Download or read book An Archaeological Survey to Examine the Nature and Distribution of Aboriginal Sites in Areas Affected by Erosion written by Hilary Du Cros and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Community Archaeology Working Ancient Aboriginal Wetlands in Eastern Australia written by Wendy Beck and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2023-04-06 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents the results of an investigation of wetland heritage in eastern Australia, with important contributions to the archaeology of the Tasmanian Midlands and the New England Tablelands.
Download or read book Geoarchaeology of Aboriginal Landscapes in Semi arid Australia written by Simon Holdaway and published by CSIRO PUBLISHING. This book was released on 2014-03-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides readers with a unique understanding of the ways in which Aboriginal people interacted with their environment in the past at one particular location in western New South Wales. It also provides a statement showing how geoarchaeology should be conducted in a wide range of locations throughout Australia. One of the key difficulties faced by all those interested in the interaction between humans and their environment in the past is the complex array of processes acting over different spatial and temporal scales. The authors take account of this complexity by integrating three key areas of study – geomorphology, geochronology and archaeology – applied at a landscape scale, with the intention of understanding the record of how Australian Aboriginal people interacted with the environment through time and across space. This analysis is based on the results of archaeological research conducted at the University of New South Wales Fowlers Gap Arid Zone Research Station between 1999 and 2002 as part of the Western New South Wales Archaeology Program. The interdisciplinary geoarchaeological program was targeted at expanding the potential offered by archaeological deposits in western New South Wales, Australia. The book contains six chapters: the first two introduce the study area, then three data analysis chapters deal in turn with the geomorphology, geochronology and archaeology of Fowlers Gap Station. A final chapter considers the results in relation to the history of Aboriginal occupation of Fowlers Gap Station, as well as the insights they provide into Aboriginal ways of life more generally. Analyses are well illustrated through the tabulation of results and the use of figures created through Geographic Information System software.
Download or read book Native American Landscapes of St Catherines Island Georgia written by David Hurst Thomas and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 1136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Geoarchaeology of Aboriginal Landscapes in Semi arid Australia written by Simon Holdaway and published by CSIRO PUBLISHING. This book was released on 2014-03-15 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the ways in which Aboriginal people interacted with their environment in the past at Fowlers Gap Station.
Download or read book Site Surveys and Significance Assessment in Australian Archaeology written by Sharon Sullivan and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Papers by S. Bowdler, J. Clegg, P.J. Hughes and M.E. Sullivan, D. Witter, J. Flood, D. Byrne, B.J. Egloff, L. Haglund, R. Cosgrove, P. Vinnicombe, H. Sullivan, J. Hope, V. Attenbrow and T. Negerevich, annotated separately.
Download or read book Native American Landscapes of St Catherines Island Georgia The theoretical framework written by David Hurst Thomas and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four deceptively simple questions have guided our long-term research into the aboriginal lifeways of St. Catherines Island: 1. How and why did the human landscape (settlement patterns and land use) change through time? 2. To what extent were subsistence and settlement patterns shaped by human population increase, intensification, and competition for resources? 3. What factors can account for the emergence of social inequality in Georgia's Sea Islands? 4. Can systematically collected archaeological evidence resolve the conflicting ethno-historic interpretations of the aboriginal Georgia coast (the so-called 'Guale problem')? Over a span of four decades, the American Museum of Natural History has addressed these four fundamental questions using a broad array of field and analytical techniques. We conducted a 20 percent probabilistic transect survey of St. Catherines Island, walking and probing for buried sites across a series of 31 east-west transects, each 100 m wide. During this initial survey we located 122 archaeological sites, which we tested with more than 400 one-meter by one-meter units. Because the transect sampling was heavily biased toward sites with marine shell, we also conducted a systematic shovel testing program. We also augmented these systematic surveys with a direct shoreline reconnaissance (mostly following the late Holocene surfaces), recording roughly 84 additional shoreline sites on St. Catherines Island. By plotting the distribution of these known-age sites across the Holocene beach ridges, we have developed a detailed sequence documenting the progradation and erosion of beach ridge complexes adjacent to tidal estuaries and oceanward shorelines on the island. To evaluate the results of the 1000+ test explorations and excavations on St. Catherines Island, we have processed 251 radiocarbon determinations, including