Hands across the water: Exploring maritime networks in Pleistocene Wallacea

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Seacountries of Northern Australia and Island Neighbours", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Once characterised as a cultural backwater due to the lack of traditional markers of modern human behaviour, the last few decades have seen Southeast Asia’s archaeological record re-evaluated following finds of the world’s earliest evidence for rock art and Pleistocene fishing technology. Now research in the islands of southern Wallacea to Australia’s north has shown the region to have the world’s first long distance maritime interaction network. From ~16,000 years ago tools made from distinctive ‘exotic’ obsidian are found on four islands, appearing around the same time as highly standardised items of shell personal decoration, fishhooks and edge-ground adzes. Obsidian geochemistry has identified some of the islands linked in this network demonstrating maritime contact over hundreds of kms. The shell adzes suggest interaction over thousands of kms. Here I outline the evidence for this network and discuss how it may have sustained social relationships over vast distances.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Seacountries of Northern Australia and Island Neighbours   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow