Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T22:45:10.290Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

37,000 Years and More in Tropical Australia: Investigating Long-Term Archaeological Trends in Cape York Peninsula

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2014

Bruno David  and
Harry Lourandos
Harry Lourandos
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The prehistory of Cape York Peninsula, in tropical northern Australia, has been more intensively investigated than that of most other parts of the continent. As a result, a considerable database now exists by which long-term archaeological trends can be evaluated. In this paper we investigate temporal trends in occupational intensities and patterns of land use during the last 37,000 years by employing: 1, the temporal distribution of all radiocarbon dates obtained for the region; 2, the numbers of sites occupied through time; and 3, rates of establishment of new sites during the course of prehistory. These archaeological trends are then compared with the palaeo-environmental record of the region to determine its potential influence on the trends. We conclude that an initial, long period of regional occupation occurred (c. 37,000–4000 BP) when cultural trends varied in tandem with gross environmental fluctuations. This was followed by a late Holocene period (post 4000 BP) when cultural trajectories diverged significantly from environmental trends. This suggests that more complex Aboriginal demographic processes were set in train during the late Holocene, associated with social structures that were more dynamic than previously. We suggest that while changing patterns of land use may be apparent, their understanding requires an enquiry into periods of emergence — that is, their immediate historical antecedents. These results have broader implications for our understanding of Australian prehistory and the prehistory of other hunter-gatherer societies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 63 , 1997 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aharon, P. 1983. Surface ocean temperature variations during the late Wisconsin stages: 16O/18O isotopic evidence from Papua New Guinea. In Chappell, J. & Grindrod, A. (eds) 1983, 3–4.Google Scholar
Allen, J. & Holdaway, S. 1995. The contamination of Pleistocene radiocarbon determinations in Australia. Antiquity 69, 101–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, J. & O'Connell, J.F. (eds). 1995. Transitions: Pleistocene to Holocene in Australia and Papua New Guinea. Antiquity 69.Google Scholar
Attenbrow, V. 1982. The archaeology of Upper Mangrove Creek catchment: research in progress. In Bowdler, S. (ed.), Coastal Archaeology in Eastern Australia, 67–79. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Ballard, C. 1994. The centre cannot hold: trade networks and sacred geography in the Papua New Guinea highlands. Archaeology in Oceania 29(3), 130–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barker, B. 1991. Nara Inlet 1: coastal resource use and the Holocene marine transgression in the Whitsunday Islands, central Queensland. Archaeology in Oceania 20, 1–20.Google Scholar
Barker, B. 1995. The Sea People: maritime hunter-gatherers on the tropical coast — a late Holocene maritime specialisation in the Whitsunday Islands, central Queensland. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Queensland, Brisbane.Google Scholar
Beaton, J. 1977. Dangerous Harvest: investigations in the late prehistoric occupation of upland southeast central Queensland. Unpublished PhD thesis, Australian National University, Canberra.Google Scholar
Beaton, J. 1981. Princess Charlotte Bay archaeological report: second interim report. Unpublished report to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra.Google Scholar
Beaton, J. 1985. Evidence for a coastal occupation time-lag at Princess Charlotte Bay (North Queensland) and implications for coastal colonisation and population growth theories for Aboriginal Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 20, 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bender, B. 1981. Gatherer-hunter intensification. In Sheridan, A. & Bailey, G. (eds), Economic Archaeology, 149–57. Oxford: British Archaeological Report S96.Google Scholar
Bender, B. 1985. Prehistoric developments in the American midcontinent and in Brittany, northwest France. In Price, T.D. & Brown, J.A. (eds,), Prehistoric Hunter-gatherers: the emergence of cultural complexity, 21–57. Orlando: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bird, C. & Frankel, D. 1991. Chronology and explanation in western Victoria and southeast South Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 26, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowler, J. 1983. 18±2KA: northern Australia hydrologic evidence. In Chappell, J. & Grindrod, A. (eds) 1983, 47–8.Google Scholar
Brown, J. A. 1985. Long-term trends to sedentism and the emergence of complexity in the American midwest. In Price, T.D. & Brown, J.A. (eds), Prehistoric Hunter gatherers: the emergence of cultural complexity, 201–31. Orlando: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, J.B. 1982. New radiocarbon results for north Queensland prehistory. Australian Archaeology 14, 62–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, J. & Mardaga-Campbell, M. 1993. From macroto nano-stratigraphy: linking vertical and horizontal dating of archaeological deposits with the direct dating of rock art at ‘The Walkunders’, Chillagoe (north Queensland, Australia). In Steinbring, J., Watchman, A., Faulstich, P. & Tacon, P. (eds), Time and Space: dating and spatial considerations in rock art research, 57–63. Melbourne: Australian Rock Art Research Association.Google Scholar
Chappell, J. 1982. Sea levels and sediments: some features of the context of coastal archaeological sites in the tropics. Archaeology in Oceania 17, 69–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chappell, J. & Grindrod, A. (eds). 1983. CLIMANZ: Proceedings of the First CLIMANZ, February 1981. Canberra: Department of Biogeography and Geomorphology, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Chappell, J., Chivas, A., Wallensky, E., Polach, H. & Aharon, P. 1983. Holocene palaeoenvironmental changes, central to north Great Barrier Reef inner zone. Bureau of Mineral Resources Journal of Geology and Geophysics 8, 223–35.Google Scholar
Cohen, M. N. 1977. The Food Crisis in Prehistory. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, M. N. 1985. Prehistoric hunter-gatherers: the meaning of cultural complexity, in Price, T.D. & Brown, J.A. (eds), Prehistoric Hunter-gatherers: the emergenc of cultural complexity, 99–119. Orlando: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Cowgill, G.L. 1975. On causes and consequences of ancient and modern population changes. American Anthropologist 77, 505–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
David, B. 1991a. Fern Cave, rock art and social formations: rock art regionalisation and demographic changes in southeastern Cape York Peninsula. Archaeology in Oceania 26, 41–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
David, B. 1991b. Mitchell River Cave: a late Pleistocene-Holocene sequence from southeastern Cape York Peninsula. Australian Aboriginal Studies 1991(1), 67–72.Google Scholar
David, B. 1993. Nurrabullgin Cave: preliminary results from a pre-37,000 year old rockshelter, north Queensland. Archaeology in Oceania 28, 50–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
David, B. 1994. A Space-Time Odyssey. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Queensland, Brisbane.Google Scholar
David, B. & Chant, D. 1995. Rock Art and Regionalisation in North Queensland Prehistory. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 37(2).Google Scholar
David, B. & Cole, N. 1990. Rock art and inter-regional interaction in northeastern Australian prehistory. Antiquity 64, 788–806.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
David, B. & Dagg, L. 1993. Two caves. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 33, 143–62.Google Scholar
David, B., Tuniz, C., Lawson, E., Hua, Q., Jacobsen, J.E., Head, J. & Rowe, M. 1995. New AMS determinations for Chillagoe rock art, Australia, and their implications for northern Australian prehistory. Paper presented at the NEWS 95 International Rock Art Congress, Turin, Italy.Google Scholar
Flood, J. & Horsfall, N. 1986. Excavations at Green Ant and Echidna Shelter, Cape York Peninsula. Queensland Archaeological Research 3, 4–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flood, J., David, B., Magee, J. & English, B. 1987. Birrigai: a 21,000 year old site from the ACT. Archaeology in Oceania 22, 9–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galloway, R.W., Gunn, R.H. & Story, R. 1970. Lands of the Mitchell-Normanby area. CSIRO, Queensland Land Research Series 26.Google Scholar
Gamble, C. 1986. The Palaeolithic Settlement of Europe. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
Hiscock, P. 1981. Comments on the use of chipped stone artefacts as a measure of ‘intensity of site usage’. Australian Archaeology 13, 30–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hiscock, P. & Kershaw, P. 1992. Palaeoenvironments and prehistory of Australia's tropical Top End. In Dodson, J. (ed.), The Naive Lands: prehistory and environmental change in Australia and the Southwest Pacific, 43–75. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire.Google Scholar
Holdaway, S. & Porch, N. 1995. Cyclical patterns in the Pleistocene human occupation of southwest Tasmania. Archaeology in Oceania 30, 74–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopley, D. 1983. Evidence of 15,000 years of seal level change in tropical Queensland. In Hopley, D. (ed.), Australian Sea Levels in the last 15,000 Years: a review. Occasional Paper 3, 93–104. Townsville: Geography Department, James Cook University of North Queensland.Google Scholar
Horsfall, N. 1987. Living in rainforest: the prehistoric occupation of north Queensland's humid tropics. Unpublished PhD thesis, James Cook University of North Queensland, Townsville.Google Scholar
Hughes, P. 1977. A geomorphological interpretation of selected archaeological sites in southern coastal New South Wales. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sydney, Sydney.Google Scholar
Hughes, P. 1983. Colless Creek rockshelter archaeological site, NW Queensland, 18KA. In Chappell, J. & Grindrod, A. (eds), 1983, 59–61.Google Scholar
