Hook, Line, and Dilly Bag: An Interpretation of an Australian Coastal Shéll Midden

Bowdler, Sandra

doi:10.1111/j.1835-9310.1999.tb01453.x

Cited by 115 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…As with other sectors, there is increasing diversification as diet broadens, which here is dominated by marine resources. Sites such as Bass Point midden (Sydney Basin) (Bowdler, 1976), Point Ritchie midden (Victoria Volcanic Plain) (Godfrey et al, 1996), Kendrick Park midden (Sydney Basin) (Australian Museum Business Services, 2003), MHE 8 (South East Corner) (Boot, 2002), Murrumarang midden (Sydney Basin) (Boot, 2002), Balmoral Beach 2 rockshelter (Sydney Basin) (Hutchinson and Attenbrow, 2009) and middens across South Eastern Queensland (Ulm et al, 1995) all show initiation, or re-activation, between ~4-3ka (see also Bird and Frankel, 1991a); and the number and spread of middens continue to increase in the last 2,000 years, suggesting resource intensification, although coastal stabilisation and preservation may be implicated (Ulm and Hall, 1996). A brief decline at ~3ka is also evident in regional studies for the south coast of NSW (Boot, 2002).…”

Section: Temperatementioning

confidence: 99%

A continental narrative: Human settlement patterns and Australian climate change over the last 35,000 years

Williams

Veth

Steffen

et al. 2015

Quaternary Science Reviews

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, we consider the effects of climate systems on past human settlement patterns and inferred demography. We use 5,044 radiocarbon dates from ~1,750 archaeological sites to develop regional timeseries curves for different regions defined in the OZ-INTIMATE compilation as the temperate, tropics, interior and Southern Ocean sectors to explore human-climate relationships in Australia over the last 35,000 years. Correlations undertaken with improved palaeoclimatic data and archaeological records indicate that the regional time-series curves are robust, and can be used as a proxy for human behaviour. However, interrogation of the datasets is essential with artificial peaks and taphonomic over-correction being critical considerations. The time-series curves are interpreted as reflecting population growth, stasis and even decline in phase with terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene climatic fluctuations. This coupling, however, decreases during the last 5,000 years, most likely due to increased population levels, greater territoriality, technological solutions to stress, and social and ideational innovation. Curves from all sectors show exponential population growth over the last 5,000 years. We identify future research priorities, highlighting the paucity of archaeological records across several parts of Australia (<1 dated site/4,000km 2 ), especially around the fringes of the arid zone, and the need for improved taphonomic correction techniques. Finally, we discuss how these time-series curves represent a first-order framework, not dissimilar to global climate models, which researchers can continue to test and refine with local, regional and continental records. KeywordsTime-series analysis, archaeological radiocarbon data, hunter-gatherer behaviour, Aus-INTIMATE, OZ-INTIMATE, human-environment interaction, palaeoenvironment Highlights  Comparison of radiocarbon time-series techniques with other archaeological indices  We demonstrate robust relationship between radiocarbon data and demographic change  Our results suggest past demography was coupled with climate until mid-Holocene  Mid-Holocene social/technological innovation effected a de-coupling of relationship  We provide future directions for Australian archaeological and time-series research 3

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Section: Temperatementioning

confidence: 99%

A continental narrative: Human settlement patterns and Australian climate change over the last 35,000 years

Williams

Veth

Steffen

et al. 2015

Quaternary Science Reviews

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“…The last is a sandy site with dating (c. 21,000 BP) based on dispersed charcoal; it has not been fully reported (Neal and Stock 1986;Ulm et al 1995). The lowest layer of the Bass Point site is also a sandy deposit, for which the dating (c. 17,000 BP) is also based on scattered charcoal which could have blown into the site from anywhere (Bowdler 1970(Bowdler , 1976. The dating of the lowest level of the Burrill Lake rock-shelter site might equally be called into question.…”

Section: Eastern Mainland Australia During the Pleistocenementioning

confidence: 99%

Altered Ecologies: Fire, climate and human influence on terrestrial landscapes: Terra Australis 32

Haberle¹,

Stevenson²,

Prebble³

2010

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terra australis 32Terra Australis reports the results of archaeological and related research within the south and east of Asia, though mainly Australia, New Guinea and island Melanesia -lands that remained terra australis incognita to generations of prehistorians. Its subject is the settlement of the diverse environments in this isolated quarter of the globe by peoples who have maintained their discrete and traditional ways of life into the recent recorded or remembered past and at times into the observable present.Since the beginning of the series, the basic colour on the spine and cover has distinguished the regional distribution of topics as follows: ochre for Australia, green for New Guinea, red for South-East Asia and blue for the Pacific Islands. From 2001, issues with a gold spine will include conference proceedings, edited papers and monographs which in topic or desired format do not fit easily within the original arrangements. All volumes are numbered within the same series. Copyright of the text remains with the contributors/authors, 2009. This book is copyright in all countries subscribing to the Berne convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher. Among saltbush greyer than seaweed we boardwalk the yeasting waves of the old golden-perch pond. List of volumes in Terra AustralisRabbit dung dots a lake bottom dry since their coming -only once, last century, after seven inches of rain a farmer had to rescue his sheep by boat.The roo bounces down-slope, a brown branch crackling.The professor's eye, noting the local runoff and what the westerlies do, observes seas that rush in and out of a continent's middle, salt lakes spreading and emptying, hills pimpling up and down with cartoon-like speed, or gullying themselves into extinction, rainforests and deserts zipping back and forth like Tom and Jerry. A human mouse plague swiftly swarms, perhaps soon gone.Impermanent planet. Impermanent surface. All under air and water. The lunette is a wave, a dumper of sand, a collapsing tower in the mad rabbit years when its top blew off and old bones winked through, with a vault's worth of fine stone cores.Once so simply mislaid in sand, now so obligingly sluiced out to the un-subincised world that smiles at stone knives. terra australis 32Altered Ecologies: Fire, climate and human influence on terrestrial landscapes v You might as well offer your table knife to a carpenter.Cane grass and the Dreamtime's stone fight the eroding rivulets together. In today's rare downpour each lost core, or blunted scraper crowns some tiny eroding hillock, plops its anchor in the dissolving silts.The bettong whose skin took off the stone tool's edge has vanished -sacrifice to future fertility.Through the softening soil Homo sapiens's skeleton bumps up like a carp's back.Waits for the wind to shave it off in pieces.A D-section and a ti...

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“…All the food represented by the deposit may have been collected by women, and the site may have been used for food consumption almost exclusively by women -based on ethnohistoric sources (Bowdler 1976, Collins 1798, Phillip 1789Phillip [1970, Worgan 1788) and ethnographic analogy (Hiatt 1965, Meehan 1982. Fishhooks were also reported in Sydney region to be women's fishing apparel, and the presence of fishhooks in the deposit supports an interpretation of the site as one used mainly by women.…”

Section: The Bonementioning

confidence: 99%

Dreamtime Superhighway (TA27) : Sydney Basin Rock Art and Prehistoric Information Exchange

McDonald¹

2008

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Terra Australis reports the results of archaeological and related research within the south and east of Asia, though mainly Australia, New Guinea and island Melanesia -lands that remained terra australis incognita to generations of prehistorians. Its subject is the settlement of the diverse environments in this isolated quarter of the globe by peoples who have maintained their discrete and traditional ways of life into the recent recorded or remembered past and at times into the observable present. List of volumes in Terra AustralisVolume 1: Burrill Lake and Currarong: Coastal Sites in Southern New South Wales. R.J. Lampert (1971) Volume 2: Ol Tumbuna: Archaeological Excavations in the Eastern Central Highlands, Papua New Guinea. J.P. White (1972) Volume 3 vi Dreamtime Superhighway: an analysis of Sydney Basin rock art and prehistoric information exchange FOREWORD I remember the visit with clarity: it was 1991 and my first trip to Australia. One day was spent at Sydney's West Head with the young and enthusiastic Jo McDonald, where we toured some of the rock engraving sites and the painted Great Mackerel rock shelter. I can still see the large flat curving rocks at West Head on which animals had been engraved -fish, kangaroos, a goanna. And, as is so often the case when I visit rock art sites, my imagination gets going as to the 'how's' and 'why's'. I try to run some sort of a show in my head as to the people who produced these, viewed these, and what kinds of significations the images and their makings played in the lives of past peoples. At the time of this visit, Jo McDonald was well into her 1994 dissertationthe work upon which this monograph is based. Already, in that PhD dissertation, she was able to touch on some of the things that my imagination was searching for. Thus, it is with great pleasure and even more enthusiasm that I am writing this Foreword to a revised and thoroughly up-dated monograph based on that initial dissertation research.At the time of the 1994 dissertation, the anthropological and archaeological study of 'rock art' was really emerging into new trends and new prominence. Surely Australia was one of the leaders in the training of students and in the research that contextualized the images and 'art', thanks to such scholars as Andrée Rosenfeld, Robert Layton, and John Clegg among others. By this time, the work of David Lewis-Williams and colleagues in southern Africa had set off numerous studies world-wide into the relationship between the production of rock art images and altered states of consciousness and the role of shamans in image-making practices. But this was not the direction or focus of rock art studies in Australia, and McDonald's original work would not be tempted either. Rather, she carried out an extensive project of contextualizing the rock art in question, and in two different ways. First, she wanted to give us an understanding of the rock art in its archaeological contexts-sheltered or open, dates and chronologies, site types and, in general, what the archaeology c...

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Hook, Line, and Dilly Bag: An Interpretation of an Australian Coastal Shéll Midden

Cited by 115 publications

References 7 publications

A continental narrative: Human settlement patterns and Australian climate change over the last 35,000 years

A continental narrative: Human settlement patterns and Australian climate change over the last 35,000 years

Altered Ecologies: Fire, climate and human influence on terrestrial landscapes: Terra Australis 32

Dreamtime Superhighway (TA27) : Sydney Basin Rock Art and Prehistoric Information Exchange

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