two dozen dates on 'modern' mollusks (known-age specimens collected prior to atomic bomb contamination) to compute a 'reservoir' correction factor specific to the estuaries around St. Catherines Island (of [Delta]R = -134 [+ or -] 26). The results have been compiled into a dataset of 239 radiocarbon determinations for samples from St. Catherines Island. One hundred and ten of these dates (from 31 distinct mortuary and midden sites) could be directly associated with datable ceramic assemblages, which were classified according to Chester DePratter's (1979, 1991) Northern Georgia Coast chronology .By comparing the results of typological classification with the radiocarbon evidence currently available from St. Catherines Island, we propose a slightly modified ceramic chronology for St. Catherines Island. We analyzed the seasonal growth increments in modern hard clams (Mercenaria mercenaria) for a 9-year interval (beginning in 1975). Mercenaria suitable for seasonal analysis were recovered from nearly 85 percent (110 of 130) of the sites identified and sampled in the island wide survey. We analyzed about 2000 individual hard clam shells recovered from these shell middens and, of these, 1771 individual specimens (or fragments) provided usable growth increment estimates, enabling us to address seasonal patterns during the 5000 years of human history. This study is reinforced by an oxygen isotope study of modern and ancient clams from St. Catherines Island. This transect survey produced an extensive and diverse set of vertebrate faunal remains collected systematically from archaeological sites tested across the entire island. Elizabeth Reitz and her colleagues analyzed this vertebrate faunal assemblage, which contains at least 586 individuals represented by 14,970 vertebrate specimens weighing 21,615 g. These materials provide a solid basis for refining hypotheses not only for St. Catherines Island, but for most coastal locations. With the exception of the first and last occupations (the St. Simons and Altamaha periods), the samples suggest a stable pattern of resource use through time, with little variation through time or across space (although the small sample sizes for each time period and circumscribed geographical setting might constrain this interpretation). She also notes the presence of numerous seasonal indicators in the vertebrate zoo archaeological samples recovered from archaeological sites on St. Catherines Island--including unshed deer antlers, juvenile deer dentition, and shark and sea catfish remains. But we also recognized the importance of examining diverse sources of seasonal information in our attempt to flesh out overall patterns of site utilization. We also include analysis of the vertebrate zooarchaeological assemblages from Meeting House Field and Fallen Tree, two additional sites intensively investigated by the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Georgia. The intensive program of mortuary archaeology has recovered the remains of more than 725 individuals from 18 archaeological sites on St. Catherines Island. More than 90 percent of these remains were analyzed by Clark Spencer Larsen and his colleagues, using a variety of microscopic, biomechanical, and stable isotopic techniques. In this monograph, we address the archaeology of St. Catherines Island using the broad- based theoretical approach known as optimal foraging theory, which is grounded in the more general paradigm of human behavioral ecology (that studies human behavior by applying the principles of natural selection within an ecological context). The broad rubric of 'optimal foraging theory' encompasses a broad range of specific models, each of which employs a unique set of simplifying assumptions and constraints, and each can be used to derive testable hypotheses about foraging behavior under certain environmental circumstances. Each model is a formal, mathematical construct and they share the key assumption that during 'economic' pursuits, the forager will operate to maximize the overall rate of energetic return. Specifically, we have employed three basic models to address the archaeology of St. Catherines Island. The diet-breadth (or prey choice) model addresses the issue of which foods should an efficient forager harvest from all those available on St. Catherines Island. Diet-breadth models predict that foragers will optimize the time spent capturing prey, and employ the simplifying assumptions that all resources are randomly distributed (without patches) and that 'capture/handling' and 'search' times represent the sum total of all time spent foraging. We also apply the patch choice model, which, combined with the central limit theorem, predicts that foraging effort will correlate directly with efficiency rank order, meaning that foragers should spend more time working the higher-ranked patches and less time in patches with lower energetic potential. Finally, we likewise employ the central place foraging model to investigate the time/energy spent processing resources at temporary camps before transport to a residential base. We find central place foraging theory to be useful for addressing the role and location of the residential base as a locus for provisioning offspring and mates or potential mates. This monograph also reports the results of optimal foraging experiments conducted over a 2-year period on St. Catherines Island, specifically addressing procurement and return rates for key marine and terrestrial resources that would have been available to aboriginal foragers on St. Catherines Island.
