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Aboriginal people have lived in Australia, continuously, for tens of thousands of years. Over that time, they developed complex knowledge systems that were committed to memory and passed to successive generations through oral tradition. The length of time oral traditions can be passed down while maintaining vitality is a topic of ongoing debate in the social sciences. In recent years, scientists have weighed into the debate by studying traditions that describe natural events, such as volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts, which can be dated using scientific techniques. Here, we bring together a trans-disciplinary team of scholars to apply this approach to Tasmanian Aboriginal (palawa) oral traditions that were recorded in the early nineteenth century. These traditions describe the flooding of the Bassian Land Bridge connecting Tasmania to mainland Australia and the presence of a culturally significant "Great South Star", identified as Canopus (α Carinae). Utilising bathymetric and topographic data of the land and sea floor in the Bass Strait, we estimate the Bassian Land Bridge was finally submerged approximately 12,000 years ago. We then calculate the declination of the star Canopus over the last precessional cycle (26,000 years) to show that it was at a far southerly declination (δ < −75°) between 16,300 and 11,800 years ago, reaching its minimum declination approximately 14,000 years ago. These lines of evidence provide a terminus ante quem of the Tasmanian traditions to the end of the Late Pleistocene. This paper supports arguments that the longevity of orality can exceed ten millennia, providing critical information essential to the further development of theoretical frameworks regarding the archaeology of orality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Australia contains some of the world''s richest and apparently longest traditions of rock pictographs. Dating this art, however, has been problematic, with few ‘direct’ and reliable dates of Pleistocene or early Holocene age having been obtained from visible, representational imagery. This paper critically reviews the evidence for the antiquity of pigment rock art in Australia by examining the various dating techniques employed. The accurate and reliable dating of rock art worldwide is crucial to understanding the evolution of modern human symbolism and whether cognitive modernism came about after, rather than with, the first signs of full biological modernism; understanding the pitfalls and devising proper methods are crucial prerequisites. Towards these ends, this paper reviews the results and techniques that have been employed to date the apparently earliest known pictographs in Australia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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 been highly sensitive to changes in monsoon dynamics over time. How these climatic changes have affected the colonisation and occupation of Australia is an important research theme in Australian archaeology. This paper illustrates the contribution and challenges of micromorphology in deciphering palaeoenvironmental and anthropogenic markers in a still largely unexplored Australian context. Micromorphological analysis of two archaeological sequences in the Napier Range (Carpenters Gap 1 and 3) provides a complementary and comprehensive reconstruction of the human-climate history in this area spanning nearly 50,000 years of Australian human presence. The results demonstrate an opportunistic use of sites by people through time, surprisingly independent of local climatic variation, suggesting highly flexible subsistence strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In coastal areas of the globe, open shell matrix sites are commonly used to establish regional chronologies of human occupation and identify patterns of cultural change, particularly for the Holocene, post-sea-level stabilisation period. Despite this, many basic sedimentary analyses that are routinely applied to rockshelter deposits (e.g. geophysical characterisation, particle size etc) are rarely applied to these sites. Magnetic susceptibility, occasionally used in rockshelters, has never been used to investigate shell matrix sites in Australia, despite several international studies identifying its efficacy for other types of open sites. This paper reports a pilot project applying a range of conventional sedimentary and archaeological analyses, as well as magnetic susceptibility at three anthropogenic shell mounds on Mornington Island, Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia. Results are compared to, firstly, assess site integrity and, secondly, to ascertain whether magnetic signatures are related to cultural or natural site formation processes. The results establish that the mounds were repeatedly visited, despite the archaeological evidence, including radiocarbon ages, suggesting effectively 'instantaneous' deposition. This has important implications for studies of other shell mounds where the limitations of radiocarbon dating precision may also mask multiple deposition events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic data indicate that during the mid-to-late Holocene eastern Australia became significantly drier and experienced more intense and more frequent droughts. These changes, driven by the re-emergence and intensification of the ENSO climate phenomena, have been argued to have had considerable impact on Aboriginal societies, although there is uncertainty as to the exact nature, timing and magnitude of this impact. This paper analyses changes in the utilisation of toxic Macrozamia (cycad) seeds at seven archaeological sites in eastern Australia, identifying an extremely close correlation between the intensity of seed use and two proxy ENSO datasets, and a weaker correlation with a third ENSO dataset. Given the ecological attributes and resource potential of these plants, it is argued that these correlations are best explained as an intensified exploitation of a lower-ranked resource in direct response to the increased subsistence risks and lower productivity created by ENSO-driven climatic conditions. It also suggests that by 3000 BP the intensification of the ENSO system was driving changes in human subsistence behaviour on a sufficient scale to have considerable impact on other aspects of the wider cultural systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper describes the methods and results of ethnographically-based replicative seed processing experiments conducted on Australian Macrozamia moorei seeds. Archaeological evidence indicates that these seeds were consumed by Australian hunter–gatherers in both the Pleistocene and Holocene. The experiments identified three features indicative of human processing and tested the effect of different processing variables (striking position, indentor type, thermal modification and presence of outer flesh) on the frequency of these diagnostic criteria. The results demonstrate that it is possible to use the physical modifications on individual seed specimens to identify the anthropogenic fracture of seeds and specific methods used to process them. These criteria were used in the analysis of M. moorei seeds from mid-Holocene-aged archaeological sites in central Queensland, Australia. The results indicate that seeds with and without sarcotesta were processed using a wooden indentor via side striking techniques. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Palaeo-environments and past human subsistence patterns are difficult to determine from dual-patterned faunal assemblages where human and non-human predators have accumulated and intensively modified animal bones. This paper examines such records in the Leeuwin–Naturaliste Region of south-western Australia, where a thin belt of coastal limestone contains caves and rock shelters with rich faunal deposits. The Late Pleistocene and Holocene part of this record derives from four archaeological sites: Devil''s Lair, Tunnel Cave, Witchcliffe Rock Shelter and Rainbow Cave. Correspondence analysis combined with cluster analysis enables a preliminary assessment of habitat changes using simple species abundances in the faunal assemblages and comparison with indices of past human activity in the sites and the species’ present habitat preferences. These inferred changes, consistent with previous analyses of faunal remains and tree charcoal, suggest that late Holocene sites document Aboriginal occupation in coastal heath, scrub and woodland. Late Pleistocene deposits record hinterland occupation at times of low sea-level when the coast was up to 30km seawards of its present position and the surrounding vegetation was open-forest or woodland. As rainfall increased and vegetation changed in the Holocene, species foraging in open-woodland declined or became locally extinct, while species requiring closed canopy habitats increased. Rank-order correlations of taxa and archaeological remains from depositional sequences before and after the environmental change indicate that the occupiers of late Holocene sites favoured the same generalist species that occupiers of Late Pleistocene sites had favoured, which were available at all times. Prey habitats, foraging behaviours and historic records of ethnographic hunting and settlement pattern suggest that this local continuity is consistent with maintenance of a “dispersive mode” subsistence pattern in the region. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The composition of lithic assemblages is typically depicted in terms the relative abundance of different implement types. In this paper we hypothesize that the characteristics of early Australian assemblages said to distinguish those types are part of a morphological continuum, and that this continuum is largely explained as a reflection of different levels of reduction. We demonstrate the viability of this perspective at one of the classic sites at which early industries were defined, Capertee 3. The existence of an Australian technology structured around continuous reduction without evidence of “imposed form” reveals that this pattern is widespread and should not be taken to represent an “archaic” approach to stone working. Implications for conventional interpretations of Palaeolithic stone implements are briefly examined. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]