Peter Hiscock

After more than a century, debate over the explanation of microliths continues. We review debates on three continents (Australia, India and southern Africa), and argue that depictions of them as purely symbolic items manufactured for public display are implausible. Two different mechanisms dominate recent discussions: 1) exchange of symbolically loaded artefacts as a device for constructing cultural connections and establishing access to territory/resources, and 2) microliths as portable and standardized tools that helped buffer foragers against economic risk and/or scheduling difficulties by increasing multi-functionality and tool readiness as an aid in reducing fluctuations in resource capture. We show that there is a different history and pattern to microlith use on each continent and dissimilar environmental contexts for microlith-intensive phases. This conclusion challenges any notion that a single simple process underpins microlith use across the globe and implies that comparative studies might enhance understandings of this process of technological change.

Archaeologists have variously used the terms ‘indurated mudstone’ and ‘tuff’ as a description for the fine-textured, very hard, yellowish, orange, reddish-brown or grey rocks from the upper Hunter Valley from which many of the stone artefacts there were made. The desire of archaeologists working in the region to offer a precise and accurate geological description of this material has fuelled debate about whether ‘tuff’ or ‘mudstone’ is the most appropriate label. Some of the samples of these problematic rocks that we have examined petrograhically are definitely not tuff. Until much more is known about the range of lithologies represented in this group of rocks, and ways are developed to distinguish between them, the term ‘IMT’ (‘indurated mudstone/tuff’) is an acceptable alternative to the term ‘mudstone’ as a description for these fine-grained rocks.

The distinctive tool called ‘tula’ is an endemic adaptation, which was adopted by Aboriginal people across central and western Australia, encompassing some two-thirds of the continent. The tula is a hafted tool used for working hardwoods as well as other tasks including butchery and plant-processing. The geographic spread of tulas appears to have been rapid and no antecedent form has been identified. The sudden appearance of tulas was coincident with the onset of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions. While we do not yet have the data to establish an unequivocal causal link, in this paper we hypothesise that the appearance of this new and specialised tool at c.3700 BP was very likely a human response to the intensification of ENSO. This intensification resulted in increased aridity and climatic variability lasting almost 2000 years. We posit that this technological adaptation, an element of a risk minimisation toolkit, was part of a wider economic and social strategy adopted by Aboriginal people to cope with increasing climatic uncertainty. This possibility has implications for the diversity of innovation processes operating in Australia during the Holocene, which is further explored in this paper with concluding suggestions for future research. We offer this discussion as a platform for these future, and what we believe, are very necessary critical studies.

We report on early occupation from the Parnkupirti site on Salt Pan Creek at Lake Gregory, on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert of northwest Australia. OSL ages from excavations, and stratigraphic correlations between dated exposures along Salt Pan Creek, show some stone artefacts in situ in sediments dating from greater than 37ka and most probably on stratigraphic grounds in the range of ~50–45ka. The deep stratigraphic section at Parnkupirti also provides a long record of the Quaternary history of Lake Gregory, which remained a freshwater system during the Late Quaternary.

Shell mounds ceased to be built in many parts of coastal northern Australia about 800–600 years ago. They are the subject of stories told by Aboriginal people and some have been incorporated in ritual and political activities during the last 150 years. These understandings emerged only after termination of the economic and environmental system that created them, 800–600 years ago, in a number of widely separated coastal regions. Modern stories and treatments of these mounds by Aboriginal people concern modern or near-modern practices. Modern views of the mounds, their mythological and ritual associations, may be explained by reference to the socioeconomic transitions seen in the archaeological record; but the recent cultural, social and symbolic statements about these places cannot inform us of the process or ideology concerned with the formation of the mounds. Many Aboriginal communities over the last half a millennium actively formed understandings of new landscapes and systems of land use. Attempts to impose historic ideologies and cosmologies on earlier times fail to acknowledge the magnitude and rate of economic and ideological change on the tropical coastline of Australia.

A study of the artefact assemblage from the Henry Lawson Drive Rockshelter, a stratified midden deposit near Sydney excavated by Peter White in 1971, reveals new information about the temporal and morphological complexities of stone working technology in eastern Australia. Not only does this site provide further evidence of the presence of backed artefacts in this region more than 5000 years ago, it also reveals abundant production of backed artefacts during the last millennium. The site contains small implements and cores that can be interpreted as being more extensively reduced than assemblages reported from other sites in the region. Quantitative examinations of size and extent of reduction reveal that artefact assemblages in eastern New South Wales display variation which has yet to be characterised or explained.