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The Traces in a Lost Landscape: Aboriginal archaeological sites, Dyarubbin/Nepean River Project uses geospatial recording and analysis to recover, integrate, and map data from published and unpublished reports on Aboriginal archaeological sites on Dyarubbin/the Nepean River in New South Wales, Australia. This dataset consists of Australian Aboriginal archaeological locations of interest in the greater Nepean River area in New South Wales, Australia.

We present the results of a compliance-based excavation on the banks of Peach Tree Creek within the alluvial margin of the Nepean River, Penrith, NSW. The excavations consisted of (i) two mechanically excavated trenches (3 × 1 m) in controlled 20 cm spits to depths of 4 m below surface, and (ii) a subsequent stage of manual salvage excavation (6 m2) focussing on the artefact-bearing levels indicated by the testing phase. The excavations identified two sedimentary deposits, with the lowest being part of the Cranebrook Formation, a deep alluvial deposit within which artefacts dating to >40 ka have been previously reported. We recovered four indurated mudstone/tuff and two coarse silcrete artefacts, all having characteristics of the late Pleistocene/early Holocene, and which we have OSL dated to >9.5 ka from the upper portion of the Richmond Unit of the Cranebrook Formation (3.5–3.9 m below the surface). Along with a greater understanding of the formation (only a part of which was deposited during the last 50 ka) and recent archaeological discoveries, our results lend increasing support for visitation of the Nepean river corridor by Aboriginal people as a part of the initial colonisation of Australia. It remained a key locale for occupation and visitation throughout the late Pleistocene. Finally, we discuss the current NSW State government guidelines for investigating archaeological deposits and identify concerns about their effectiveness and applicability when investigating areas of potentially deep stratigraphy along the banks of the Nepean River. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many lowland stream channels have dramatically widened over the last two centuries. There has been considerable debate about whether this widening was caused by an unusually large flood, by a series of large floods, or by decreased bank stability caused by clearing of riparian vegetation. The relative effects of floods and vegetation can be disentangled in southeastern Australia where streams have undergone both clearing of bank vegetation, and decadal sequences of relatively higher and lower flood magnitude and frequency. Archival aerial photographs of the Nepean River, in southeastern Australia, suggest that banks did not erode during periods of low flood magnitude (drought-dominated regime: from 1901-1949) whether they were cleared or not. However, during periods of flood-dominated regime (1950 to 1970s) only cleared stream banks eroded. Thus, on the upper Nepean River, clearing alone was insufficient to trigger erosion by small floods, and even large floods were unable to erode vegetated banks. The conclusion is that substantial channel widening in this river required both clearing of bank vegetation, and periods of unusually large and frequent floods. This conclusion is supported by geomechanical modelling that examine the reduction in bank shear strength arising from the loss of tree-root reinforcement. The modelling also suggests that bank instability arising from devegetation amplifies the potential for bank failure during the drawdown phase of a flood, leading to channel widening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]