Hughes, P. & Lampert, R. 1982. Prehistoric population change in southern coastal New South Wales. In Bowdler, S. (ed.), Coastal Archaeology of Eastern Australia, 16–28. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Jochim, M.A. 1983. Palaeolithic cave art in ecological perspective. In Bailey, G.N. (ed.), Hunter-gatherer Economy and Prehistory, 212–19. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
Kromer, B. & Becker, B. 1993. German oak and pine 14C calibration, 7200–9400 BC. Radiocarbon 35, 125–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamb, L. 1993. Fern Cave: a technological investigation of increased stone artefact deposition rates. Unpublished BA (Honours) thesis, University of Queensland, Brisbane.Google Scholar
Lamb, L. 1996. Investigating changing stone technologies, site use and occupational intensities at Fern Cave, north Queensland. Australian Archaeology 42.Google Scholar
Lourandos, H. 1983. Intensification: a late Pleistocene–Holocene archaeological sequence from southwestern Victoria. Archaeology in Oceania 18, 81–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lourandos, H. 1985. Intensification and Australian prehistory. In Price, T.D. and Brown, J.A. (eds), Prehistoric Hunter-gatherers: the emergence of cultural complexity, 385–423. Orlando: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Lourandos, H. 1988. Palaeopolitics: resource intensification in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea. In Ingold, T., Riches, D. & Woodburn, J. (eds), Hunters and Gatherers: history, evolution and social change, 148–60. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Lourandos, H. 1993. Hunter-gatherer cultural dynamics: long- and short-term trends in Australian prehistory. Journal of Archaeological Research 1(1), 67–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lourandos, H. 1996. Change in Australian prehistory: scale, trends and frameworks of interpretation. In Lilley, I., Ross, A. & Ulm, S. (eds), Proceedings of the 1995 Australian Archaeological Association Conference, 15–21. Brisban: University of Queensland.Google Scholar
Lourandos, H. 1997. Continent of Hunter-gatherers: new perspectives in Australian prehistory. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
Lourandos, H. & Ross, A. (1994). The great ‘intensification debate’: its history and place in Australian archaeology. Australian Archaeology 39, 54–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacDonald, J. 1994. Dreamtime Superhighway. Unpublished PhD thesis, Australian National University, Canberra.Google Scholar
Mardaga-Campbell, M. 1986. Prehistoric living-floors and evidence for them in north Queensland rockshelters. Australian Archaeology 23, 42–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marquardt, W. H. 1985. Complexity and scale in the study of fisher-gatherer-hunters: an example from the eastern United States. In Price, T. D. & Brown, J. A. (eds), Prehistoric Hunter-gatherers: the emergence of cultural complexity, 59–98. Orlando: Academic Press.Google Scholar
McBryde, I. 1984. Kulin greenstone quarries: the social contexts of production and distribution for the Mt. William site. World Archaeology 16, 267–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNiven, I. 1990. Prehistoric Aboriginal settlement and subsistence in the Cooloola region, coastal southeast Queensland. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Queensland, Brisbane.Google Scholar
Mellars, P. A. 1985. The ecological basis of social complexity in the Upper Palaeolithic of Southwestern France. In Price, T.D. & Brown, J.A. (eds), Prehistoric Hunter-gatherers: the emergence of cultural complexit, 271–97. Orlando: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Modjeska, C.N. 1982. Production and inequality: perspectives from central New Guinea. In Strathern, A. (ed), Inequality in New Guinea Highlands Societies, 50–108. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
Mook, W.G. 1986. Business meeting: recommendations/resolutions adopted by the twelfth International Radiocarbon Conference. Radiocarbon 28, 799.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morren, G. E. B. 1977. From hunting to herding: pigs and the control of energy in montane New Guinea. In Bayliss-Smith, T. P. & Feachem, R. G. (eds), Subsistence and Survival: rural ecology, 273–316. London: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morwood, M. J. 1990. The prehistory of Aboriginal landuse on the Upper Flinders River, North Queensland Highlands. Queensland Archaeological Research 7, 3–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morwood, M. 1995a. Excavations at Giant Horse. In Morwood, M. & Hobbs, D. (eds), 1995b, 101–6.Google Scholar
Morwood, M. 1995b. Excavations at Red Bluff 1. In Morwood, M. & Hobbs, D. (eds), 1995b, 127–32.Google Scholar
Morwood, M. & Dagg, L. 1995. Excavations at Yam Camp. In Morwood, M. & Hobbs, D. (eds), 1995b, 107–15.Google Scholar
Morwood, M. & Hobbs, D. 1995a. Themes in the prehistory of tropical Australia. In Allen, J. & O'Connell, J.F. (eds), 1995, 747–68.Google Scholar
Morwood, M. & Hobbs, D. (eds). 1995b. Quinkan Prehistory: the Archaeology of Aboriginal Art in SE Cape York Peninsula, Australia. Tempus 3, Brisbane: University of Queensland.Google Scholar
Morwood, M., Hobbs, D. & Price, D. 1995a. Excavations at Sandy Creek 1 and 2. In Morwood, M. & Hobbs, D. (eds), 1995b, 71–92.Google Scholar
Morwood, M., L'Oste-Brown, S. & Price, D. 1995b. Excavations at Mushroom Rock. In Morwood, M. & Hobbs, D. (eds), 1995b, 133–46.Google Scholar
