Archaeological publications commonly include illustrations and photographic reproductions of archaeological artefacts. These illustrations and photographs usually include a scaling reference to indicate the dimensions of the original artefact. Unfortunately, the different scaling factors and measurement systems used in the reproduction of archaeological illustrations often makes it difficult to comparatively analyse the artefacts with any degree of accuracy. For instance, accurately comparing pottery profiles from a number of published sources often involves a great deal of redrawing and guesswork to make them conform to a common scale. The use of photocopiers with scaling capabilities has helped with this problem but this method has a number of limitations, not the least of which are the uncertainties associated with the enlargement and reduction accuracy of the photocopier mechanisms and, once again, the amount of guesswork involved in the process.

This paper proposes a methodology that provides I) highly accurate solutions to the problem of developing a common scale for previously published archaeological illustrations, and ii) methodologies for creating a new generation of "digital" archaeological illustrations that make their comparison and reproduction very flexible and efficient. The later technique has been found to be particularly useful for the production and analysis of pottery profiles and opens up new methods for comparing profiles. Both these solutions involve the use of "off-the-shelf" digital imaging and illustration software packages that are well within the reach of archaeology students to acquire and master. The paper provides a step-by-step guide to the using of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to produce archaeological illustrations using the methodologies outlined in the paper.

Since 1988 a group known as the Ancient Nation of Waitaha have developed an alternative prehistory for New Zealand. Waitaha's version of the past is strikingly different from that of over 130 years of archaeological work. Mainstream research indicates that the Maori arrived some 700 years ago from Eastern Polynesia. But, according to Waitaha's utopian view, New Zealand was first settled 2000 years ago by groups that contained non-Polynesian and Polynesian elements. Archaeologists and Maori have criticised Waitaha's prehistory for its poor scholarship, its lack of evidence for any pre-Maori population, and its reliance on informants who are unknown or do not have authority to speak about tribal histories. However, the Waitaha group has continued to flourish and in a recent high court ruling won the right to argue for its status as a separate political entity. At stake is the legal authentication of their version of the past and with it the ability to lodge land and resource claims through the Waitangi Tribunal - the organisation responsible for settling Maori grievances resulting from British annexation in 1840. This paper examines the development of Waitaha and their use of a constructed prehistory to further the group's economic and political ambitions. The effectiveness of conventional archaeology in combating Waitaha and the similarities of Waitaha to earlier fictional prehistories are assessed.

2 Department of Archaeology and Natural History, RSPAS, Australian National University

It is common knowledge among archaeologists that the public is not reliably informed about archaeology and archaeologists, both in Australia and overseas. Most archaeologists have ideas about why this is so. Films, newspapers, television and the public schooling system are constantly blamed for either not giving enough information to the public, or for giving them the ‘wrong’ information. But who is this ‘public’? The small volume of research done by archaeologists into public perceptions seems to confirm that the ‘public’ of most archaeologists is the acquaintances they may have asked about the subject, and that archaeologists’ ideas about public archaeology are also shaped by the media sources they blame for misinforming the public.

 Yet most archaeologists have an opinion on the subject of public perceptions of archaeology and claim to know what the public thinks. Politicians also do this, however they are usually (although regrettably not always) informed by polls and statistics. Archaeologists are not; and without them archaeologists will never be able to deal with what they clearly see as a problem. Whether it is actually a problem is also a concern rarely addressed. Is archaeology any more important and less understood or misrepresented than other subjects?

 This paper will review past research dealing with what information the public receives about archaeology and where it comes from. It will also outline how the first useful Australian data on the subject is soon to be collected and what archaeologists may be able to do with them.

 Australia has two different types of cultural heritage, indigenous and historical, and many pieces of legislation which deals with them, both Commonwealth and State. Some deal specifically with either of the types, for instance, the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988 (SA), and other legislation deals with various forms of cultural heritage, such as moveable cultural heritage.

 This paper addresses the question of whether indigenous and historical cultural heritage are treated differently under current legislation and common law in South Australia. Both Commonwealth and State legislation are reviewed, with case studies on various statuary authorities and government departments. The logistics and difficulties of implementing the legislation are outlined. These will be illustrated by case studies involving indigenous Australians and also public and private professionals in the field of archaeology who work with the legislation on a regular basis.

The legislation is compared with contemporary cultural heritage legislation in countries with situations similar to Australia, such as Canada and South Africa. Areas that will be discussed will include what Australian cultural heritage is, why it needs protection and what it needs protection from, with the main focus being on the discrepancies between indigenous and historical Australian cultural heritage. These issues are very important to professional archaeologists, or those people who aim to work in the field of archaeology, as legislation does, and will continue to affect the type of work that is available for archaeologists in Australia now and in the future.

