Residential Patterning around Highly Variable Wetlands in Australia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Wetlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

We compare residential patterning of hunter-gatherer/forager populations along wetlands on the coastal plains of the Top End of the Northern Territory of Australia and the Riverine Plain of the Murray Darling River Basin, New South Wales. Although climates are very different in these regions, people needed to adapt to the variability, as well as the specific ecologies of these evolving environments. Mapping of earth mounds associated with these wetlands provides an indicator of settlement patterns relating directly to local hydrology. This is also a distillation of roughly 4,000 years of individual and group decision making about the best places to live. We provide examples of how this traditional knowledge can be used as an environmental proxy, or indicator of where we should concentrate our conservation efforts. Constraints on water availability, introduced animals and plants, tourism, water level change, and sea level rise are all in play. The archaeological record may or may not survive these impacts, but our eyes must be firmly set on trying to keep some animals and plants alive. If the environment survives, so does the archaeology have a better chance.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeology of Wetlands   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41569.0