beyond 40,000 years ago. Here we explore the evidence for change in dynamics of land use in one region of northern Australia, SE Cape York Peninsula, and argue that systemic changes in cultural practices took place during the mid to late Holocene. It is further argued that the broad scope of these changes imply alterations in the signification and cultural construction of people’s effective environments, their cultural landscapes.
Statistics is a subject of many uses and surprisingly few effective practitioners. The traditional road to statistical knowledge is blocked, for most, by a formidable wall of mathematics. The approach in An Introduction to the Bootstrap avoids that wall. It arms scientists and engineers, as well as statisticians, with the computational techniques they need to analyze and understand complicated data sets.
Coastal archaeology in Australia differs in many respects from that of other areas, with the potential to examine relatively fine-scale variation. Nevertheless, there has been a general tendency in Australian archaeology to play down the variability and to subsume the evidence into broader homogenising models of Aboriginal cultural change. This case study clearly and self-consciously addresses the need to focus on local and regional patterns before moving on to more general levels of explanation.
Coastal Themes builds a detailed chronology of Aboriginal occupation for the southern Curtis Coast in Queensland. Innovative analyses refine radiocarbon dates and explore discard behaviours and post-depositional processes affecting the integrity of coastal archaeological sites. The resulting insights highlight major changes in Aboriginal use of this region over the last 5,000 years and disjunctions between the course of occupation in this and adjacent regions.
Coastal Themes: An archaeology of the Southern Curtis Coast, Queensland Canberra: ANU E Press Ulm, S. and J. Hall 1995 Radiocarbon and cultural chronologies in southeast Queensland
- S Ulm
Ulm, S. 2006 Coastal Themes: An archaeology of the Southern Curtis Coast, Queensland. Terra Australis 24. Canberra: ANU E Press Ulm, S. and J. Hall 1995 Radiocarbon and cultural chronologies in southeast Queensland. Tempus 6: 45-62