Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Aboriginal australians – antiquities – congresses'

This study examines the variability of the stone assemblages at the mound springs campsites in South Australia. The research area is part of the tribal territories of Arabana and Diyari people. It comprises a network of mound springs stretching for about 200 km along the south and southwest shores of Lake Eyre. These mound springs were vital for permanent occupation of this arid region in late prehistory and in the post contact period. Large campsites located near the major springs attest to the prehistoric occupation of the area. Historical accounts reveal that this occupation was abruptly terminated in early 1 8 6 0’s. Although environment and chronology are uniform for all the mound spring sites the assemblages are distinctly different. They vary in the proportions of lithic materials, tool types, and artefact size. Inter-site variability is prominent while intrasite variation is minimal. The research is focused on this fact as it provides an important clue to the nature of springs o c c u p a t i o n. It is demonstrated that the variability of the mound spring campsites reflects different tactics of use and economy of lithic materials at each site. These tactics were influenced by: a) availability of different lithic materials and b) different demands for processing organic materials. It is argued that assemblage patterning is sensitive to local circumstances, and affected by quantity and quality of resources at each site. Consequently the variability between assemblages reflects the overall organisation and strategy of land use. This study attempts not merely to reconstruct human behaviour at each site but rather to understand how this behaviour was organised on the strategic level. This level of organisation is best represented by the differential use of sites within a common settlement system. Organisation such as this suggests consistent links between groups of people in the mound springs area throughout the last thousand years.

Aboriginal Australian heritage forms a significant and celebrated part of Australian heritage. Set within the institutional frameworks of a predominantly ??white?? European Australian heritage practice, Aboriginal heritage has been promoted as the heritage of a people who belonged to the distant, pre-colonial past and who were an integral and sustainable part of the natural environment. These controlled and carefully packaged meanings of Aboriginal heritage have underwritten aspects of urban Aboriginal presence and history that prevail in the (previously) colonial city. In the midst of the city which seeks to cling to selected images of its colonial past urban Aboriginal heritage emerges as a significant challenge to a largely ??white??, (post)colonial Australian heritage practice. The distinctively Aboriginal sense of anti-colonialism that underlines claims to urban sites of Aboriginal significance unsettles the colonial stereotypes that are associated with Aboriginal heritage and disrupts the ??purity?? of the city by penetrating the stronghold of colonial heritage. However, despite the challenge to the colonising imperatives of heritage practice, the fact that urban Aboriginal heritage continues to be a deeply contested reality indicates that heritage practice has failed to move beyond its predominantly colonial legacy. It knowingly or unwittingly maintains the stronghold of colonial heritage in the city by selectively and often with reluctance, recognising a few sites of contested Aboriginal heritage such as the Old Swan Brewery and Bennett House in Perth. Furthermore, the listing of these sites according to very narrow and largely Eurocentric perceptions of Aboriginal heritage makes it quite difficult for other sites which fall outside these considerations to be included as part of the urban built environment. Importantly this thesis demonstrates that it is most often in the case of Aboriginal sites of political resistance such as The Block in Redfern, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra and Australian Hall in Sydney, that heritage practice tends to maintain its hegemony as these sites are a reminder of the continuing disenfranchised condition of Aboriginal peoples, in a nation which considers itself to be postcolonial.

A classification of Australian Aboriginal stone arrangements is fundamental to the understanding of their function and social significance for both Australian and world prehistory. The implications of certain problems with the archaeological data for a classification of arrangements, such as dating and inadequate reporting, are discussed. Possible principles governing the mode of construction, design and location of arrangements are investigated, and the criteria for classification suggested. A two-tier classification is proposed. On the first level, the technological and morphological characteristics of discrete stone arrangements are organised into classes. On the second level, the combination of arrangement classes at any one site defines site types. 144 sites in four regions in New South Wales are classified. Comparisons are made between classes and site types within each region and across regions. Existing opinions about the distribution of so-called 'simple' and 'complex' types are challenged. An investigation of the relationship between classes or site types, and other kinds of archaeological sites, such as rock art, reveals no perfect correlations either within one region or across regions. It is proposed that any governing principles are more likely to have operated at a local level, reflecting such factors as local topography, beliefs and traditions, and population density, rather than at a universal level. The significance of a classification of stone arrangements for studies on culture areas, and on complex Aboriginal hunter-gathering is discussed. Further research is proposed with regard to the former. The construction and location of many arrangements is regarded as evidence for a considerable investment of time and energy in non-subsistence activities. It is suggested that these stone arrangements are associated with the archaeological evidence identified by Australian and overseas researchers, for an increasingly more complex stage in the evolution of hunter-gatherers, in which ceremonial and ritual requirements were paramount.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Environmental & Life Sciences, Graduate School of the Environment, 2002.
Includes bibliographical references: p. 228-232.
Geomorphology, archaeology and geoarchaeology: introduction and background -- Surface stone artefact scatters: why can we see them? -- Geomorphic controls on spatial patterning of the surface stone artefact record -- A temporal framework for interpreting surface artefact scatters in Western NSW -- Synthesis: stone artefact scatters in a dynamic landscape.
Surface scatters of stone artefacts are the most ubiquitous feature of the Australian Aboriginal archaeological record, yet the most underutilized by archaeologists in developing models of Aboriginal prehistory. Among the many reasons for this are the lack of understanding of geomorphic processes that have exposed them, and the lack of a suitable chronological framework for investigating Aboriginal 'use of place'. This thesis addresses both of these issues. -- In arid western NSW, erosion and deposition accelerated as a result of the introduction of sheep grazing in the mid 1800s has resulted in exposure of artefact scatters in some areas, burial in others, and complete removal in those parts of the landscape subject to concentrated flood flows. The result is a patchwork of artefact scatters exhibiting various degrees of preservation, exposure and visibility. My research at Stud Creek, in Sturt National Park in far western NSW, develops artefact and landscape survey protocols to accommodate this dynamic geomorphic setting. A sampling strategy stratified on the basis of landscape morphodynamics is presented that allows archaeologists to target areas of maximum artefact exposure and minimum post-discard disturbance. Differential artefact visibility at the time of the survey is accommodated by incorporating measures of surface cover which quantify the effects of various ephemeral environmental processes, such as deposition of sediments, vegetation growth, and bioturbation, on artefact count. -- While surface stone artefact scatters lack the stratigraphy usually considered necessary for establishing the timing of Aboriginal occupation, a combination of radiocarbon determinations on associated heat-retainer ovens, and stratigraphic analysis and dating of the valley fills which underlie the scatters, allows a two-stage chronology for huntergatherer activity to be developed. In the Stud Creek study area, dating of the valley fill by OSL established a maximum age of 2,040±100 y for surface artefact scatters. The heatretainer ovens ranged in age from 1630±30 y BP to 220±55 y BP. Bayesian statistical analysis of the sample of 28 radiocarbon determinations supported the notion, already established from analysis of the artefacts, that the Stud Creek valley was occupied intermittently for short durations over a relatively long period of time, rather than intensively occupied at any one time. Furthermore, a gap in oven building between about 800 and 1100 years ago was evident. Environmental explanations for this gap are explored, but the paiaeoenvironmental record for this part of the Australian arid zone is too sparse and too coarse to provide explanations of human behaviour on time scales of just a few hundred years. -- Having established a model for Stud Creek of episodic landscape change throughout the late Pleistocene and Holocene, right up to European contact, its veracity was evaluated in a pilot study at another location within the region. The length of the archaeological record preserved in three geomorphically distinct locations at Fowlers Gap, 250 km south of Stud Creek, is a function of geomorphic dynamics, with a record of a few hundred years from sites located on channel margins and low terraces, and the longest record thus far of around 5,000 years from high terrace surfaces more remote from active channel incision. But even here, the record is not continuous, and like Stud Creek, the gaps are interpreted to indicate that Aboriginal people moved into and out of these places intermittently throughout the mid to late Holocene. -- I conclude that episodic nonequilibrium characterizes the geomorphic history of these arid landscapes, with impacts on the preservation of the archaeological record. Dating of both archaeological and landform features shows that the landscape, and the archaeological record it preserves, are both spatially and temporally disjointed. Models of Aboriginal hunter-gatherer behaviour and settlement patterns must take account of these discontinuities in an archaeological record that is controlled by geomorphic activity. -- I propose a new geoarchaeological framework for landscape-based studies of surface artefact scatters that incorporates geomorphic analysis and dating of landscapes, as well as tool typology, into the interpretation of spatial and temporal patterns of Aboriginal huntergatherer 'use of place'.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
vii, 232 p. ill., maps

