Ian Mcniven
Biographic Data
| ID | 599525 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ian Mcniven |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ian |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcniven |
| SIGNATURE | MCNIVEN I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Programme for Australian Indigenous Archaeology School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University Clayton Victoria 3800 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 285 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Phased redevelopment of an ancient Gunditjmara fish trap over the past 800 years: Muldoons Trap Complex, Lake Condah, southwestern Victoria
Critics point out that a weakness of Lourandos’ ‘intensification’ paradigm for southwestern Victoria is a lack of dates for iconic fish traps of the Lake Condah region. McNiven et al. (2012) detailed excavations at Muldoons Trap Complex at Lake Condah in Gunditjmara Country, where charcoal recovered from channel infill sediments indicated initial construction at least 6600 cal. BP, making the site one of the world’s oldest known fish traps. Chann…
Forum: Backed Artefacts: Useful Socially and Operationally
This paper has two purposes. One is to question the adequacy of the current utilitarian explanation for the wide proliferation of backed artefacts in Australia in the later Holocene. The second is to suggest that broadly social explanations for this event need to be given more weight
Historicising The Present: Late Holocene Emergence of a Rainforest Hunting Camp, Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea
Historicising the emergence of ethnographic activities provides insights into the reliability of ethnographic analogies to aid archaeological understandings of past human societies, as well as allowing us to explore the historical emergence of ethnographically contextualised cultural traits. Epe Amoho is the largest hunting camp rockshelter used by the Himaiyu clan (Rumu people) of the Kikori River region, southern Papua New Guinea. Contemporary …
The Argan stone arrangement complex, Badu: Initial results from Torres Strait
AbstarctThe Argan stone arrangement complex of the island of Badu is a series of mainly geometrically shaped stone formations that together extend for 1km along an isolated ridge-top in Western Torres Strait. Here we report on archaeological excavations at this ritual site in a first attempt to historicise Badulgal spiritscapes
Badu 15 and the Papuan-Austronesian settlement of Torres Strait
Archaeological excavations on the island of Badu have for the first time revealed evidence of people in Torres Strait before 2500 years BP. We interpret this evidence as representing three phases of island use and occupation. Phase 1 (8000-6000 years BP), when the high islands of Torres Strait were part of terminal Greater Australia, saw permanent occupation of the region. During Phase 2 (6000-c.3500/3000 years BP), the Western Islands of Torres …
Saltwater People: Spiritscapes, maritime rituals and the archaeology of Australian indigenous seascapes
Anthropological research reveals that the scale and complexity of Australian indigenous seascapes correlate with the scale and complexity of spiritual engagements with the sea and use of its resources. Marine specialists see and represent themselves as Saltwater People - an identification spiritually embedded within seascapes rich in cosmological meaning. For Aboriginal people, this embeddedness is underwritten by a Dreaming cosmology that formal…
Goba of Mua: Archaeology Working With Oral Tradition
A team of Elders and community officials from the island of Mua in the Torres Straits got together with archaeologists from Australia to study an episode which occurred on the island before the coming of Christianity in 1871. Oral tradition located the burial place of the father of an ancestral islander named Goba, and the investigation of a rock shelter nearby gave a dated sequence of occupation and a fresh sighting of rock paintings, all relati…
Excavations at Sos Höyük
Pre-European coastal settlement and use of the sea: A view from Queensland
We draw attention to important omissions in the chronology of Australian coastal occupation presented by Nicholson and Cane (1994) in their recent review of the subject. In the Queensland section of their review, Nicholson and Cane (1994:110-11) state that coastal settlement is confined to the last 2000 years in the Moreton Bay area, and to the last 1500 years for the remainder of the Queensland coast, with the exception of Princess Charlotte Bay…