 From the earliest days of archaeology, it has been recognised that the objects uncovered by the archaeologist are part of a legacy from the past, and as such are to be preserved not only for contemporary study and admiration, but also for generations to come. However, the need for archaeological conservation is not always widely recognised, and conservators and archaeologists continue to eye each other with mistrust over their respective views on excavated artefacts. Archaeological conservation involves not only preserving the artefacts once they are excavated, but also determining the best method of excavation for the artefacts and ensuring their safe storage and transportation from the site

to a laboratory. This in turn involves careful planning and study long before the first excavation takes place on a site, so that the conservator can be adequately prepared for any eventuality. The respective roles of the archaeologist and conservator must also be defined, and a good rapport set up between the two disciplines, as differences of opinion can often arise between the two areas. The conservator has to remember that the archaeologist is working to a schedule and may not consider the survival of all objects as necessary to the excavation, and the archaeologist has to be aware of the dangers of attempting conservation treatments without the assistance or advice of a trained conservator. This talk aims to give more detailed information about the procedures of on-site conservation, as well as discussing the respective roles of the conservator and archaeologist on an archaeological site.

Urban historical archaeology constitutes more than what is found under floor boards. This paper proposes new ways archaeologists can read the practices, images, sounds, texts and objects produced by the Irish popular music group U2. The approach is to explore urban historical archaeological perspectives on what the material in social life does to interaction and communication. Popular music is part of the noise of communication in our lives and tells something of how people use sound in social interaction. An archaeology of the material culture produced by U2 and its consumption, takes the discussion about the material and social life into a new dimension. In today’s interdisciplinary environment, cultural historians, anthropologists, literary critics and historical archaeologists all investigate the impact of the material in society. Popular culture is a comparative term which academics use to make sense of the way we live. It can refer to culture produced for or by the people, and it can refer to specific material and values at the edges of artistic exploration. The frontier of popular culture exploded in the last two decades due to improvements in technology and the creation of increased leisure time. How can archaeologists measure cultural phenomenon which effect large numbers of people and create cultural differences between social groups? What can archaeologists in particular do with the new means of textual, audio and visual production and communication produced by U2? Such questions are substance of a research proposal to investigate the place of popular music in cultural transformations into the next millennium.

The non indigenous cultural landscape of the Fleurieu Peninsula consists of spatially and temporally differentiated settlement patterns easily identified by employing a landscape approach. Research undertaken has used a landscape approach which recognises the dynamic nature of cultural landscapes and has focused on change. A system is also used in which elements in the cultural landscape are classified in terms of markers and associations. Such that both 20th century rural dairy factories and 19th century flour mills are regarded as markers of previous land use in the region. Furthermore their life histories are explained in terms of changing regional adaptive and production strategies. Changing land use patterns in the region are subsequently contextualised within the framework of the history of South Australian agricultural expansion, contraction, changing technologies and government intervention.

In this paper I will be exploring issues of cultural interaction and the potential for archaeology to add to our understanding of the processes of contact. Contact between cultures has, in a general sense, long been a part of the range of study of archaeology. More recently, there has been a move toward specific ‘contact’ oriented studies which seek to examine the nature of cultural interaction and change, particularly (but not exclusively) in a colonial context. Previously colonialism was often assumed to result in rapid uni-directional change or ‘acculturation’. There now seems to be a general agreement that the picture is more complex than can adequately be described by such models and a more ‘multi-directional’ and creative ‘contact picture’ is required. Contact is now being viewed as a process rather than an event and as such is a process that still continues. It is for this reason that contact studies are increasingly important. By looking at a case study of Aboriginal/European interaction in the Sydney area it is my intention to examine how a material based analysis can help to increase our understanding of these changes. This paper will touch on some ideas/themes relevant to contact studies, including:

· types of contact trade/theft/gifts etc.

· recognising ethnicity through objects

· material culture/meaning of objects

It will also examine some alternative data sources and how these might be combined with archaeological data to provide new insights into Aboriginal/European interaction in Sydney and to more general concepts of cultural interaction.

Investigations into a ship graveyard in Port Adelaide have been carried out since the late 1970s, but only relatively recently from a perspective both archaeological and historical. One of the problems in the past in gaining a more accurate portrayal of the significance of the abandonment ground has been an inability to combine relevant and historiographic principles with archaeological approaches. Apparently used between 1906 and 1945, the site on a mangrove and samphire dominated section of island, has provided a rare insight into the practices which dictated the disposal of a considerable number of ships, while shedding light on the circumstances which lead to the decision that a ship is of no further value.

While the progressive adoption of diesel powered vessels appears to have been a major reason for abandonment, other factors such as the winding down of government-run dredging and deepening operations in the Port have also played a role. Changes in state government legislation, attitudes towards the use of particular sea routes and perceived threats to navigation have also been factors that determined shifts in the beaurocratic method of deposition and the actual number of ships deposited throughout the early twentieth century.

