Pleistocene maritime economies of northwest Australia

Summary

This paper will critically assess new evidence for the antiquity of maritime economies from North West Australia. Northwest Australia has evidence for hunter-gatherer occupation from 50,000 years ago from sites now located in the interior. The evidence for antiquity of coastal resource use extends back to over 41,000 cal BP, however this is soon expected to approach the earliest dates from these interior sites. Recent research on continental islands of the Northwest Shelf illustrates rich early Holocene middens with records extending back to the low sea stands of the Last Glacial Maximum. There is now clear evidence for economic reliance on coastal resources procured from procumbent shorelines through the marine transgression from 17,000 BP to the Present from the Carnarvon Bioregion of North West Australia. Shellfish assemblages and hearth charcoals provide direct evidence for use of estuarine and mangrove communities. It is not clear whether the oldest marine remains are dietary, however. Current propositions about delayed maritime adaptations due to precipitous and depauperate coastlines and the early depletion of high-ranked coastal resources by colonising groups (sensu O’Connell and Allen 2012) are examined with this new data from North West Australia.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

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