This thesis analyses an extensive bone deposit from Allen's Cave, which is situated on the southern Nullarbor, South Australia. Excavation of the site in 1989 yielded evidence for 38,000 years of human occupation, the first 25,000 years of which took place under extremely arid conditions. A taphonomic analysis of the bone debris was undertaken in order to identify patterns of Aboriginal arid zone subsistence and occupation. The bone debris consists of skeletal material from a range of small to large prey. The smaller species are both better represented and preserved than larger species. Primary deposition by owls and carnivores and significant modification of human-deposited bone is clearly demonstrated. Previous vertebrate analyses which have aimed at identifying humandeposited bone from such mixed and. fragmented deposits were found to display on-going methodological problems. These problems were largely based on misunderstandings about the behavior of predators associated with the cave sites. Therefore a comprehensive review of the taphonomic effects of a range of carnivores in human occupation sites has been undertaken. Revision of earlier methodologies also revealed that expectations concerning the capacity of the highly fragmented and diminished amount of human discard to provide evidence of subsistence and occupation were overstated. Thus a taphonomic methodology focussing on the far greater quantity of non-cultural bone debris has been formulated for Allen's Cave. It is anticipated that this will also be applicable to similar deposits in sites elsewhere.

Despite the changes in method and theory which have occurred in the study of prehistory over the last one hundred and fifty years the understanding of lithic technology has been dominated by a single perspective. This has been based on three central assumptions: (1) the form of an artifact reflects prior mental or cognitive processes which supply the formal cause, (2) the clear delineation of products as ends and (3) the neutrality of the experience of the production process which converts the cognitive into the material. This thesis presents a critique of these assumptions and demonstrates the utility of applying an alternative perspective to the problem of understanding technological change in north-western Australian stone assemblages. This is carried out via an analysis of the Ingaladdi site. The central component of the criticism of the 'traditional model’ is that it has failed to recognize lithic technology as a form of practical knowledge or 'knowing how’. The implication of the alternative understanding of lithic technology as 'knowing how’ is that stone artifacts were not and should not be seen as a series of materialized ideas or products but as a series of experienced manufacturing processes. It is the organizational structure of these reduction processes which constitute lithic technology in time and space of the archaeological record. This approach to the understanding of prehistoric technology, when applied to the Ingaladdi material, reveals two previously unrecognized elements. Firstly, the early underlying material, previously characterized as a crude and amorphous flake and core 'industry’ is seen to reflect a complex organization based on a two tiered structure utilizing both local lithic materials and that which maintains a relationship termed the 'standing reserve’. It is suggested that the amorphous nature of the early assemblages derives from their inability to separate lithic reduction from wider production processes and that it was the inherent disjunction between the structural and situational 'logic’ which preconditioned the later technological change. The second major aspect of the analysis shows that, despite their marked typological difference from the underlying, the major component of the later assemblage, the lancet flake, can be derived directly from the earlier flake production process. The transformation follows a major shift from 'on-site’ to 'off-site’ primary core reduction - the principal organizational difference between the early and later assemblages. Some implications for the understanding of technological, economic and social relations in Australian prehistory are discussed and the thesis concludes with a more detailed examination of the origins of the 'traditional’ and alternative models of lithic technology.

The past few years has seen the emergence of a critical assessment of the relationship between the ethnographer and the society being studied (for example see Agar 1984; Marcus and Fisher 1986). One result has been the recognition that '..ethnographies are a function of the different traditions of ethnographer, group, and intended audience" (Agar 1984: 783). I believe it appropriate to include here a summary of the traditions, influences and chance events that led me to ethno-archaeology and shaped the methodology I used.

