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This paper provides new insights into the long-term history of Aboriginal use of mountainous Victoria over the past 25,000 years. It presents results of excavations at Garden Range 2 rock art site located on the edge of the Strathbogie Ranges in central Victoria. The excavations were a research collaboration between the Taungurung Land and Waters Council (TLaWC) and Monash University. Results indicate possible ephemeral visitation by the Old People during the Last Glacial Maximum, clear evidence of occupation over the past 11,000 years, and increased activity since 1600 cal BP. The stone artefact assemblage is dominated by flakes of local quartz. Three igneous flakes from ground-edge axes, dating to after 700 cal BP, are contemporary with a grinding stone showing use-wear and residues from stone axe maintenance. The faunal assemblage is dominated by forest and grassland animals, such as macropod and emu, with mussel shells and fish bones indicating the use of nearby Seven Creeks. The rarity of ochre within sediments precludes insights into the age of rock art paintings on the shelter's surface. Fossil pollen documents the nineteenth-century European forest clearances, a period when Taungurung people's use of the site became unsafe. Unburnt fragments of rabbit and sheep bone suggest subsequent use of the site as a fox den. Garden Range 2 illustrates Aboriginal use of mountainous central Victoria during periods of significant environmental changes in the Early Holocene and possibly in the Late Pleistocene. These chronological patterns, including increased activity in the central Victorian uplands during the Late Holocene, match emerging chronological patterns of long-term use of other mountainous regions of southeastern Australia. How sites like Garden Range 2 relate to broader long-term Aboriginal use of more elevated sub-alpine and alpine (snow country) zones of central and eastern Victoria is a question for future archaeological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An Aboriginal man done to death on the dunes 4000 years ago was recently discovered during excavations beneath a bus shelter in Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches. The presence of backed microliths and the evidence for trauma in the bones showed that he had been killed with stone-tipped spears. Now we know how these backed points were used. A punishment ritual is implied by analogies with contact-period observations made in the eighteenth century AD. Keywords: Australia, Sydney, Aborigine, microliths, ritual punishment, spears, Introduction This paper documents the first archaeological evidence in Australia both for death by spearing and for the use of backed artefacts as spear armatures. Excavation below a bus shelter [...]

Recent claims for continent wide disappearance of megafauna at 46.5 thousand calendar years ago (ka) in Australia have been used to support a 'blitzkrieg' model, which explains extinctions as the result of rapid overkill by human colonizers. A number of key sites with megafauna remains that significantly postdate 46.5 ka have been excluded from consideration because of questions regarding their stratigraphic integrity. Of these sites, Cuddie Springs is the only locality in Australia where megafauna and cultural remains are found together in sequential stratigraphic horizons, dated from 36-30 ka. Verifying the stratigraphic associations found here would effectively refute the rapid-overkill model and necessitate reconsideration of the regional impacts of global climatic change on megafauna and humans in the lead up to the last glacial maximum. Here, we present geochemical evidence that demonstrates the coexistence of humans and now-extinct megafaunal species on the Australian continent for a minimum of 15 ka. archeology | extinction | geochemistry | rare earth element | climate change

New Guinea has yielded some of the earliest evidence for a human presence in Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea), with the north coast being one of the likely colonisation routes from Southeast Asia. Of the known pre-Last Glacial Maximum (≥30kya) archaeological sites from New Guinea, only a handful come from the Highlands. Navigable pathways linking the north coast to the central cordillera, specifically 'grassland corridors', may have facilitated settlement, yet little is known about human settlement of fringe montane valleys within these corridors. A survey and excavation program within the Simbai-Kaironk Valleys (2,000–1,600 m asl) on the northern montane fringe identified 51 sites across a 21 km corridor. Radiocarbon dating suggests a possible human presence from 31 ka, clear evidence for landscape use from 17 to 15 ka, and an increase in site density from the Mid-Holocene. Most sites were from open settings, with Holocene settlements positioned at elevations optimising access to montane forests, grasslands and lowland resources. We argue that the Simbai-Kaironk grassland corridor has facilitated access to the central Highland valleys since the Late Pleistocene. Shorter and more direct pathways, transecting the river valleys via prominent spurs rising above the lowlands – and their associated insect-borne diseases – are likely to have facilitated coastal-Highland movement throughout the Holocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Understanding the loss of the final few species of Australian megafauna is beset by a paucity of data on human arrival, well‐provenanced megafauna, human/megafauna population range and distribution (coexistence and interaction), and the range, scale and impact of environmental changes spanning the human–megafauna period. To overcome these shortcomings, the occurrence and decline of coprophilous fungal spores of Sporormiella in sediments have been used as a proxy for extinct megaherbivores. The Sporormiella evidence is presented as the key indicator of extinction timing and these reports are often from locations where there is no known archaeological record or megafauna remains. However, interpreting fungal spore occurrence is not straightforward, as demonstrated by studies investigating taphonomy, taxonomy and the types of animal dung where Sporormiella occurs. No detailed studies on these problems exist for Australia and no evidence supporting the use of Sporormiella as a valid proxy has been reported. Here we examine the occurrence of Sporormiella spores from Cuddie Springs in south‐eastern Australia. Despite a well‐preserved suite of megafauna fossils, Sporormiella occurrence is sporadic and frequencies are low. We conclude that using Sporormiella alone as an indicator for the presence of megafauna is premature for the Australian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]