Of Lightning Brothers and White Cockatoos: Dating the antiquity of signifying systems in the Northern Territory, Australia
Northern Australia is one of the very few regions of the world where an established tradition of rock-art has continued and extends into present-day knowledge. Excavation of deposits under the painted surfaces allows the age of the paintings to be estimated, by linking across to these deposits and their dateable contexts. One can begin to assess the antiquity of those systems of knowledge and of 'signifying
Tula Adzes And Bifacial Points On The East Coast Of Australia
The documentation and explanation of distributions of artefacts are of major concern in prehistoric archaeology. A fundamental component of this concern is the production of distribution maps. In Australia, a strong historical-diffusionist tradition using distribution maps in the interpretation of historical items of Aboriginal material culture flourished in the 1930s (e.g. Davidson 1933, 1934, 1936; McCarthy 1939-40). In contrast, major use of s…
Sandblow sites in the Great Sandy Region, coastal southeast Queensland: Implications for models of late Holocene rainforest exploitation and settlement restructuring
Excavations and surface collections undertaken at four large stone artefact sites situated within huge, active parabolic dunes at Cooloola are described. I argue that these sites, along with similar sites on Fraser Island, represent elements of an Early Phase of Aboriginal use of the Great Sandy Region between at least c. 5500 to 2300 BP. Demise of the Early Phase is seen as a response to climatically-induced, regional decreases in rainforest …
The Double Island Point Aboriginal Burials, Coastal Southeast Queensland
This paper reports on the excavation of two Aboriginal burials from near Double Island Point, Cooloola National Park, southeast Queensland. The work represents the first controlled excavation of Aboriginal burials in southeast Queensland since Haglund's Broadbeach Aboriginal Burial Ground excavation in the 1960s (Haglund 1976). The examination of the two burials arose out of a larger regional study of settlement and subsistence at Cooloola (McNiv…
Settlement and subsistence activities along Tin Can Bay, southeast Queensland
Tin Can Bay flanks the northwestern boundary of the Cooloola region, coastal southeast Queensland. It is a rich estuarine environment emptying into the southern end of the Great Sandy Strait which separates Fraser Island from the mainland. In 1983, I undertook a survey along the eastern periphery of the bay as part of Stage 1 of the Cooloola Region Archaeological Project (McNiven 1984, 1985). The survey aimed to provide insights into the form, fr…
The Lightning Brothers Project: The 1988 And 1989 Field Seasons
In 1988 we began a research project in Wardaman country, Northern Territory. The project centres on the rock art located to the immediate northeast of the Victoria River and to the south of Katherine. The rock art itself currently forms an integral part of Wardaman lore, and is largely seen by Wardaman people not so much as 'art' but as an expression of the land and of the Dreaming beings which give identity to the land (cf. Frost et al, in press…
Blowout Taphonomy: Non-Cultural Associations Between Faunal And Stone Artefact Assemblages Along The Cooloola Coast, Southeast Queensland
Taphonomic analyses of archaeological sites in coastal regions of Australia have made important contributions to our understanding of processes that create the archaeological record (e.g. Balme et al. 1978; Barker 1987; Bowdler 1984; Hope et al. 1977). Unfortunately, most of these studies have focused upon terrestrial faunal assemblages with the result that few insights have been made concerning the creation of marine faunal assemblages (cf. Coll…
Yiwarlarlay 1: Archaeological excavations at the Lightning Brothers site, Delamere station, Northern Territory
Recent archaeological excavations at Yiwarlarlay, the Lightning Brothers site (Northern Territory), shows that the large, paired striped figures which today decorate the rock wall were originally painted late last century. Other similar paintings found throughout what is today Wardaman country likewise appear to be of recent antiquity. We report these findings, with preliminary discussion of their implications and prospects for future research
Aboriginal shell middens at the mouth of the Maroochy River, southeast Queensland
