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Symbolic Revolutions and the Australian Archaeological Record

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2005

Adam Brumm  and
Mark W. Moore
Adam Brumm
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Natural History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia; [email protected].
Mark W. Moore
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology, School of Human and Environmental Studies, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia; [email protected].
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Abstract

Australia was colonized by at least 40,000 bp and scientists agree that the continent was only ever occupied by anatomically and behaviourally modern humans. Australia thus offers an alternative early record for the archaeological expression of behavioural modernity. This review finds that the pattern of change in the Australian archaeological sequence bears remarkable similarity to the pattern from the Lower to Upper Palaeolithic in the Old World, a finding that is inconsistent with the ‘symbolic revolution’ model of the origin of modern behaviour. This highlights the need for archaeologists to rethink the implications of the various criteria and scales of analysis used to identify modern human behaviour.

Keywords

Australian archaeologysymbolic revolutionearly human behaviour
Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , October 2005 , pp. 157 - 175
Copyright
2005 The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

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