Harry Allen

Identifying continuity and discontinuity in Holocene hunter-gatherer burial sites is often challenging. Roonka, is the largest excavated burial area in Australia. Despite preliminary analysis in the 1970–1980s chronology was challenging given the complex record of dune formation, intrusive burials, erosion and exposure. As part of collaboration with the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation, we have re-analysed the legacy data. We have combined three tools: 3D reconstruction and spatial analysis of the site; Bayesian analysis of the radiocarbon sequence, and archaeothanatology to gain a deeper understanding of the relationships between burials and dune formation and hence the connection between changes in burial practices and environmental change. Analysis confirms that the site was used as a burial place over the last 8000 years, but the burial record has been significantly impacted by erosion. The most likely cause of erosion is ENSO-driven climatic change. Other changes that are not coincident with climatic change but alter the intensity of site use were identified by tracing the number of burials over time. Analysis indicates a shift from occasional and specialised use to increasing use in the mid to Late-Holocene. We argue that burial practices became more diverse and demographically inclusive over time. In summary, our analysis clearly demonstrates that it was not a place for everybody all the time. The selection of ‘who’ and ‘when’ demonstrates access to and maintenance of a broader set of persistent burial places in the Murray Valley region during the Holocene.

Ngaut Ngaut (Devon Downs) and Tungawa (Fromm’s Landing) 2 and 6 are located in the Gorge Section of the Lower Murray River. They were excavated more than 60 years ago. Unusually, they preserved fauna over the 6000 or 7000 years of occupation. Assessing this record, it is concluded that Aboriginal agents were responsible for the middens in these rockshelters. Following this, Ngaut Ngaut and the Tungawa sites are compared in terms of their dating, stratigraphy and changes in the fauna through time. While the majority of species are present throughout at all three sites, there are shifts in the number of animals in concert with Holocene environmental changes. After 3000 BP, the trend is to increased attention being given to resources from the riparian and river zones and away from the dryland Murray Plains. An increase in shellfish and the presence of crayfish gastroliths support this contention. Nearby Tartanga Island provides a record of Holocene sedimentary changes in the Murray River associated with altered sea level and flood regimes, particularly the deposition of the Monoman and Coonambidgal formations. The latter creating a landscape of highly productive swamps and backwaters. The information from these legacy excavations supports the conclusion that a shift in the locus of Aboriginal hunting and gathering activities accompanied mid- and late-Holocene environmental changes on the Lower Murray River.

Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island People. Please be aware that this review contains the names of people who have passed away. Credits at the end of this short film tell us that in 1964 B...

Discussion in settler New Zealand concerning the Maori past has gone on for more than 150 years. To a large extent, archaeological approaches to this issue date only to the arrival of Jack Golson, a Cambridge-trained archaeologist, at the University of Auckland in 1954. He was joined shortly afterwards by Roger Green from Harvard. Debates between Golson and Green, bringing both European and American approaches to bear within a culture historical framework, have been influential. Their work and subsequent critiques are reviewed, along with an assessment of how New Zealand archaeologists currently interpret the archaeological record of change and development within Maori culture.

Unlike the majority of spears used by Australian Aboriginal people, reed spears were a lightweight form that made optimal use of spearthrower technology. In the Kimberleys, reed spears were mounted with small pressure‐flaked stone projectile points. Small projectile points occur in the archaeological record of both the Kimberleys and western Arnhem Land. Outside the Kimberleys, however, there is no record of how these were mounted and used. This paper reviews the evidence for reed spears and small projectile points across the Northern Territory and north‐western Western Australia, concluding that they represent associated technologies the primary role of which lay in feuding and conflicts.

Reviewing archaeological research in the Willandra Lakes area over the past forty years shows a number of methodological and conceptual problems. One of these is the use of ethnographic models of Aboriginal behaviour to organise the archaeological data. Such models privilege spatial over temporal relationships and minimise the extent of archaeological changes over time. Of research to date, it is Bowler's correlations of archaeological and hydrographic changes since the Late Pleistocene which best match the limited archaeological data available. A comparison of the Pleistocene archaeology from the Willandra Lakes and Tasmania reveals time‐averaged records that are amenable to the analysis of patterns of mobility and material use, but not of functionally defined sites nor of typologically defined artefact assemblages. The periodicity and intensity of human occupation of the Willandra Lakes can be studied using large samples of stone artefacts drawn from wide areas, allied with a strategy of dating of land units based on multiple C14 and Optical dates. Such a strategy requires the reconsideration of the relationships between behaviour, function, space and time and a reformulation of much of our existing knowledge of the archaeology of Pleistocene Australia.

Here is a paper of pivotal importance to all prehistorians attempting to reconstruct societies from assemblages of shells or stone artefacts in dispersed sites deposited over tens of thousands of years. The authors demonstrate the perilous connections between the distribution and content of sites, their geomorphic formation process and the models used to analyse them. In particular they warn against extrapolating the enticing evidence from Pleistocene Willandra into behavioural patterns by drawing on the models presented by nineteenth-century anthropologists. They propose new strategies at once more revealing and more ethical.