Temporal Scales and Archaeological Landscapes from the Eastern Desert of Australia and Intermontane North America

The duration and mode of occupation of pre‐European Māori living in northern New Zealand was influenced by their subsistence strategies. Our analysis of the surface archaeological remains on Ahuahu (Great Mercury Island, Coromandel) examines how communities practiced horticulture and interacted with their local ecological and social environments through mobility, storage and competition. Focusing on a 300 ha study area in the northern quarter of the island, we use a multi‐scalar land‐unit (LU) approach to categorize the landscape as a continuously varying phenomenon with multiple characteristics. Our results suggest that the largest concentrations of horticultural features were located in areas with high sunlight exposure (insolation), good soils, low slopes and stream access. This patterning indicates that specific areas were probably being targeted for horticultural production, although differential feature preservation and visibility must also be considered. The spatial organisation of storage pits, residential features and fortified locations suggests year‐round occupation of the island, not just summer planting. The heterogeneous characteristics of the landscape influenced the settlement of three particular zones on the island. We suggest that the economic defensibility of these areas would have facilitated territoriality within a socio‐historical context of population fluidity and mobility.

Section: Analytical Unitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A multi‐scalar analysis of Māori land use on Ahuahu (Great Mercury Island), New Zealand

McIVOR

Ladefoged

2015

“…It is the more detailed, situational analyses, carried out by Bowler and others on a grand scale, which has provided us with a more accurate picture of the archaeology of the Pleistocene Willandra. Bailey (2007:200) argues that archaeologists should adopt time perspectivism, an approach which brings into focus processes operating at different temporal and spatial scales, capable of providing an understanding of the spatial relationships of archaeological phenomena which might be hundreds or even thousands of years apart (Holdaway and Wandsnider 2008). In the second part of this article, we will compare the Willandra with Pleistocene Tasmania in order to arrive at more reliable archaeological information to place alongside the remarkable sedimentary and environmental record at Willandra.…”

Section: Stratigraphic Unit and Age Stratigraphic Correlations Archaementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The functioning of individual artefacts has given way to concerns with context increasingly articulated under the guise of 'strategies' rather than artefact function. Behavioural strategies reconstructed for geographically and culturally diverse peoples have a surprisingly high level of redundancy, the significance of which, like continuities in raw material use, is hard to assess (Holdaway and Wandsnider 2006). At one level, some degree of similarity is to be expected since humans may have adopted a form of evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) leading to a range of cross-cultural behavioural similarities.…”

Section: Re-imagining the Willandra Lakesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Records for western NSW Holocene artefacts are now in excess of 168,000 and we are only just beginning to have a sufficient database from which to assess the controls on variability (e.g. Douglass et al 2008;Holdaway et al 2008;Shiner et al 2005). To deal with the Pleistocene human occupation of places such as the Willandra Lakes requires samples at a similar order of magnitude.…”

Section: Re-imagining the Willandra Lakesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Elsewhere in western New South Wales, advances in understanding that offer the potential for a different form of narrative have come from chronological studies, not in an attempt to isolate chronological distinctive strata, but rather to gain some idea of periodicity of occupation using multiple C14 dates combined with an analysis of land units (e.g. Holdaway et al 2002Holdaway et al , 2005Holdaway et al , 2008. At the Willandra Lakes, Gillespie (1998) has attempted to make sense of different components of the C14 record (shell, fish otolith, emu eggshell and hearth dates) and further, more extensive work along these lines will usefully complement the archaeological picture derived from stone artefact analysis.…”

Section: Re-imagining the Willandra Lakesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The archaeology of Mungo and the Willandra Lakes: looking back, looking forward

Allen

Holdaway

2009

Reviewing archaeological research in the Willandra Lakes area over the past forty years shows a number of methodological and conceptual problems. One of these is the use of ethnographic models of Aboriginal behaviour to organise the archaeological data. Such models privilege spatial over temporal relationships and minimise the extent of archaeological changes over time. Of research to date, it is Bowler's correlations of archaeological and hydrographic changes since the Late Pleistocene which best match the limited archaeological data available. A comparison of the Pleistocene archaeology from the Willandra Lakes and Tasmania reveals time-averaged records that are amenable to the analysis of patterns of mobility and material use, but not of functionally defined sites nor of typologically defined artefact assemblages. The periodicity and intensity of human occupation of the Willandra Lakes can be studied using large samples of stone artefacts drawn from wide areas, allied with a strategy of dating of land units based on multiple C14 and Optical dates. Such a strategy requires the reconsideration of the relationships between behaviour, function, space and time and a reformulation of much of our existing knowledge of the archaeology of Pleistocene Australia.

Archaeological site types, and assemblage size and diversity in Aotearoa New Zealand

Phillipps

Holdaway²,

Barrett

et al. 2022

Archaeological settlement models involve the identification of functional site types like base camps and extraction sites based, in part, on differences in the range and frequency of artefact types and fauna. Using reports describing such assemblages from Aotearoa (New Zealand) archaeological sites dating to the first 300 years after initial colonisation, differences in assemblage composition are assessed against total assemblage size. Aotearoa provides a particularly useful test case for the archaeological identification of site types since human colonisation was relatively late in world human history meaning that assemblage accumulation should show functional site types like those identified in the ethnographic record. To test this, SHE (Richness, Heterogeneity, Evenness) diversity analysis is used to examine 18 artefact and ten faunal assemblages dated pre-1500 CE from a variety of Aotearoa locations. Results suggest artefact and faunal diversity measures perform poorly when employed to differentiate functional site types, suggesting that the null hypothesis of assemblage size dependency cannot be rejected. This result allows for comment on the appropriateness of ethnographically derived functional site types for the study of the archaeological record even when this record accumulated over short time periods.