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Riwi, a limestone cave located in the south central Kimberley, northwest Western Australia, has one of the most accurately dated archaeological sequences in Australia, with human occupation beginning between 46,400 and 44,600 cal bp. Macrobotanical remains are well preserved at the site, particularly in upper stratigraphic units 1 and 2 dated to the late and mid-Holocene, respectively. Macrobotanical materials (excluding wood charcoal) are uncommon in Pleistocene contexts, and direct dating of some of the macrobotanical remains recovered from Pleistocene hearths suggest that they derive from the directly superposed Holocene layers. Analysis of the macrobotanical remains from the Holocene layers reveals a pattern where Aboriginal groups occupying Riwi intermittently between 7,000 years ago and the present principally exploited monsoon rainforest ecosystems for food plants, especially Vitex cf. glabrata. Fruiting times of dominant monsoon rainforest taxa indicate that the site was occupied seasonally, corresponding with periods of rainfall when people were able to move away from rivers and other permanent water sources. Results demonstrate a strong cultural preference for fruits associated with monsoon rainforest—a vegetation type restricted in distribution—highlighting the importance of moisture retaining limestone outcrops in foragers’ subsistence organisation in the south central Kimberley.

With both rock art and ochre-stained marine shell ornamentation identified at the four Timor-Leste sites of Jerimalai, Lene Hara, Matju Kuru 1, and Matja Kuru 2, it should not be surprising that almost one kilogram of colorants were also recovered from these same sites. Pieces displaying clearly identifiable use wear (grinding, scraping, rubbing) were collected from the earliest levels of Jerimalai dating to around 40,000 cal. BP, and continued up through the deposit to the near present levels. Similar quantities and distributions were also found in Matju Kuru 1 and 2, along with Lene Hara. Alongside these colorant fragments were six stone implements displaying evidence for ochre processing, providing insights into the exact pigment producing tools used in this location. Also found was an artifact dated to >10,200–9909 cal. BP from MK2 which may be a fragment of a mastic including ochre as an ingredient in its formation. Overall, this Timorese assemblage offers the ideal opportunity to explore ochre processing and use over a 40,000 year period in Island Southeast Asia — information which has been previously lacking.

This paper reviews the raw materials used by Indigenous Australians to make beads. It includes beads recovered from archaeological sites, as well as beads collected before 1940 held in museum collections, and those that are described in pre-1940 literature and other archival material. All three sources of information indicate that people were highly selective in their choice of materials for bead production and that availability and abundance only partly determined selection. Grass and reeds, the most widespread material represented in the museum and historic sources, if used in pre-European times, have not been preserved in archaeological sites. Beads made of highly iridescent or luminous shells, that historic sources suggest were regarded as imbued with powerful properties, were selected over other, more abundant colorful or patterned shells. Teeth of large macropod species were more commonly used than any other mammals despite other species being more readily available. On the other hand, dingo teeth, which were just as large and more robust than macropod teeth, were very rarely used, and this seems surprising given dingoes’ ubiquitous presence in Aboriginal society. As dog teeth were commonly used as beads in personal adornments by Melanesian people in Papua New Guinea, and the teeth of now locally extinct dogsized carnivores are found as beads in archaeological contexts, we suggest that the lack of dog teeth beads may reflect the high status of dogs in Aboriginal societies. Although the Australian archaeological bead assemblage is small, comparison with the historically documented beads indicates that the choice of raw material has remained relatively constant for thousands of years. The historical sources also describe human teeth and other bone relics as being worn as pendants for protection for the wearer. However these are often unmodified, being suspended by resin or other non-destructive techniques. This has implications for isolated human skeletal parts

The migration of anatomically modern humans (AMH) from Africa to every inhabitable continent included their dispersal through Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) to Australia. Significantly, this involved overwater dispersal through the Lesser Sunda Islands between Sunda (continental Southeast Asia) and Sahul (Australia and New Guinea). However, the timing and direction of this movement is still debated. Here, we report on human skeletal material recovered from excavations at two rockshelters, known locally as Tron Bon Lei, on Alor Island, Indonesia. The remains, dated to the Late Pleistocene, are the first anatomically modern human remains recovered in Wallacea dated to this period and are associated with cultural material demonstrating intentional burial. The human remains from Tron Bon Lei represent a population osteometrically distinct from Late Pleistocene Sunda and Sahul AMH. Instead, morphometrically, they appear more similar to Holocene populations in the Lesser Sundas. Thus, they may represent the remains of a population originally from Sunda whose Lesser Sunda Island descendants survived into the Holocene.

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 present new data from the site of Asitau Kuru, Timor-Leste, to show that the creation of shell adzes and greater inter-island connectivity also characterizes the early and middle and early Holocene in the Nusa Tenggara archipelago of southern Wallacea. We suggest that one of the functions of these shell adzes was in making dugout canoes enabling regular access to neighboring islands; the import of exotic stone materials; long-term occupation of very small islands; and, with new hook and line technology, the capture of more fish. This evidence predates the Neolithic in the region and corroborates a linguistic hypothesis that there was a pre-Austronesian interaction sphere covering much of Wallacea.

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 phases: a Pleistocene occupation from ~ 44,000 to 15,000 years ago, an early to middle Holocene occupation from ~ 10,000 to 5000 years ago and a Neolithic occupation from ~ 3800 years ago to the recent past. Across these three phases, there are distinct continuities in the way stone tools are made, and the use of red ochre and Oliva beads. We suggest that the unusually high relief topography of the Wallacean Archipelago ensured continuity in several parameters of potential behavioural change, including available environments, proximity to the sea and island size. Given the long-term continuity, the similarities with stone artefacts elsewhere in Wallacea and the early dates for human occupation in Wallacea from this excavation, we suggest that the stone tool technology documented here was introduced by an early dispersing population of Homo sapiens.

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 networks. The archaeology of Here Sorot Entapa rockshelter (HSE) on Kisar Island in the Wallacean Archipelago provides an unparalleled record for examining these issues in Southeast Asia. Kisar is the smallest of the Wallacean islands known to have a Pleistocene occupation record, and one of the smallest permanently inhabited today. Our results indicate that Here Sorot Entapa was first occupied in the terminal Pleistocene by people with advanced maritime technology who made extensive use of local marine resources and engaged in social connections with other islands through an obsidian exchange network. As a result, populations appear to have been maintained on the island for approximately 6,000 years. In the early Holocene occupation at HSE ceased for unknown reasons, and the site was not reoccupied until the mid-Holocene, during which time a major change in the lithic resources can be observed and the exchange network appears to have ceased.

Archaeological surveys are essential to the discovery and interpretation of remains left by past 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 is still imperative for successful discoveries. Here we present the results of the 2017 archaeological survey of islands Babar Besar and Wetang in the Babar Island Group, Maluku Barat Daya, Indonesia. A total of 62 archaeological sites were recorded between the two islands; seven of which represent new rock art sites on Wetang island. Our survey results indicate the successful use of geological and topographic maps alongside satellite images in detecting prospective regions for survey. Results also indicate however that a more detailed and comparative understanding of the regions geology is required before more advanced forms of remote survey are conducted in the Maluku Barat Daya region.

Traditional fish vertebrae identification relies on the availability of comprehensive reference collections that include every element from the neural spine for each taxon. In regions with great taxonomic diversity, such as the Indo-Pacific, the identification of fish vertebrae to species is difficult. This results in taxonomic lists with many skeletal elements identified only to family. However family level identifications often tell us little about the environmental preferences of the fish and thus, by inference, human fishing practices. Here we apply geometric morphometrics (GM) to examine shape variations within vertebrae in modern specimens of a variety of pelagic and reef species to determine if this method can be used to reliably inform on habitat preferences. Digitized vertebral elements of reef (Acanthuridae, Balistidae, Labridae, Lethrinidae, Lutjanidae and Serranidae) and pelagic/open water (Scombridae and Carangidae) families were scored using 2D landmarks. These were subjected to Generalized Procrustes Analysis and discriminatory multivariate analyses (Linear Discriminant Analysis and Discriminant Function Analysis) in order to assess whether shape can be used to differentiate habitats. Our results suggest that geometric morphometrics do allow the differentiation of habitat in vertebrae and provide an alternative method for the classification of archaeological fish assemblages. These analyses were applied to a sample of archaeological fish remains from a site in Alor Island (Nusa Tenggara Timur, Indonesia) and compared with the results of an earlier traditional comparative icthyoarchaeological analysis. We found that the main component of the Pleistocene marine human diet comprised reef species, with the sporadic addition of open water species, supporting the pattern recorded with traditional analyses. This methodology could be widely applied to archaeological fish material from across the Indo-Pacific allowing a greater number of bones in assemblages t

The palaeogeography of the Wallacea Archipelago is a significant factor in understanding early modern humancolonization of Sahul (Australia and New Guinea), and models of colonization patterns, as well as archaeologicalsurvey and site interpretation, are all heavily dependent on the specific palaeogeographic reconstruction employed.Here we presentfive reconstructions for the periods 65, 60, 55, 50, and 45 000 years ago, using the latest bathometricchart and a sea-level model that is adjusted to account for the average uplift rate known from Wallacea. Using this datawe also reconstructed island areal extent as well as topography for each time period. These reconstructions were thenused to estimate visibility for each island in the archipelago, andfinally to model how intervisible each island wasduring the period of likely human colonization. Our models provide thefirst evidence for intervisibility between Timorand Australia at ca. 65–62 ka and 47–12 ka, the second of which is notable for its overlap with the oldest radiocarbondates from Timor-Leste and Australia. Based on intervisibility alone, however, our study suggests that the northernroute into Papua New Guinea was the most parsimonious route forfirst modern human entry into Sahul. Our studyprovides archaeologists with an important baseline from which to conduct physical surveys, interpret archaeologicaldata, and theorize the colonization of Wallacea and Sahul.