Download or read book Saltbush Sampling Strategy and Settlement Pattern written by Michael Alexander Smith and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Murujuga written by José Antonio González Zarandona and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-12-20 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating case study of the archaeological site at Murujuga, Australia Located in the Dampier Archipelago of Western Australia, Murujuga is the single largest archaeological site in the world. It contains an estimated one million petroglyphs, or rock art motifs, produced by the Indigenous Australians who have historically inhabited the archipelago. To date, there has been no comprehensive survey of the site's petroglyphs or those who created them. Since the 1960s, regional mining interests have caused significant damage to this site, destroying an estimated 5 to 25 percent of the petroglyphs in Murujuga. Today, Murujuga holds the unenviable status of being one of the most endangered archaeological sites in the world. José Antonio González Zarandona provides a full postcolonial analysis of Murujuga as well as a geographic and archaeological overview of the site, its ethnohistory, and its considerable significance to Indigenous groups, before examining the colonial mistreatment of Murujuga from the seventeenth century to the present. Drawing on a range of postcolonial perspectives, Zarandona reads the assaults on the rock art of Murujuga as instances of what he terms "landscape iconoclasm": the destruction of art and landscapes central to group identity in pursuit of ideological, political, and economic dominance. Viewed through the lens of landscape iconoclasm, the destruction of Murujuga can be understood as not only the result of economic pressures but also as a means of reinforcing—through neglect, abandonment, fragmentation, and even certain practices of heritage preservation—the colonial legacy in Western Australia. Murujuga provides a case study through which to examine, and begin to reject, archaeology's global entanglement with colonial intervention and the politics of heritage preservation.
Download or read book Crafting Country written by Caroline Bird and published by Sydney University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on ten years of surveys and excavations in Nyiyaparli country in the eastern Chichester Ranges, north-west Australia, Crafting Country provides a unique synthesis of Holocene archaeology in the Pilbara region. The analysis of about 1000 sites, including surface artefact scatters and 19 excavated rock shelters, as well as thousands of isolated artefacts, takes a broad view of the landscape, examining the distribution of archaeological remains in time and space. Heritage compliance archaeology commonly focuses on individual sites, but this study reconsiders the evidence at different scales – at the level of artefact, site, locality, and region – to show how Aboriginal people interacted with the land and made their mark on it. Crafting Country shows that the Nyiyaparli ‘crafted’ their country, building structures and supplying key sites with grindstones, raw material and flaked stone cores. In so doing, they created a taskscape of interwoven activities linked by paths of movement.
Download or read book Place as Occupational Histories written by Justin Shiner and published by BAR International Series. This book was released on 2008 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph presents a theoretical and methodological approach to the investigation of deflated surface stone artefact scatters beyond those that emphasise synchronic behavioural interpretations. The study is undertaken on Pine Point and Langwell Stations, two adjoining pastoral leases south of Broken Hill in arid western New South Wales, Australia. The main objective of the study is to investigate long-term accumulated patterns in stone artifact assemblage composition within archaeological deposits with known occupational chronologies. These are derived from the dating of charcoal from heat retainer hearths. It is argued that the Pine Point-Langwell assemblages represent multiple episodes of accumulation over the last 2,000 years. Therefore, the formation of the Pine Point-Langwell assemblages means they are ideal for the investigation of long-term accumulated patterns.
Download or read book Between the Murray and the Sea written by David Frankel and published by Sydney University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the Murray and the Sea: Aboriginal Archaeology in South-eastern Australia explores the Indigenous archaeology of Victoria, focusing on areas south and east of the Murray River. Looking at multiple sites from the region, David Frankel considers what the archaeological evidence reveals about Indigenous society, migration, and hunting techniques. He looks at how an understanding of the changing environment, combined with information drawn from 19th-century ethnohistory, can inform our interpretation of the archaeological record. In the process, he investigates the nature of archaeological evidence and explanation, and proposes approaches for future research. ‘A carefully crafted and impressively illustrated depiction of the economic and social lives of past Aboriginal peoples who lived in the diverse landscapes that existed between the Murray and the sea. This book will be valuable to both specialists and non-specialists alike, as it provides a foundation for thinking about the remarkable variety of ways Aboriginal foragers adapted to the lands of southeastern Australia.’ Peter Hiscock, Tom Austen Brown Professor of Australian Archaeology, University of Sydney
Download or read book Reading Archaeological Landscapes written by Tessa Glen Bryant and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the aims of archaeological investigations of Australian Aboriginal material culture is to understand how Aboriginal people used Australian landscapes in the past. One of the main ways that the Aboriginal archaeological record at a regional scale is interpreted is through the construction of settlement systems. In the Australian arid zone these settlement systems tend to use water availability (both water permanency and distance from source) as predictors of the distribution of the record. In cultural heritage management (CHM) archaeology, as part of the NSW regulatory framework for Aboriginal archaeology, physical environmental variables are used as predictors for the distribution of the Aboriginal archaeological record. The use of these kinds of environmental variables as predictors is somewhat problematic. In western NSW surface exposures of stone artefacts (open sites) and heat retainer hearths are common. A large recorded stone artefact assemblage (over 27,000 stone artefacts) and assemblage of heat retainer hearths (over 90 hearths) from surface deposits in the Rutherfords Creek catchment in western NSW was used to test whether water availability did have an impact on assemblage composition and therefore past Aboriginal behaviour. Spatial autocorrelation and one-way ANOVA was used to test the geographical location against arange of assemblage attributes, including artefact density, tool type, flake to core ratio and flake to tool ratio, for 97 sample areas spread across the valley floor of Rutherfords Creek. Across the valley floor there were no consistent differences in assemblage composition from the study areas that indicated a settlement system based on distance from the lake was operating within the single catchment. The second part of this research examined the surface record at a larger spatial scale. Transect surveys across seven catchments in the Peery section of the Paroo Darling National Park, including the Rutherfords Creek catchment, were used to record artefact presence/absence and density as well as a range of environmental variables including dominant geomorphic process, surface visibility, distance from water and landform unit. Statistical tests were used to investigate the relationship between artefact density, commonly recorded in CHM surveys, and the different environmental parameters within and across the catchments. While there was a relationship between some of the variables, particularly the dominant geomorphic process either deposition, erosion or residual, overall none of these variables could account for the current distribution of stone artefacts across the catchments surveyed. Based on these analyses, the relationship between the distribution of the surfacearchaeological record and current environmental conditions is not as simple as is generally assumed. For aspects of CHM archaeology such as significance assessment to be used to truly create and preserve a representative sample of the Aboriginal archaeological record more research effort is required to provide a good understanding of the regional archaeological record and the behavioural interpretations that are made from it.
Download or read book Indigenous Archaeologies written by Margaret M. Bruchac and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reader of original and reprinted articles--many by indigenous authors--is designed to display the array of writings around relationships between archaeologists and indigenous peoples around the globe.
Download or read book The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage of the Merri Merri Creek written by Isabel Ellender and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Archaeological Resource Management in Australia and Oceania written by Kevin L. Jones and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Archaeology of Wilson s Promontory written by Peter J. F. Coutts and published by Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island. This book was released on 1970 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on research for M.A. thesis at A.N.U.; southwest Gippsland ecological zones described as background to life of Brataualung clan of Kurnai, economic cycle (brief list of diet animals), notes on weapons, selection of sites at Promontory and Yanakie, aims of project; topographical description of Promontory, climate, possible Aboriginal food resources (tables show; 1) frequency of edible taxa - taken from list in Smyth with Aboriginal names where known & parts eaten, 2) avifauna of south west Gippsland, 3) list of animals & reptiles taken by Aborigines in pre European times, 4) distribution of shellfish at Promontory), notes on previous archaeological studies (including Kenyon & Spencer), division of Promontory into 3 areas - western and eastern coasts of Yanakie Isthmus & east coast of Promontory including Singapore Peninsula; archaeological features of Yanakie west coast - dune system, peat outcrop, features of A & B series dunes (erosion, carbon dates, formation of interdune swamps, midden material); excavation and field studies - site YW9, stratigraphy soil analysis, relationship of B series to latest A series, faunal species, presence of two sequences (Yanakie A associated with backed blade industry, Yanakie B with flake & large core tools & edge ground axes), site YWll - soil analysis, carbon dates; stratigraphy; analysis of excavated shell fauna, 3 types of quantitative analysis, level I - (defining of occupational floors, extent & composition of shell heaps, numbers of Aborigines associated with each heap, culinary evidence), level II (environmental & seasonal evidence), level III (calcite/aragonite rations), palaeotemperature measurements; changes in coastal ecology, quantitative assessment of faunal distributions associated with dune sequences; material culture analysis of stone tools, classification, statistical & computer analyses (key to descriptive system in table), Yanakie A assemblages discussed (geometric microliths and Bondi points, carbon dates, cores, tool making areas, characteristics of flake tools & core tools, analysis of waste flakes), Yanakie B assemblages (flake & core tools, edge ground axes, hammerstones, anvils & pebble tools), Yanakie A lithic technology, raw materials, comparison of A & B sites; summary of evidence for occupation of Wilsons Promontory - backed blades, imported quartzite, presence of scraping tools, Aboriginal diet - (molluscs), seasonal visits, evidence of fire making, changes in physiography of area leading to changes in diet & tools (enlargement of diet species), literary evidence for culture of Gippsland Aborigines (quotes Haydon, Bulmer, Horne, Howitt & Curr) diminution in population after white contact (result of pastoralism & intertribal warfare), relationship of work at Yanakie to other work in Victoria; Appendix 1 - methods of excavation, Appendix 2 - method of soil analysis, Appendix 3 counting techniques used on surface sites YW9A and YW10A, Appendix 4 - Botanical report on the area in the vicinity of sites YW9 to YW11 by R.F. Parsons, Appendix 5.