This paper examines a series of shell midden and stone artefact sites located at the mouth of the Maroochy River, southeast Queensland. It represents the first detailed archaeological research undertaken on the Sunshine Coast since Jackson (1939) investigated a series of middens near Point Cartwright in the 1930's. The present study details the results of survey and excavation work, with a number of tentative hypotheses concerning late Holocene s…
Small unifacial pebble cores from Fraser Island, southeast Queensland
During the 1970's Lauer (1977, 1978) identified and collected numerous surface scatters of stone artefacts from Fraser Island in an attempt to reconstruct prehistoric Aboriginal activities. The assemblages which he recovered displayed a wide range of artefact forms, including some which had not previously been described. One class of artefact, which Lauer (1978:65-6) termed the "pebblescraper", has a distinctive morphology which he interpreted as…
Brooyar Rockshelter: A late Holocene seasonal hunting camp from southeast Queensland
This paper details the results of an excavation undertaken at Brooyar Rockshelter, southeast Queensland during August 1987. The Rockshelter was excavated as part of a larger research project focused upon the adjacent coastal region of Cooloola (McNiven 1985). The excavation had two main aims. The first was to establish a chronological framework for backed blades in the Gympie-Cooloola region, thus providing insight into the antiquity of non-strat…
An archaeological survey of the Cooloola Region, S.E. Queensland
Within the last decade a general model of Aboriginal subsistence and settlement has emerged for coastal southeast Queensland. Investigations have concentrated in two areas, Fraser Island (Devitt 1979, Lauer 1977, 1979) and Moreton Bay (Alfredson 1983, 1984, Crooks 1982, Draper 1978, Hall 1980, 1982a, 1984, Hall and Robins 1984, Richardson 1979, 1984, Robins 1983, Robins and Hall 1981, Stockton 1974, Walters 1980). The general ethnohistorical and …
Saltwater People: Spiritscapes, maritime rituals and the archaeology of Australian indigenous seascapes
Anthropological research reveals that the scale and complexity of Australian indigenous seascapes correlate with the scale and complexity of spiritual engagements with the sea and use of its resources. Marine specialists see and represent themselves as Saltwater People - an identification spiritually embedded within seascapes rich in cosmological meaning. For Aboriginal people, this embeddedness is underwritten by a Dreaming cosmology that formal…
Badu 15 and the Papuan-Austronesian settlement of Torres Strait
Archaeological excavations on the island of Badu have for the first time revealed evidence of people in Torres Strait before 2500 years BP. We interpret this evidence as representing three phases of island use and occupation. Phase 1 (8000-6000 years BP), when the high islands of Torres Strait were part of terminal Greater Australia, saw permanent occupation of the region. During Phase 2 (6000-c.3500/3000 years BP), the Western Islands of Torres …
Of Lightning Brothers and White Cockatoos: Dating the antiquity of signifying systems in the Northern Territory, Australia
Northern Australia is one of the very few regions of the world where an established tradition of rock-art has continued and extends into present-day knowledge. Excavation of deposits under the painted surfaces allows the age of the paintings to be estimated, by linking across to these deposits and their dateable contexts. One can begin to assess the antiquity of those systems of knowledge and of 'signifying
Aboriginal shell middens at the mouth of the Maroochy River, southeast Queensland
This paper examines a series of shell midden and stone artefact sites located at the mouth of the Maroochy River, southeast Queensland. It represents the first detailed archaeological research undertaken on the Sunshine Coast since Jackson (1939) investigated a series of middens near Point Cartwright in the 1930's. The present study details the results of survey and excavation work, with a number of tentative hypotheses concerning late Holocene s…
Settlement and subsistence activities along Tin Can Bay, southeast Queensland
Tin Can Bay flanks the northwestern boundary of the Cooloola region, coastal southeast Queensland. It is a rich estuarine environment emptying into the southern end of the Great Sandy Strait which separates Fraser Island from the mainland. In 1983, I undertook a survey along the eastern periphery of the bay as part of Stage 1 of the Cooloola Region Archaeological Project (McNiven 1984, 1985). The survey aimed to provide insights into the form, fr…
Yiwarlarlay 1: Archaeological excavations at the Lightning Brothers site, Delamere station, Northern Territory
Recent archaeological excavations at Yiwarlarlay, the Lightning Brothers site (Northern Territory), shows that the large, paired striped figures which today decorate the rock wall were originally painted late last century. Other similar paintings found throughout what is today Wardaman country likewise appear to be of recent antiquity. We report these findings, with preliminary discussion of their implications and prospects for future research
Goba of Mua: Archaeology Working With Oral Tradition
A team of Elders and community officials from the island of Mua in the Torres Straits got together with archaeologists from Australia to study an episode which occurred on the island before the coming of Christianity in 1871. Oral tradition located the burial place of the father of an ancestral islander named Goba, and the investigation of a rock shelter nearby gave a dated sequence of occupation and a fresh sighting of rock paintings, all relati…
Tula Adzes And Bifacial Points On The East Coast Of Australia
The documentation and explanation of distributions of artefacts are of major concern in prehistoric archaeology. A fundamental component of this concern is the production of distribution maps. In Australia, a strong historical-diffusionist tradition using distribution maps in the interpretation of historical items of Aboriginal material culture flourished in the 1930s (e.g. Davidson 1933, 1934, 1936; McCarthy 1939-40). In contrast, major use of s…
Sandblow sites in the Great Sandy Region, coastal southeast Queensland: Implications for models of late Holocene rainforest exploitation and settlement restructuring
Excavations and surface collections undertaken at four large stone artefact sites situated within huge, active parabolic dunes at Cooloola are described. I argue that these sites, along with similar sites on Fraser Island, represent elements of an Early Phase of Aboriginal use of the Great Sandy Region between at least c. 5500 to 2300 BP. Demise of the Early Phase is seen as a response to climatically-induced, regional decreases in rainforest …
Phased redevelopment of an ancient Gunditjmara fish trap over the past 800 years: Muldoons Trap Complex, Lake Condah, southwestern Victoria
Critics point out that a weakness of Lourandos’ ‘intensification’ paradigm for southwestern Victoria is a lack of dates for iconic fish traps of the Lake Condah region. McNiven et al. (2012) detailed excavations at Muldoons Trap Complex at Lake Condah in Gunditjmara Country, where charcoal recovered from channel infill sediments indicated initial construction at least 6600 cal. BP, making the site one of the world’s oldest known fish traps. Chann…
Brooyar Rockshelter: A late Holocene seasonal hunting camp from southeast Queensland
This paper details the results of an excavation undertaken at Brooyar Rockshelter, southeast Queensland during August 1987. The Rockshelter was excavated as part of a larger research project focused upon the adjacent coastal region of Cooloola (McNiven 1985). The excavation had two main aims. The first was to establish a chronological framework for backed blades in the Gympie-Cooloola region, thus providing insight into the antiquity of non-strat…
The Argan stone arrangement complex, Badu: Initial results from Torres Strait
AbstarctThe Argan stone arrangement complex of the island of Badu is a series of mainly geometrically shaped stone formations that together extend for 1km along an isolated ridge-top in Western Torres Strait. Here we report on archaeological excavations at this ritual site in a first attempt to historicise Badulgal spiritscapes
Blowout Taphonomy: Non-Cultural Associations Between Faunal And Stone Artefact Assemblages Along The Cooloola Coast, Southeast Queensland
Taphonomic analyses of archaeological sites in coastal regions of Australia have made important contributions to our understanding of processes that create the archaeological record (e.g. Balme et al. 1978; Barker 1987; Bowdler 1984; Hope et al. 1977). Unfortunately, most of these studies have focused upon terrestrial faunal assemblages with the result that few insights have been made concerning the creation of marine faunal assemblages (cf. Coll…
Forum: Backed Artefacts: Useful Socially and Operationally
This paper has two purposes. One is to question the adequacy of the current utilitarian explanation for the wide proliferation of backed artefacts in Australia in the later Holocene. The second is to suggest that broadly social explanations for this event need to be given more weight
Historicising The Present: Late Holocene Emergence of a Rainforest Hunting Camp, Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea
Historicising the emergence of ethnographic activities provides insights into the reliability of ethnographic analogies to aid archaeological understandings of past human societies, as well as allowing us to explore the historical emergence of ethnographically contextualised cultural traits. Epe Amoho is the largest hunting camp rockshelter used by the Himaiyu clan (Rumu people) of the Kikori River region, southern Papua New Guinea. Contemporary …
Pre-European coastal settlement and use of the sea: A view from Queensland
We draw attention to important omissions in the chronology of Australian coastal occupation presented by Nicholson and Cane (1994) in their recent review of the subject. In the Queensland section of their review, Nicholson and Cane (1994:110-11) state that coastal settlement is confined to the last 2000 years in the Moreton Bay area, and to the last 1500 years for the remainder of the Queensland coast, with the exception of Princess Charlotte Bay…
Small unifacial pebble cores from Fraser Island, southeast Queensland
During the 1970's Lauer (1977, 1978) identified and collected numerous surface scatters of stone artefacts from Fraser Island in an attempt to reconstruct prehistoric Aboriginal activities. The assemblages which he recovered displayed a wide range of artefact forms, including some which had not previously been described. One class of artefact, which Lauer (1978:65-6) termed the "pebblescraper", has a distinctive morphology which he interpreted as…
The Double Island Point Aboriginal Burials, Coastal Southeast Queensland
This paper reports on the excavation of two Aboriginal burials from near Double Island Point, Cooloola National Park, southeast Queensland. The work represents the first controlled excavation of Aboriginal burials in southeast Queensland since Haglund's Broadbeach Aboriginal Burial Ground excavation in the 1960s (Haglund 1976). The examination of the two burials arose out of a larger regional study of settlement and subsistence at Cooloola (McNiv…
The Lightning Brothers Project: The 1988 And 1989 Field Seasons
In 1988 we began a research project in Wardaman country, Northern Territory. The project centres on the rock art located to the immediate northeast of the Victoria River and to the south of Katherine. The rock art itself currently forms an integral part of Wardaman lore, and is largely seen by Wardaman people not so much as 'art' but as an expression of the land and of the Dreaming beings which give identity to the land (cf. Frost et al, in press…
An archaeological survey of the Cooloola Region, S.E. Queensland
Within the last decade a general model of Aboriginal subsistence and settlement has emerged for coastal southeast Queensland. Investigations have concentrated in two areas, Fraser Island (Devitt 1979, Lauer 1977, 1979) and Moreton Bay (Alfredson 1983, 1984, Crooks 1982, Draper 1978, Hall 1980, 1982a, 1984, Hall and Robins 1984, Richardson 1979, 1984, Robins 1983, Robins and Hall 1981, Stockton 1974, Walters 1980). The general ethnohistorical and …
Small unifacial pebble cores from Fraser Island, southeast Queensland
During the 1970's Lauer (1977, 1978) identified and collected numerous surface scatters of stone artefacts from Fraser Island in an attempt to reconstruct prehistoric Aboriginal activities. The assemblages which he recovered displayed a wide range of artefact forms, including some which had not previously been described. One class of artefact, which Lauer (1978:65-6) termed the "pebblescraper", has a distinctive morphology which he interpreted as…
Brooyar Rockshelter: A late Holocene seasonal hunting camp from southeast Queensland
This paper details the results of an excavation undertaken at Brooyar Rockshelter, southeast Queensland during August 1987. The Rockshelter was excavated as part of a larger research project focused upon the adjacent coastal region of Cooloola (McNiven 1985). The excavation had two main aims. The first was to establish a chronological framework for backed blades in the Gympie-Cooloola region, thus providing insight into the antiquity of non-strat…
Aboriginal shell middens at the mouth of the Maroochy River, southeast Queensland
This paper examines a series of shell midden and stone artefact sites located at the mouth of the Maroochy River, southeast Queensland. It represents the first detailed archaeological research undertaken on the Sunshine Coast since Jackson (1939) investigated a series of middens near Point Cartwright in the 1930's. The present study details the results of survey and excavation work, with a number of tentative hypotheses concerning late Holocene s…
The Lightning Brothers Project: The 1988 And 1989 Field Seasons
In 1988 we began a research project in Wardaman country, Northern Territory. The project centres on the rock art located to the immediate northeast of the Victoria River and to the south of Katherine. The rock art itself currently forms an integral part of Wardaman lore, and is largely seen by Wardaman people not so much as 'art' but as an expression of the land and of the Dreaming beings which give identity to the land (cf. Frost et al, in press…
Blowout Taphonomy: Non-Cultural Associations Between Faunal And Stone Artefact Assemblages Along The Cooloola Coast, Southeast Queensland
Taphonomic analyses of archaeological sites in coastal regions of Australia have made important contributions to our understanding of processes that create the archaeological record (e.g. Balme et al. 1978; Barker 1987; Bowdler 1984; Hope et al. 1977). Unfortunately, most of these studies have focused upon terrestrial faunal assemblages with the result that few insights have been made concerning the creation of marine faunal assemblages (cf. Coll…
Yiwarlarlay 1: Archaeological excavations at the Lightning Brothers site, Delamere station, Northern Territory
Recent archaeological excavations at Yiwarlarlay, the Lightning Brothers site (Northern Territory), shows that the large, paired striped figures which today decorate the rock wall were originally painted late last century. Other similar paintings found throughout what is today Wardaman country likewise appear to be of recent antiquity. We report these findings, with preliminary discussion of their implications and prospects for future research
The Double Island Point Aboriginal Burials, Coastal Southeast Queensland
This paper reports on the excavation of two Aboriginal burials from near Double Island Point, Cooloola National Park, southeast Queensland. The work represents the first controlled excavation of Aboriginal burials in southeast Queensland since Haglund's Broadbeach Aboriginal Burial Ground excavation in the 1960s (Haglund 1976). The examination of the two burials arose out of a larger regional study of settlement and subsistence at Cooloola (McNiv…
Settlement and subsistence activities along Tin Can Bay, southeast Queensland
Tin Can Bay flanks the northwestern boundary of the Cooloola region, coastal southeast Queensland. It is a rich estuarine environment emptying into the southern end of the Great Sandy Strait which separates Fraser Island from the mainland. In 1983, I undertook a survey along the eastern periphery of the bay as part of Stage 1 of the Cooloola Region Archaeological Project (McNiven 1984, 1985). The survey aimed to provide insights into the form, fr…
Sandblow sites in the Great Sandy Region, coastal southeast Queensland: Implications for models of late Holocene rainforest exploitation and settlement restructuring
Excavations and surface collections undertaken at four large stone artefact sites situated within huge, active parabolic dunes at Cooloola are described. I argue that these sites, along with similar sites on Fraser Island, represent elements of an Early Phase of Aboriginal use of the Great Sandy Region between at least c. 5500 to 2300 BP. Demise of the Early Phase is seen as a response to climatically-induced, regional decreases in rainforest …
Tula Adzes And Bifacial Points On The East Coast Of Australia
The documentation and explanation of distributions of artefacts are of major concern in prehistoric archaeology. A fundamental component of this concern is the production of distribution maps. In Australia, a strong historical-diffusionist tradition using distribution maps in the interpretation of historical items of Aboriginal material culture flourished in the 1930s (e.g. Davidson 1933, 1934, 1936; McCarthy 1939-40). In contrast, major use of s…
Of Lightning Brothers and White Cockatoos: Dating the antiquity of signifying systems in the Northern Territory, Australia
Northern Australia is one of the very few regions of the world where an established tradition of rock-art has continued and extends into present-day knowledge. Excavation of deposits under the painted surfaces allows the age of the paintings to be estimated, by linking across to these deposits and their dateable contexts. One can begin to assess the antiquity of those systems of knowledge and of 'signifying
Pre-European coastal settlement and use of the sea: A view from Queensland
We draw attention to important omissions in the chronology of Australian coastal occupation presented by Nicholson and Cane (1994) in their recent review of the subject. In the Queensland section of their review, Nicholson and Cane (1994:110-11) state that coastal settlement is confined to the last 2000 years in the Moreton Bay area, and to the last 1500 years for the remainder of the Queensland coast, with the exception of Princess Charlotte Bay…
Excavations at Sos Höyük
The Argan stone arrangement complex, Badu: Initial results from Torres Strait
AbstarctThe Argan stone arrangement complex of the island of Badu is a series of mainly geometrically shaped stone formations that together extend for 1km along an isolated ridge-top in Western Torres Strait. Here we report on archaeological excavations at this ritual site in a first attempt to historicise Badulgal spiritscapes
Badu 15 and the Papuan-Austronesian settlement of Torres Strait
Archaeological excavations on the island of Badu have for the first time revealed evidence of people in Torres Strait before 2500 years BP. We interpret this evidence as representing three phases of island use and occupation. Phase 1 (8000-6000 years BP), when the high islands of Torres Strait were part of terminal Greater Australia, saw permanent occupation of the region. During Phase 2 (6000-c.3500/3000 years BP), the Western Islands of Torres …
Saltwater People: Spiritscapes, maritime rituals and the archaeology of Australian indigenous seascapes
Anthropological research reveals that the scale and complexity of Australian indigenous seascapes correlate with the scale and complexity of spiritual engagements with the sea and use of its resources. Marine specialists see and represent themselves as Saltwater People - an identification spiritually embedded within seascapes rich in cosmological meaning. For Aboriginal people, this embeddedness is underwritten by a Dreaming cosmology that formal…
Goba of Mua: Archaeology Working With Oral Tradition
A team of Elders and community officials from the island of Mua in the Torres Straits got together with archaeologists from Australia to study an episode which occurred on the island before the coming of Christianity in 1871. Oral tradition located the burial place of the father of an ancestral islander named Goba, and the investigation of a rock shelter nearby gave a dated sequence of occupation and a fresh sighting of rock paintings, all relati…
Historicising The Present: Late Holocene Emergence of a Rainforest Hunting Camp, Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea
Historicising the emergence of ethnographic activities provides insights into the reliability of ethnographic analogies to aid archaeological understandings of past human societies, as well as allowing us to explore the historical emergence of ethnographically contextualised cultural traits. Epe Amoho is the largest hunting camp rockshelter used by the Himaiyu clan (Rumu people) of the Kikori River region, southern Papua New Guinea. Contemporary …
Forum: Backed Artefacts: Useful Socially and Operationally
This paper has two purposes. One is to question the adequacy of the current utilitarian explanation for the wide proliferation of backed artefacts in Australia in the later Holocene. The second is to suggest that broadly social explanations for this event need to be given more weight
Phased redevelopment of an ancient Gunditjmara fish trap over the past 800 years: Muldoons Trap Complex, Lake Condah, southwestern Victoria
Critics point out that a weakness of Lourandos’ ‘intensification’ paradigm for southwestern Victoria is a lack of dates for iconic fish traps of the Lake Condah region. McNiven et al. (2012) detailed excavations at Muldoons Trap Complex at Lake Condah in Gunditjmara Country, where charcoal recovered from channel infill sediments indicated initial construction at least 6600 cal. BP, making the site one of the world’s oldest known fish traps. Chann…
Archaeology (19 works) · Geography (17 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (16 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (12 works) · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies (12 works) · History (9 works) · Excavation (8 works) · History (8 works) · Subsistence agriculture (6 works) · Geology (5 works)