The Upper Nepean River catchment in the Sydney Basin has a rich repertoire of visual imagery - rock-art, and a variety of other types of marks on stone. This thesis examines the diversity and spatial distribution across the land of these rock markings and change over time. The theoretical focus is on materiality, practice and performance. In previous research conducted in the Sydney Basin, rock-art located in shelters has been considered, at least implicitly, to be functionally equivalent across both space and time. The research in this thesis, by comparison, has been developed to explore both synchronic and diachronic variability in sheltered rock-art and to give consideration to the occupational and contextual diversity this represents. The rock-art corpus is analysed in accordance with its material diversity in order to explore the qualitatively different forms of behavioural expression that this variation may embody. A fundamental distinction is made between graphically structured, imposed form on the one hand, and gestural marks on the other. The material relationship between the rock-art and the rock on and within which it is set, is also examined. The different data sets are explored dialectically and in accordance with their geographic and environmental location in order to gain an appreciation of the experience and engagement between Aboriginal people and the land in this part of the Sydney Basin. The analysis employs both quantitative and explicitly narrative approaches to examine the spatial and temporal dimensions of occupation. While this research has been conducted without the support of any direct dating or archaeological context, the methodology has, nevertheless allowed for the discrimination of temporal diversity in spatial patterns, and concomitantly, the manner in which the land has been occupied and created as landscape, over time. In order to achieve this, it has been crucial to analyse the rock markings not only in respect of their behaviour correlates, but also their material locations within geographic, environmental and micro-topographic space. The analysis of the Upper Nepean rock-art reveals a pattern of diachronic change in which the marking of the land with imagery became increasingly diverse in a number of formal and material ways, and geographically and environmentally common and widespread. The results suggests that regional bodies of rock-art are likely to have been produced in accordance with a diversity of motivations and functional purposes and that significant temporal change in the impetus to mark the land, and the choice of how and where to do so, can occur over relatively short time frames. It is argued that the practice of marking the land in the Upper Nepean was a dynamic dialectic, both constitutive and transformative, of being and place. Over time, people drew the land into an object world which became, with ever increasing inscription and embellishment, a marked and painted landscape, both productive of and reflecting, a complex history.

The archaeological record of southeastern Australia, from the Pleistocene to the mid-tolate Holocene, is seen to reflect a transition from dispersed Aboriginal land use patterns to those of increasing) y populous, sedentary and socioeconomically complex hunter gatherers. This unilinear development model is nevertheless based on broad trends in rates of site formation and intensity of use, limited dating and functional analysis of spatially patterned evidence, and scarce data for the comparative complexities of the Pleistocene cultural environment. The present study reviews assumptions and evidence underlying this model, and contributes the results of a new large scale sample survey, and excavation program, in the Central Murrumbidgee Riverine Plain. The regional study enables a reformulation of the Holocene land use model, especially for riverine plains environments, and identifies avenues for further investigation. A major weakness underlying the population-sedentism model is the inadequate understanding of the definition, formation processes, functions and dating of the 'mound' sites which are common in some southeastern Australian environments. These were therefore a special focus of the research. The vast majority of such sites in the study region were formed as a result of the operation of earth ovens. Multiple dates from individual oven mounds demonstrated the very long periods over which they were revisited and used. Such use highlights the caution required in interpreting their surficial groupings, and relationship to proximate artefact scatters and other sites, as contemporaneous settlement patterns. Their formation, even in large groupings, is argued to be well within the capability of a population of modest densities within a regime of seasonal or semi-sedentary usage. The unilinear development model is also found to inadequately appreciate the degree to which Aboriginal peoples reorganised their regional land use pattern at different times within the Holocene. The major Pleistocene-Holocene environmental transition has been a moment of expected cultural change, whilst intra-Holocene change has been more readily interpreted as a result of a socioeconomic transition. Nevertheless, Holocene environments underwent punctuated localised change. These are important parameters in explaining the archaeological record. Such change was managed through complex and flexible subsistence patterns, and elaborate technology and socioeconomic organisation, which characterised the hunter gatherer societies of Aboriginal Australia from the mid Holocene to the 19th century. It is argued, for the Central Murrumbidgee Riverine Plain, that this process did not necessarily involve dramatic population increases, demographic pressures, or a substantial adoption of the strictures of sedentism.

Early European explorers were puzzled by the absence of Aboriginal populations on the larger more remote larger islands of the Bass Strait as at least King and Flinders Islands appeared capable of supporting human populations. Subsequent discoveries of stone artefacts on several of the Bassian islands were variously ascribed to human occupation during the landbridge phase or historic times, when Aboriginal Tasmanians had been taken to the islands by sealers and by G.A. Robinson for resettlement However, the discovery of shell midden sites on Flinders Island in the 1970s brought ne\v perspectives to the previous artefact finds - these prehistoric midden sites suggested people had been living on or visiting Flinders Island after the inundation of the Bassian landbridge. Radiocarbon dating of the midden sites on Flinders Island indicated that people were on Flinders Island until about 4,500 BP but absent in more recent times. The aim of the research was to investigate why it should be that evidence of human occupation on Flinders Island disappears from the archaeological record about 4,500 years ago, some 5,000 years of so after insulation. The primary step in this investigation was to determine whether the habitation ceased due to the island being abandoned, or whether it was a case of in situ extinction of the island population. Lampert (1979) had investigated a similar mid-Holocene habitation cessation on Kangaroo Island, and although concluding that the population probably died out he could not dismiss the alternative possibility that people had watercraft and had ceased visiting or living on the island about 4,000 years ago. Unlike Kangaroo Island, the Fumeaux Group had outer islands which enabled the issue of watercraft use to be investigated and thus resolve the primary question of island abandonment or extinction. Results of surveys of the Outer Islands indicated that people in the Furneaux region in prehistoric times did not have watercraft and thus the mid-Holocene middens on Flinders Island were deposited by an isolated relict population. Subsequent excavations on Badger and Prime Seal Islands in the Furneaux Group indicated that people had not only been stranded on Flinders Island by the post-glacial sea level rise, but had been occupying the area from at least 23,000 years ago in late Pleistocene times. The evidence from Beeton Rock.shelter and Mannalargenna Cave suggests relatively low levels of human occupation from about 23,000 BP until the early Holocene when the post-glacial sea level rise resulted in the formation of the outer islands and severed overland access to these peripheral Fumeaux areas. A more intense phase of occupation is evident behveen about 18,000 BP and 15,500 BP, and it is argued that this phase reflects a greater mobility of people in the region during the last glacial maximum. The adaptation of stone working techniques to locally available fossil shell resources, and the continued practice of shell working for ten or more thousand years or so, suggests that these sites may have been part of a northeast Tasmanian cultural system focused on the plains of the Bassian region. Despite the rapid onset of the terminal Pleistocene marine transgression, people remained in the Furneaux region. As the sea level continued to rise, fragmenting the Furneaux peninsula into the Furneaux Islands, people retreated toward the more upland areas that today comprise Flinders Island. The chronology of site abandonment in both the outer island excavations tracks the contracting land-use pattern in the region as areas were abandoned corresponding with retreating shorelines. Lltimately a group of people became stranded on Flinders Island and lived there in isolation until about 4,000 or so years ago. The Flinders Island habitation cessation coincides with major changes in the archaeological record in mainland Australia and Tasmania, and a similar disappearance of evidence of human occupation on Kangaroo Island. Furthermore, these changes also coincide with a mid-Holocene climatic shift associated with the onset of the ENSO (El Nifto Southern Oscillation) cycle which brought about droughts and fires to the southeast Australian region. The demise of the Flinders Island population had been previously interpreted in light of the devolutionary cultural model posited for the Aboriginal Tasmanians by Jones (1977b). These interpretations suggested that Flinders Island represented a microcosm of the purported trajectory for Tasmania, played out to its ultimate conclusion. This proposition is examined in light of the cultural and palaeoenvironmental evidence from the Furneaux region and a number of case studies of island extinctions and abandonments. These other examples include a range of chronologically, geographically and culturally diverse societies and provide both biogeographic and cultural models for human habitation cessation on islands.

This thesis examines the archaeological record on the West Coast of the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia with a view to identifying the pattern of behaviour associated with sites present on this coast. The sites are notable in that they are extensive and feature high proportions of stone artefacts but contain little or no shell material. This thesis seeks to explain the virtual absence of shells by considering a number of environmental, behavioural, demographic and cultural issues. Is the archaeological record a product of post-depositional disturbance or resource availability, or did other environmental influences such as a shortage of water restrict adaptive behaviour so as to exclude or minimize interaction with the sea. Alternatively, is the subsistance strategy indicated by the archaeological record a result of other cultural influences. Ethnohistorical evidence is examined to investigate the subsistence patterns which operated on this coastline. Linguistic, technological and social factors which may have influenced the economic choices made by these coastal people are considered and compared with the archaeological record. The thesis then examines the interpretation of the West Coast evidence in the context of other coastal studies both in Australia and overseas to contribute to the current debate regarding the role of the sea in the evolution of hunter-gatherer subsistence economies.