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The opening keynote session at the 2019 Australian Archaeological Association (AAA) annual conference on the Gold Coast was designed to allow reflection on how archaeology has developed in the 50 y...

Nardoo (scientific name Marsilea spp.) is a small freshwater fern, common across semi-arid and arid Australia. While reported as an important starchy food, albeit requiring complex processing in some regions, it is not well known as a food source in the Pilbara of Western Australia. Here we describe plant residues including megaspores, starch grains, cellulose, and fibres on a portable grinding stone from the surface of a rockshelter in the West Angelas region of the Central Pilbara. These residues display physical characteristics that strongly suggest they derive from nardoo. Given these findings, we encourage researchers to consider nardoo processing and consumption in future ethnobotanical and archaeological studies in the Pilbara.

Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys offer several advantages for non-invasively assessing stratigraphy in archaeological rockshelters, including providing information about subsurface stratigraphy and the location of features such as roof fall and bedrock. Challenges to understanding the record of human impact and site formation processes in Australian rockshelter deposits include where to position archaeological excavations, how best to determine the onset of human occupation within sequences beyond the presence of stone artefacts (which can be limited at depth owing to sampling issues) and how to resolve issues relating to stratigraphic associations. This paper demonstrates how GPR can be used to gain a better understanding of buried deposits in a Pleistocene-aged rockshelter. When compared with results from sediment magnetic susceptibility studies, GPR verified the major stratigraphic units identified at the site, the depth of bedrock and the presence of roof fall, but it also provided information on the sediment volume within the stratigraphic units. This is a unique outcome for exploring rockshelter deposits and geophysical signatures overall, aiding in the interpretation of complex site sediments and offering a useful tool for future site investigations.

The archaeological record of Lower Laura (aka Boralga) Native Mounted Police camp, a longstanding base for Queensland’s frontier war in Cape York Peninsula, includes a diverse assemblage of culturally modified Erythophleum chlorastychys (Cooktown ironwood) trees. Analysis of cultural scar attributes and tool marks – which were found to be variously associated with Aboriginal stone tools, tomahawks of different types, and long handled axes – reveals a scenario of nineteenth century land use and technology that transcends the pre-conflict era of Aboriginal clan estates. As well as reflecting traditional patterns of Aboriginal tenure of prime waterfront land, the assemblage reveals innovations that occurred in Aboriginal technology in the lead-up to war. However, an unusual style of cultural scar cut using long handled axes appears to signal transformations in demography and land use following Native Mounted Police occupation. By integrating historical, oral history, spatial, typological, and botanical data this study provides evidence of demographic and environmental changes set in train by the gold-rush invasion. It also highlights the complexities of documenting Cooktown ironwood trees of advanced age and their fragile, deteriorating cultural modifications.

For several years now the Australian Archaeological Association (AAA) has been expanding its online presence through the Association’s website, Facebook page and Twitter account. In order to ascertain whether these activities are worth the investment of time and energy required to pursue and maintain them, an audience survey was undertaken. Coupled with interrogation of Facebook and Twitter user data, the survey results were assessed to understand better AAA’s online audience, the value of particular kinds of content, and the online platforms and their use, in order to tailor the Association’s efforts. Results show surprising uptake and use by all age groups, despite the common perception that social media users are predominantly ‘young’. Our overall assessment is that a strong understanding of one’s audience leads to more sophisticated use of online media, which is proving essential to achieving the objects and purposes of the Association in terms of public education and the dissemination of arch...

This paper presents 29 radiocarbon dates from eight surface concentrations of shell and 10 test-pits across four shell middens at Long Point in the Coorong, South Australia. Results indicate that occupation of these sites was confined to the late Holocene period, post-2500 cal. BP. With the exception of one midden, which appears not to have been used after 500-300 cal. BP, all other sites suggest continued use until the recent past. This pattern fits with a proposed period of population expansion and intensification of resource use in the Coorong, along with more general changes known to have occurred in parts of coastal Australia during the mid- to late Holocene.

In recent years there has been greater examination and discussion of teaching and learning in archaeology, and exploration of how best to reconcile the sometimes competing requirements of students, industry, teachers and university administrators. A key response by the academy in Australia has been the emergence of graduate level programmes. Drawing on the experiences of staff, students and industry partners of the Flinders University Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Management graduate programmes, we reflect on the opportunities such programmes afford to effect positive change in the training of graduates, the challenges they pose and the contrast they offer to the standard and long accepted Honours degree. We demonstrate that carefully crafted graduate level teaching programmes, with strong involvement of industry stakeholders, offer practical solutions to the issue of providing students with a well-rounded degree, whilst also meeting the particular needs of the cultural heritage sector to produce work-ready graduates.

The rock art of the north Queensland highlands has previously been argued to be the northern limit of the Central Queensland Province, based on a similarity of techniques and motifs. In this paper we test this hypothesis through an archaeological study of the rock art of Middle Park Station in the Gregory Range. Motifs from 88 rock art sites were analysed, revealing a predominance of stencilling of a limited range of motifs, with rare paintings of mostly geometric motifs and similarly rare occurrences of geometric motifs executed in a variety of engraving techniques. We argue these results, coupled with other considerations of distance and biogeography, suggest the north Queensland highlands should be regarded as a distinct rock art province, separate from the Central Queensland Province. Evidence is also presented to suggest that open social networks with limited territoriality were operating in the study area through at least the late Holocene.

This paper presents an overview of archaeological investigations in the Sir Edward Pellew Islands in the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia. It is argued that Vanderlin Island, like the majority of Australia's offshore islands, attests to a lacuna in human habitation for several thousand years after the marine transgression and consequent insulation c.6700 years ago. With the imminent threat of inundation, people appear to have retreated to higher land, abandoning the peripheral exposed shelf areas; subsequent (re)colonisation of these relict shelf areas in their form as islands took place steadily from c.4200 BP, with increased intensity of occupation after 1300 BP. Possible links between the timing of island occupation, watercraft technology and the role of climate change are investigated, with more recent changes in the archaeological record of Vanderlin Island also examined in light of cultural contact with Macassans.

The use of geophysical techniques as an aid to archaeological investigations has become common-place, however these methods have only occasionally been applied in Indigenous Australian archaeology. This is despite recognition (and recommendations) since the 1970s that such approaches have the potential to yield positive results in such contexts (e.g. Connah et al. 1976; Stanley 1983; Stanley and Green 1976). Australian archaeologists have perhaps been reluctant to embrace these techniques because of their perceived high cost (both of equipment and specialist staff) and the subtle nature of subsurface Indigenous sites as geophysical targets. Nevertheless, there have been a number of recent applications of these techniques in Australia, particularly in relation to burial and hearth sites. We report the results of a pilot study conducted in northwest Queensland. This study aimed to test the applicability of geophysical methods being routinely employed to locate a variety of open site features (particularly hearths and middens) as part of reconnaissance surveys. While not being entirely successful, this study demonstrated that certain archaeological features can be readily identifi ed using geophysical techniques, though further research and trials should be carried out to refi ne the uses of these techniques to allow their more widespread applicability.

This preliminary report describes the initial results from an archaeological survey conducted in the foothills of the Gregory Ranges on Middle Park Station in inland northwest Queensland. Nearly 130 Aboriginal sites were located during the survey, which was carried out as a collaborative project between an archaeologist (LW) and members of the Woolgar Valley Aboriginal Corporation (DS and HS). Sites were dominated by rockshelters containing stenciled art, although open artefact scatters, grinding surfaces, axe grinding grooves and quarries were also present. This project has enabled the Woolgar Valley Aboriginal Corporation to begin compiling a detailed inventory of sites in their traditional country, thereby allowing a better understanding of their cultural heritage and addressing various research oriented questions about the nature of Aboriginal occupation in the region.

In this postmodern World the evocation of ecological approaches in archaeology conjures up visions of banal environmental determinism and passive human actors receiving their cues from terrifying landscapes. And yet anything but the most superficial critique of the myriad approaches that have been labelled ecology easily illustrates that social and cognitive factors may be given voice at both the individual and group level. As Pardoe (1994:182) has argued in a recent review of studies of human ecology in Australia "Humans are one species capable of rewriting deterministic ecological equations through consciousness and intentionality". Whitley (1998:3) notes that the traditional processual approach sees cultures as "...systems of socially transmitted behaviour patterns that relate communities to their ecological settings. Culture change is ... a process of adaptation to the environment and natural selection". A range of frameworks has now been presented in Australian archaeology (e.g. Head 1986, 1994), however, to facilitate some recognition of the convergence inherent between explanatory approaches which give primacy to social relations (e.g. Friedman 1979) and those focusing on biophysical factors (Wenke 1981; Winterhalder and Smith 1981). It is argued that such frameworks aim to accommodate both social and ecological/evolutionary approaches. The somewhat artificial historical dichotomy has also been liberated by systems approaches that engender multi-causal explanations in a move away from any simplistic prime mover (cf. Hutchet 1991). Many studies in Australian archaeology have employed ecological explanatory frameworks, however, there is little consensus between different reviewers about which particular researchers have been exponents of the approach. This is undoubtedly a product of how these reviewers have chosen to characterise ecological explanatory paradigms. For example, Lourandos and Ross (1994:55, 56) note that "The 'Intensification Debate' in Australia was largely a reaction to the traditional paradigms which viewed Australian Aborigines as essentially static and under environmental control". Hutchet (1991:48) argues that while cultural ecology has assumed greater importance over the last two decades (e.g. Smith 1986; Veth 1989) its explicit use still remains low in his study of the history of theories in Australian archaeology.