This paper discusses the results of ongoing archaeological fieldwork and historical research into local newspapers, registry documents and government records. Of particular interest has been how the histories of individual ships contributed to the creation of the graveyard. This research has shown that while such graveyards are not rare occurrences around the globe, their definitions on temporal and spatial levels are born from actions that arise from issues which although being inextricably linked with changes in technology and world economy, were guided by practices dictated by a set of locally conceived and particularly unique culturally defined practices. This paper suggests that the investigations of such sites are useful from many different perspectives especially as the study of the practices of peoples linked on a global scale can tell us about occurrences in world economy, technological evolution and technological diffusion. It can also tell us to what extent locally conceived and apparently behaviourally insular and unique practices (due to perceptions of law, economy, technology and environment) persist in light of other cultural exchanges.

In 1860 the lure of gold attracted thousands of people to Kiandra, a remote township in the Snowy Mountains of southern NSW, among them were hundreds of Chinese. From then until the early 1900s the Chinese were the largest single ethnic minority group in alpine Australia, comprising over half the population of Kiandra in 1863. Today, apart from four surviving buildings, Kiandra presents a scarred landscape, marked by mounds and hollows, some brick and ironwork, and broken ceramics and glassware wherever erosion has given some surface visibility.

That landscape also shows evidence of an identifiable ethnic Chinese presence. Surveys and excavations carried out at the remains of a miners’ camp near Kiandra, within the abandoned township, and at a deserted mining site on the edge of the town, reveal that presence. Results of investigations at those sites show the Chinese largely maintained their traditional material culture, called on practical and symbolic aspects of their culture to locate and build their dwellings, and may have used distinctive mining methods at Kiandra.

In addition, identification of a number of the ethnic characteristics found at Kiandra is reinforced through comparison with other archaeological studies. A non-Chinese site excavated at Kiandra, and other similar sites in Australia and overseas exhibit different traits. Whereas contemporary Chinese miners’ dwellings located elsewhere in Australia and overseas show similar features to those at Kiandra.

After forty years of archaeological excavation in the United Arab Emirates detailed interpretations about aspects of housing, burial practices, and trade and production of material culture in the past are now available. Little, however, is known about biological aspects of the people such as health. It is argued that the geographic location and climatic extremes of the Gulf provide an interesting background for the study of relationships between humans and their environment, especially in terms of understanding the mutability of health. Given that other types of evidence such as historical documents, genetic evidence from contemporary populations, and archaeological material culture provide little information about humans in the past in this region, it is necessary to rely solely on evidence from humans themselves. This paper provides an overview of recent research carried out on collections of archaeological human skeletal remains from a variety of locations in the United Arab Emirates. Preliminary results documenting observed changes in health through time are briefly outlined.

An investigation of dental variation in the early Homo sample of Koobi Fora shows the presence of an unusual, potentially unique pattern of wear in specimens attributed to a hitherto unnamed species of this genus. In particular, mandibular third premolars show a wear pattern consistent with buccal occlusion with upper canines and upper canines show a concurrent pattern of lingual occlusion. This pattern appears to be unique among members of genus Homo, and is reminiscent of a functional complex seen only in specimens of Australopithecus, particularly A. afarensis. Absolute and relative dental proportions, expansion of the P3 talonid, patterns of tooth wear and dimensions of the mandibular corpus suggest exclusion of these fossils from Homo to be warranted.

The present study is a segment of a larger study investigating the role of environmental factors on the postnatal morphology of mammalian mandibles. Fourteen mandibles are investigated in the western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) for patterns of growth from infancy to adulthood. Three-dimensional co-ordinates for 15 homologous landmarks were obtained from each mandible. After sorting by sex, the mandibles were assigned to one of seven dental age groups. Euclidean distance matrix analysis (EDMA) is used to study mandibular form change during growth within each sex and between the sexes at each of the seven developmental stages.

Rehabilitation has been successfully used as a conservation tool in a number of non-human primate species such as Orangutans and Golden Lion Tamarins. It has, however, been met with little success in gibbons. In January 1997, a family of gibbons (Hylobates lar) were released onto an island as the first stage of a rehabilitation attempt. This release resulted in the death of a juvenile and the consequential removal of the gibbons from the island. Detailed research found that the cause of death was a bacterial infection contracted as a consequence of stress prior to release. The study concluded that stress is a major problem in rehabilitation attempt and should therefore be minimised wherever possible. Documentation of both successful and failed rehabilitation are crucial to help develop standard processes and procedures, which can be used in future rehabilitation efforts.

The archaeology of the Iron Age and Romano British periods in Central Southern Britannia have been well researched. Chronologies, settlement patterns, technologies, economic and social diversity and changes, material culture (particularly pottery), agricultural systems, external trade and politics have all been investigated and a number of theories are available for consideration in most areas of Iron Age and Romano British life.

Conversely, theories concerning the origins and relationships between the people who carried the culture of these periods have been few, and generally quite gross in their magnification. Two main theories have held sway over the course of this century. Both are quite generalised, sweeping theories that reflected contemporary thinking towards the effects of invasion on an indigenous population, rather than being based on any close examination of the evidence.

My study focusses on the shift of the British culture from one identified as Late Iron Age to that described as Romano British, and looks for any interruption to the biological continuity of the Central Southern British population which can be associated with the occupation of Britannia by the Roman Empire. In order to examine patterns of spatial and temporal variation in available Iron Age and Romano British skeletal populations of Central Southern Britannia I have used the Arizona State University dental non-metric system.

In my paper I will be outlining the above problem in more detail and report on my progress thus far.

The megalithic culture related to the Plain of Jars is surrounded by mystery, since the function and history of the jars remains unravelled. There are approximately 40 stone jar sites scattered throughout the province of Xieng Khuang, Northern Laos; the biggest one contains 250 stone jars. The stone jars are made of quarried sandstone that has been shaped and hollowed out; they are more or less cylindrical in shape and measure from 1 to 3.5 m in height with a diameter of 0.5 to 2.5 m. They weigh from between several to more than 20 tons; how they were transported from the quarry site to the "necropolis" site remains unexplained.

According to local legends, these stone jars were used to ferment rice wine so the great army of Khun Cheuang could drink while celebrating the great victory won over a redoubtable enemy. Other legends suggest that the jars were used to store rice, foods or water. Archaeological research has shown that they were related to mortuary practices, but whether they were used as sarcophagi or funerary monuments remains unclear. Secondary burials and pottery jar burials have been found in the ground around the much larger stone jars. Grave goods were composed of: bronze ornaments, iron tools, and a variety of beads made from carnelian, glass and semi-precious stones. If one considers that these grave goods items represented "tradeable" objects, they could thus provide us with an insight into economic aspects of the past society.

None-the-less, the wealth or/and the power possessed by the stone jar users remains far to be fully understood. The costs involved in the manufacture of the stone jars, and also probably in the performance of ritual ceremonies associated with the jars can hardly be estimated, since ownership of the jars remains an open question. Faced also with the paradigms of megalithic monuments, particularly with regards to their functions, one is stunned with the incredible amounts of energy, time and resources that were involved not only in their construction, but also in the realisation of related rites. Some authors, such as Heine-Geldern, have suggested that the megalithic monument served as a symbolic object regulating the survival of the whole group, as it was meant to be built and maintained as a collective operation and in many cases it refers to "the cult of fecundity" or similar beliefs which command the "reproduction" of the community.

When and how the cult of the stone jar ceased in Northern Laos is another mystery although we can attribute this culture to the Metal Age on the ground that objects made of bronze and iron had been uncovered.

What is the legacy the constructors of the stone jars have left us?

Lie Madira is a cave site, situated only 300 m from the high tide mark at Roalie in West Sawu District. It is a long cave with a narrow mouth facing to the west. Archaeological field work was carried out in August 1997 to investigate the characteristics of human occupation at Lie Madira, particularly aspects of subsistence pattern, technology and environment. The paper presents on-going analysis of data obtained from recent field work.

Three samples of marine shell for carbon dating were submitted to ANU carbon lab and one charcoal sample from the lowest level of occupation has been submitted for AMS dating (the latter not yet run). From the depth of 75 cm below the surface the C14 date is (ANU 10917) 5960± 70 BP and from the depth of 55 cm below the surface it is (ANU10916) 5800± 90 BP. These two dates are in association with long flakes, some with sign of use wear on their edges. The dating of these long flakes parallels the dating obtained by Glover for the common occurrence of blade with gloss in several sites in East Timor. The dating of the first appearance of pottery (from 20 cm below the surface) and the first occupation the site is still in process.

Throughout the site occupation, there are indications that Lie Madira was not intensively occupied in the earlier period, but then the intensity of the site use started to increase dramatically after 5960± 70 BP. The occupation reached its peak afterward, indicated by high numbers of flakes and cores, shells and animal bones. Then, it seems that the cave was not intensively used after the first appearance of pottery, at which time the archaeological data decrease.

Analysing the Lie Madira assemblage, it is apparent that the Lie Madira people depended heavily on marine resources. They exploited more varied shell species from more environments in the later period than in the earlier period of occupation. During the occupation, stone flakes were produced by a percussion technique. Some flakes were used directly without secondary working and some flakes were retouched. The correlations between the different classes of material recovered from the excavation are currently being investigated.

The fact that some iron working centres from ethnographic time are close to prehistoric iron bearing sites leads to a question whether they have a link in some degrees. This paper discusses and shows that there are some aspects that can be an evidence of a link in terms of various kinds of objects and the technology being used. With examples from Java and Bali, this paper also throws light on some aspects of the Iron Age that remain unsolved if prehistoric data are made use solely, such as preference of sources of material, preference of the location of blacksmiths’ settlement, and the blacksmiths’ status itself. From these three points, information gained from ethnographic time is worthy to take into account.

The occurrence of metal objects in the Gilimanuk site at the western tip of Bali Island is believed to reflect the introduction of metallurgy into Indonesia from the mainland of Southeast Asia. Distinctive types of bronze objects, i.e. Pejeng-type kettledrums, pentagonal plates and socketed axes have been suggested to be the products of the local Balinese metal working activity. This argument seems to be supported by the existence of kettledrum casting moulds with unique decoration found in Manuaba and Sembiran. The pentagonal plates have also never been reported outside Bali. Although numerous bronze axes have been found in a wide area of Bali, including Gilimanuk, indications of local casting have not yet been recovered.

Bronze and iron objects have also been suggested as having been traded from the inland to the coastal sites in Bali, but the effort to trace the relationship between Gilimanuk and early bronze manufacture in Bali is obstructed by poor dating.

Wider research on types of Southeast Asian bronze axes shows that some of the Balinese axe types are also found in sites in Thailand and Vietnam. These similarities, and the lack of evidence for bronze axe manufacture in Bali, could lead to the assumption that the Gilimanuk bronze axes, together with other exotic artefacts like glass beads and gold foil eye and mouth covers, were brought from other regions rather than produced internally. In this case, a re-examination of these objects using a stylistic classification and functional investigation is necessary before detailed comparison with mainland Southeast Asian assemblages can be undertaken. The results of such a re-examination will be presented in my talk.

1. Warfare has often been used by archaeologists across the Polynesian/Fijian region to describe why various societies have developed along particular sociopolitical pathways, and why particular material culture has been manifest. Or it has been used as an explanation of what occurs when a society suffers an environmental or demographic crisis. But for the archaeologist to establish that warfare had been a reality for the society under examination, a particular aspect of material culture is selected as a diagnostic indicator. An example of this is fortification in islands and groups such as:

• New Zealand;
• Rapa;
• the Marquesas, and;
• the Tonga/Samoa/Fiji region.

Other obvious indicators of warfare are particular weapons, such as the obsidian spear (Mataa) points of Easter Island.

2. Once an indicator has been identified by the archaeologist, the presence of warfare within society is often explained within the context of particular sociopolitical stages in the development of society, for example:

• the ‘Decadent Phase’ of Easter Island (Kirch 1989:264);
• the ‘Classic Maori Phase’ of New Zealand, with ‘chronic’ levels of warfare (Duff 1967:116);
• the ‘Expansion Period’ in the Marquesas (Suggs 1961:183-184), and;
• the Hawaiian archipelago’s ‘Mana’ Phase characterised by expansion-driven warfare (Kirch 1989:249).

3. But, what happens to our archaeological theories if we have mistakenly focused our attention upon false indicators, or even if our indicators are largely meaningless?

4. Along this line the following two questions will be addressed in this presentation:

This paper will firstly present an introductory outline of the archaeology of Rarotonga and its place in Polynesia, before reporting on recent field work and subsequent work in progress. This work includes mapping of sites with GPS; setting up a GIS for the analysis of the mapped data; and the analysis of ethnohistorical records; in order to delineate late prehistoric ‘landscapes’.

The subject of this talk is a pit excavated in the 1970s at Kuk Swamp, Wahgi Valley, Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. The pit is one component feature of a surface, comprised of interconnecting pits (or basins), channels and depressions around higher (and drier) islands, which has been interpreted to be evidence for agriculture at 6000 - 4500 BP (Kuk Phase 2). Varying representations have been made of this pit, e.g., site plans, photographs and notes made by several excavators at the site over the course of three years. These records are the basic resource available to a researcher interested in reconstructing the evidence for early agriculture at Kuk. However, the records made of this pit are not passive, i.e., the records are not just mirroring representations, rather they each point towards a different kind of feature for site reconstruction, i.e., the records are constitutive for what each feature becomes/is. This lack of correspondence between reality and representation will be discussed using a linguistic analogy. These reflections on the Kuk records are of broader relevance to the reconstruction of any archaeological site.

Archaeological evidence suggests that people have been in New Guinea for at least 40-60,000 years. At this time New Guinea and Australia were a single land mass. Little is known about the number of nature of migrations into New Guinea or the subsequent population movement on the island, although there is evidence of a movement between the mainland and the Bismarck Archipelago from about 20,000 years ago. About 3,500 years ago Austronesian-speaking people arrived in the Bismarck Archipelago from where they moved further into the Pacific, Remote Oceania and to the coastal regions of New Guinea. They were associated with many cultural changes identifiable in the archaeological record.

Human leucocyte antigen (HLA) genes are used in population studies because they are extremely polymorphic and show marked variation between difference populations. Direct DNA typing methods for class I genes have only recently been developed and are able to detect even single nucleotide differences between alleles. This is the first major study in which they have been applied to Melanesian population. DNA typing was carried out on eight Melanesian populations including highlanders, north and southern highlands fringe population, a Sepik population, a north and south mainland coastal population and populations from the Bismarck Archipelago and New Caledonia. Although serology had previously detected a number of polymorphisms in these populations, DNA typing was able to split them into several subtypes, thereby providing new information about population inter-relationships and migrations in this region.

1997 and early 1998 marked the most severe and widespread drought in PNG’s recorded history. It impacted heavily upon subsistence systems across the country. At Lake Kopiago, in the southern Highlands, many people’s gardens withered and died through lack of water, or were destroyed by unchecked wild-fire. People’s difficulties were amplified by a string of destructive floods over the preceding years which had discouraged many people from maintaining complimentary gardens in both the wetlands and drylands.

People’s subsistence activities during and after the drought at Kopiago provide some useful ethnographic information which may inform debate concerning patterns of wetland and dryland subsistence in prehistory. During the drought the wetlands at Kopiago provided an important refuge for people and for the domesticated crops, and, as the drought conditions have ameliorated, have acted as centres for crop dispersal. in light of the present potential environmental record, following the increased garden clearance (in the lead up to the drought), severe bushfires, and landslides, some discussion is also presented concerning the interpretation of palaeoenvironmental records to understand prehistoric wetland-dryland subsistence interactions.

Discussions on Lapita have always been controversial, and the Bismarck Archipelago is the key area where research has been focused for the last 15 years of so. The issue which research was mainly concerned with was establishing whether the Lapita ‘assemblage’ was the result of an intrusive culture or internal developments in the Bismarck area. Arguments for an intrusive cultural complex were based on the fact that the Classic dentate-stamped Lapita ceramics were found over a wide area of the Pacific, with little variation in decoration or shape, and all were found in similarly dated contexts. From this it was believed that one of the key components of the ‘cultural complex’ was an intensification of social relations, resulting in long-distance trading. Studies of obsidian already indicate complex local and regional interaction/trade well before and after the Lapita period, rather than long distance trade.

To date there have been very few studies on the movement of the most prominent and highly visible artefact in the Lapita assemblage, the Lapita ceramics. Summer-Hayes and Hunt have carried out petrological analyses to source ceramics on West New Britain and Mussau respectively, with conflicting views on the nature of interaction in these areas. What my project involves is to carry out a petrological analysis of some ceramics from the Duke of York Islands (situated between New Ireland and New Britain), and to establish what kind of interaction is occurring there (i.e. is it local, regional or long-distance), and to see what kind of role the Duke of Yorks played in interaction between the two larger islands, and within the Bismarck Archipelago. The results of this will then hopefully contribute to some better understanding of the nature of movement of ceramics and thus social interaction around the Archipelago during and after the Lapita period.

The region of the middle and upper Euphrates Valley in north Syria and south-eastern Anatolia has been the focus of intensive archaeological research over the past tow decades due to the construction of several dams on the Euphrates River. Archaeological evidence from the third millennium is particularly well represented, especially funerary or mortuary evidence. The sites of Tell Ahmar and Tell Banat both contain evidence pertaining to the third millennium; but what makes these sites stand out significantly from the majority of third millennium sites in the region is the presence of a monumental burial.

Two broad aims can be defined as pivotal to this research:

1) To understand what it is we are referring to as an ‘elite’ burial. Through a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of the finds from the tombs it is hoped to more clearly articulate what constitutes an ‘elite’ burial and to examined the extent to which this term is even relevant in this discussion.

2) The second broad aim of the research is to understand the role of the monumental burial in the third millennium life of the site, and in turn in the broader socio-economic, political and cultural region. This will be achieved through both intra- and inter-site analysis of the architecture and associated material culture, specifically the pottery from the several different areas within each site. Ceramics have been selected as the primary basis for comparison because they are the most plentiful of material remains and also occur fairly consistently across different burial contexts - funerary, public and domestic.

In this paper I shall give a brief introduction to the site of Tell Ahmar and Tell Banata and their geomorphological and historical setting, discuss the monumentary funerary remains from the sites, and present some preliminary results of the comparative ceramic analysis. In the conclusion to the paper I would also like to present some ideas for the interpretation of the material in terms of the broader socio-economic, political and cultural landscape.

The underlining premise of this paper, that the past is a foreign country, will be employed in examining the relationship between the living and the dead in the landscape of western and northern Europe from approximately 10,000 to 4,000 BP. Though most archaeologists of course recognise specific or particular differences in the past, I am suggesting that a greater degree of unfamiliarity may be present at an elementary level in the patterning of space, the living and the dead. It is my argument that the empirical evidence for this region and period (‘mesolithic’ and ‘neolithic’ indicates that the living and the dead were not separated across the landscape - that is they were not apparently divided into the familiar discrete spatial loci that our conventional perspective on the social work would lead us to expect. This re-reading of the empirical evidence suggesting that the employment of conventional terms such as house, tomb and ritual may be clouding the way we understand the complex relationship between the living and the dead in prehistoric Europe.

