Shifting Palaeoeconomies in the East Alligator River Region: An Archaeomalacological Perspective

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The East Alligator River Region (EARR), Australia, has undergone considerable environmental change throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene. Rising sea-levels and changing climatic conditions drastically altered the environments and ecosystems of this region, forcing its inhabitants to adapt their economic strategies in order to successfully exploit these new and evolving landscapes. Throughout these shifting environmental sequences molluscs have played an important role in the economic activities of people, as demonstrated by the abundance of molluscan material found in sites throughout the region. Molluscs have rarely been analyzed in detail in the EARR, resulting in a poor understanding of their role in the past economies of the region. Given that molluscs provide critical information on both past economic and social activities and environmental conditions, this gap in the literature is clearly one which must be addressed. This research fills this gap through the detailed and holistic analysis of two rockshelter sites in the region: Madjedbebe and Ngarradj Warde Djobkeng. A multifaceted approach, which utilizes current zooarchaeological methods and biological and ecological information, has been used to critically evaluate and build on current archaeological and environmental models for the region to provide a more comprehensive picture of past societies in the EARR.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23436