Morwood, M. & Jung, S. 1995. Excavations at Magnificent Gallery. In Morwood, M. & Hobbs, D. (eds), 1995b, 93–100.Google Scholar
Morwood, M. & L'Oste-Brown, S. 1995a. Excavations at Red Horse. In Morwood, M. & Hobbs, D. (eds), 1995b, 116–26.Google Scholar
Morwood, M. & L'Oste-Brown, S. 1995b. Chronological changes in stone artefact technology. In Morwood, M. & Hobbs, D. (eds), 1995b, 161–77.Google Scholar
Nix, A. & Kalma, J.D. 1972. Climate as a dominant control in the biogeography of northern Australia and New Guinea. In Walker, D. (ed.), Bridge and Barrier: the natural and cultural history of Torres Strait, 61–92. Canberra: Department of Biogeography and Geomorphology, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.Google Scholar
O'Connell, J.F. & Allen, J. 1995. Human reactions to the Pleistocene–Holocene transition in Greater Australia: a summary. In Allen, J. & O'Connell, J.F. (eds), 1995, 855–62.Google Scholar
O'Connor, S. 1992. The timing and nature of prehistoric island use in northern Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 271, 49–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Connor, S., Veth, P. & Hubbard, N. 1993. Changing interpretations of postglacial human subsistence and demography in Sahul. In Smith, M.A., Spriggs, M. & Frankhauser, B. (eds), Sahul in Review: Pleistocene archaeology in Australia, New Guinea and Island Melanesia, 95–105. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Pardoe, C. 1988. The cemetery as symbol: the distribution of prehistoric Aboriginal burial grounds in southeastern Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 23, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pardoe, C. 1995. Riverine, biological and cultural evolution in southeastern Australia. In Allen, J. & O'Connell, J.F. (eds), 1995, 696–713.Google Scholar
Pearson, W. 1989. A technological analysis of stone artefacts from Yam Camp surface scatter and rockshelter, southeast Cape York. Queensland Archaeological Research 6, 91–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rappaport, R. 1967. Pigs For The Ancestors. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Rick, J.W. 1987. Dates as data: an examination of the Peruvian Preceramic radiocarbon record. American Antiquity 52, 55–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenfeld, A., Horton, D. & Winter, J. 1981. Early Man in North Queensland. Terra Australis 6, Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Ross, A. 1985. Archaeological evidence for population change in the middle to late Holocene in southeastern Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 20, 81–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, A., Donnelly, T. & Wasson, R. 1992. The peopling of the arid zone: human-environment interactions. In Dodson, J. (ed.), The Naive Lands: prehistory and environmental change in Australia and the Southwest Pacific, 76–114. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire.Google Scholar
Smith, M.A. 1989. The case for a resident human population in the Central Australian Ranges during full glacial aridity. Archaeology in Oceania 24, 93–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, M.A. & Sharp, N.D. 1993. Pleistocene sites in Australia, New Guinea and island Melanesia: geographic and temporal structure of the archaeological record. In Smith, M.A., Spriggs, M. & Fankhauser, B. (eds), Sahul in Review, 37–59. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Soffer, O. 1985. Patterns of intensification as seen from the Upper Paleolithic of the Central Russian Plain. In Price, T.D. & Brown, J.A. (eds), Prehistoric Hunter-gatherers the emergence of cultural complexity, 235–70. Orlando: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Stephens, K. & Head, L. 1995. Palaeoecology of archaeological and swamp sites in SE Cape York Peninsula. In Morwood, M. & Hobbs, D. (eds), 1995b, 18–32.Google Scholar
Veth, P. 1989. Islands of the interior: a model for the colonization of Australia's arid zone. Archaeology in Oceania 24, 81–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogel, J.C., Fuls, A., Visser, E. & Becker, B. 1993. Pretoria calibration curve for short-lived samples 1930–3350 BC. Radiocarbon 35, 73–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watchman, A. & Cole, N. 1993. Accelerator radiocarbon dating of plant-fibre binders in rock paintings from northeastern Australia. Antiquity 67, 355–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wobst, H.M. 1976. Locational relationships in palaeolithic society. Journal of Human Evolution 5, 49–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodroffe, C.D., Chappell, J. & Thorn, B.G. 1988. Shell middens in the context of estuarine development, South Alligator River, Northern Territory. Archaeology in Oceania 23(3), 95–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, R.V.S. 1971. Prehistory in the Cape York Peninsula. In Mulvaney, D.J. & Golson, J. (eds), Aboriginal Man and Environment in Australia, 133–40. Canberra: Australian National University Press.Google Scholar
Yengoyan, A.A. 1976. Structure, event and ecology in Aboriginal Australia: a comparative viewpoint. In Peterson, N. (ed.), Tribes and Boundaries in Australia, 121–32. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar