Modelling past Aboriginal hunter‐gatherer socio‐economic and territorial organisation in Western Australia's lower south‐west

Abstract

Past Aboriginal hunter‐gatherer adaptation is modelled in Western Australia's ‘lower South‐west’ — an informally named archaeological study area incorporating coastal and immediate hinterland districts from the Swan Region southward to Cape Leeuwin and then eastward to King George Sound. The modelling is principally based on Stanner's concepts of estate ownership and interpenetrative ranges, and is developed regionally through review of ethnohistoric records describing the mobile systems of land usage practiced by Nyungar‐speaking groups in this most south‐westerly part of the South‐western cultural bloc. These records show that the ecological and demographic viability of these contiguously distributed open systems was sustained through reciprocal arrangements between families, local descent groups and bands, at times interacting in larger groupings provisionally termed ‘middle‐tier’ socio‐economic units. Five ethnologically recorded ‘tribal’ or ‘dialect’ group territories reaching across the study area provide the biogeographical and topographical framework for this systemic model, framed within parameters of spatial, demographic and social behaviour formulated for the European Palaeolithic. The regional record of archaeological sites classifiable as congregative or dispersive supports the territorial and socio‐economic modelling. Site complexes in the Leeuwin‐Naturaliste Region and the Swan Region reflect adaptive systems existing through a broad span of Late Quaternary time.

Regional Settlement Pattern Studies

“…A regional approach is key to advances that are being made in huntergatherer sedentism, in both resource-rich (Bracco Boksar 2006) and more marginal environments (Gilman 1997). Modeling has been done on hunter-gatherer transport costs (Madsen et al 2000;Zeanah 2000) and social territories (Dortch (2002).…”

Identifying palaeo-environments and changes in Aboriginal subsistence from dual-patterned faunal assemblages, south-western Australia

“…The study region is the Leeuwin-Naturaliste Region, south-western Australia (Fig. 1), where the human responses to post-glacial environmental changes are proposed to range from accommodating environmental change Dortch, 2002Dortch, , 2004a to regional depopulation or reduction in economic activity due to forest encroachment (Ferguson, 1985;O'Connor et al, 1993;Hallam, 2006).…”

The Role of Habitus in the Maintenance of Traditional Noongar Plant Knowledge in Southwest Western Australia

“…Historical observations and seasonal ecology suggest that resource availability was high in spring and summer, but low in autumn and winter (Bird and Beeck 1988;Keen 2004). As water was limited in summer (Anderson 1984), groups of one to several hundred people would congregate at perennial water sources on the coast, where food was also abundant (Nind 1831;Collie 1834;Meagher 1974;Meagher and Ride 1980;Bird 1985;Dortch 2002). Settlers noticed Noongar groups moving inland in May where they assumed they moved around in small family groups (Nind 1831;Collie 1834), limited by food resources but taking advantage of ephemeral water sources (Hallam 1975;Anderson 1984;Dortch 2002).…”