European archaeologists have stated that in the European ‘mesolithic’ the division between the living and the dead was less marked, citing burials within shell middens. It is my argument that this view has not been fully extended to the ‘neolithic’ and late periods, due to the numerous megalithic structures which are apparent in the landscape from ca. 6,500 BP onwards. The massive constructions have been interpreted as an endeavour to separate the dead from the living. But on the contrary the dead are not confined to one form of space - the megalithic structure - but are also distributed throughout the residential landscape from 6,500 BP onward, suggesting that the conventional dichotomies of house/tomb, domestic/rural are inappropriate for our understanding of the neolithic of Europe.

This paper will provide an introduction to a current project aimed at testing the viability of using chemical analysis to identify organic residues on ceramic vessels. Using non-destructive and destructive extraction techniques, it is hoped that biological remains (lipids) may still be present in the ceramics. Residues will be analysed using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS), in an attempt to identify any compounds that were present in the vessels. The paper will focus on the methodological requirements of this study, combined with a brief overview of the relevant literature from which this has been derived. Two samples of ceramics are being used for the project, the first of which comprises whole vessels from various contexts, as well as a variety of sherds recently excavated from Paphos, Cyprus.

It is hoped that the results will be able to contribute to traditional functional studies of ceramics.

The collection of unstratified surface artefact assemblages has long been implemented by archaeologists as a means of identifying and dating the periods of occupation of a site or sites. Provided certain rules are observed with regard to the collection, obtainable results may also include important information on the internal structure of the site. However, despite the obvious advantages to be gained, the controlled collection methods necessary to obtain such results have never really acquired currency amongst the majority of archaeologists working in Syria. For the most part, controlled sampling is considered to be too time consuming, and it is often argued that the method returns only poor results from the complex, multiperiod sites or tells which dominate the archaeological landscape of this part of the world.

It was partly as a response to this attitude that a controlled surface collection was carried out at the site of Tell Halula in northern Syria in 1986. From the artefactual material collected it was possible not only to identify and date ten separate periods of occupation, but also to determine the size and location of the individual settlements, as well as their relative importance in the occupation history of the site.

This paper focuses on the results of the spatial analyses of the Halula surface assemblages conducted using the Surfer contouring and three dimensional surface mapping software. By employing the Kriging gridding method which emphasises trends in data, density contour maps have been generated depicting the distribution of different artefact categories across the surface of the site. The success of this work demonstrates the advantages to the archaeologist of replacing the still-widespread implicit collection methods with a more rigorous, explicit methodology.

Acting as knowledgable agents in their environment, Aboriginal people interact directly and indirectly with the vegetation communities they utilise. Fire regimes, food collection techniques and preservation strategies all have implications for the biogeography of specific plant associations. Distinguishing hunter-gatherer influence from other environmental impact on vegetation in areas where traditional Aboriginal management techniques are now limited requires a range of methodological approaches.

The Keep River region of the Northern Territory provides good opportunities to test hypothesis about hunter-gatherer and plant relationships. Across northern Australia many areas important to Aboriginal people for resource use and or symbolic reasons are found where rocky outcrops dramatically contrast the surrounding savannas in which they lie. Several such outcrops form part of the Djibigun track and are also important fruit and yam

collection sites. Detailed mapping of vegetation distributions and disturbance processes, archaeobotanical analysis of fruits, seeds and tool residues, and ethnographic recording of past and present management practices by Aboriginal people are all being investigated along this dreaming track.

Bulee Brook 2 is located at the western edge of the NSW south coast hinterland ranges, 40 km from the Burrill Lake Rockshelter, which is itself only 4 km from the present coastline (Boot 1996a:288, 1997:169-172; Lampert 1971). Before radiocarbon dates had been obtained from charcoal excavated from Bulee Brook 2, the Burrill Lake Rockshelter, dated to 20,830+810 BP (ANU-138), was the only known Pleistocene age rockshelter in the NSW south coast region (Lampert 1971:9).

Charcoal excavated during a text excavation at Bulee Brook 2 provided a radiocarbon determination of 18,810+160 BP (ANU-9375) from spit 8, located 10 cm above the shelter’s bedrock floor (Boot 1996b:66). Younger dates obtained from deposits below spit 8 have proved problematic, however it is likely that they derive from charcoal that has been transported down through the deposits by percolating water.

The radiocarbon dates obtained from this site and the nearby Bob’s Cave indicate that Aboriginal occupation of the NSW southern coastal ranges has a much greater antiquity than was revealed from the only other hinterland rockshelters to be excavated before the 1990s, Sassafras 1 and 2, both located near Bulee Brook 2. The earliest occupation dates obtained from these two sites are 3,770+150 BP (ANU-743) and 2,780+115 BP (ANU-744) respectively (Flood 1980:226), some 15,000 years after Bulee Brook 2 was first occupied by the Aboriginal inhabitants of the South Coast Ranges. This paper will discuss interpretations of the radiocarbon dates as well as other aspects of the site’s archaeology.

Recent research in the New South Wales south and far south coast hinterland has shown that all environments, no matter how suitable, had been exploited by Aboriginal people (Knight 1996; Phil Boot 1997 pers. comm.). Earlier research in the general vicinity of the present study area suggested that some areas may have been avoided o less intensively exploited due to a lack of resources (Attenbrow 1976; Byrne 1983). These previous research projects had been either fairly broad in their analysis, or did not go into depth due to a lack of archaeological evidence. The present research project is an attempt to ascertain if a distinct pattern of Aboriginal occupation of an area in the forested hinterland of the NSW far south coast can be identified. The project will look at five quite distinct areas in and around the Bega Valley. All five areas are environmentally different, notably with regard to water availability, geology and vegetation. The first two of these have a determining influence on the third, which itself affects the resources (animal and plant populations) within the area. Although at present the data has not been fully analysed, initial results show that there are indeed major differences in Aboriginal exploitation of the areas under discussion. Those that have the least resources appear to the least utilised, with major differences in both artefacts and site density between the four areas that have been looked at so far. This paper will present these initial findings.

This paper will address the study of ‘contact’ as it relates to rock art research in Australia. A case study from central Australia will present indigenous rock art produced during and after the first encounters between indigenous Australians and non-indigenous Australians/Europeans. In providing this illustration I aim to draw out some of the problems facing research into ‘contact’ rock art in general, as well as discuss the implications it has within the wider discipline of Australian archaeology.

There are many lines of argument used to explain why agriculture never made it to Australia during 60,000 years of prehistory. From social conservatism to environmental unsuitability, there are almost as many theories as there are commentators. Over more recent times we have gained an increasing awareness of the sophistication of the Aboriginal economies, and how the environment was altered in a subtle fashion to suit subsistence requirements. Because of this growing understanding together with other lines of evidence that have come to light, flaws have been found in virtually all the arguments put forward to explain why agriculture never eventuated in Australia.

The work I have conducted over the past two years as part of my Honours thesis adds yet another element to the debate about the ‘neolithic problem". A survey of food plants around Dharawal rockshelter sites in the Royal National Park, south of Sydney, has yielded some interesting results. There are more food plants growing around rockshelter sites along the banks of the Hacking estuary than in the surrounding vegetation. Further work has shown that this difference is a function of the large shell middens that are associated with these rockshelter sites. The decomposing shell creates a lime rich soil environment around the rockshelter, which in turn means a higher soil pH. Evidently this soil attracts more food plants than the naturally occurring soils in the area. This is an Australian version of the ‘rubbish heap hypothesis’, which is oft cited as an integral part of the process that led to agriculture in the Near East.

The parallels with the ‘rubbish heap hypothesis’ add yet another so called "prerequisite" for the development of agriculture in Australia. This is a problem for those that argue the Australian situation was somehow foreign or different from parts of the world which became agricultural. Added to the already growing body of evidence that Australia satisfied all the criteria for the development of agriculture, there is really only one conclusion we can reach. Agriculture never made it to Australia because Australia was never colonised by agricultural peoples.

RESIDUE AND USE-WEAR ANALYSIS OF GLASS ARTEFACTS FROM CENTRAL AUSTRALIA.

Since 1992 a team from the University of Sydney, led by Professor Judy Birmingham and Mr Andrew Wilson, have studied a variety of contact sites between Aborigines and Europeans in the Central Australian desert. These include missions, police camps, mining sites and telegraph stations, from the 1890s to the 1950s.

One of the more interesting artefacts they have recorded are pieces of glass that have been deliberately flaked. There is evidence to suggest that these glass pieces, or vitrics, were used as tools by the Aborigines.

There are a number of questions about the vitrics' use. Were they replacing some, or all, of the stone tool assemblage? Or were they products of experimentation by Aborigines living in a European world, but still very much a part of their traditional one?

As part of my Honours thesis I will attempt to answer these questions. I will be concentrating on use wear and residue analysis. All of these pieces have been collected from surface scatters and as such have been subjected to trampling, mainly by cattle, and weathering. Using several sites I will conduct a comparison between a bottle dump and a nearby vitric scatter, as well as using a range of reference material in order to identify and allow for these factors.

Compared to stone tools, little has been published on the use of glass. This is an opportunity to examine these tools based on other factors apart from size and shape. This project comprehensively crosses the boundary of that thing we call "contact", and perhaps in its own way it will answer, in part, some of the questions that lie in this area.

My research into sources of flakeable stone in the Sydney region has highlighted both positive and negative aspects of background information gleaned from geological maps, ethnohistory, ethnoarchaeology and helpful locals. Geological maps can be useful for initial "stabs in the dark", provided one takes scale into account and realises boundaries are very approximate and many outcrops have not been mapped at all! Reliable primary sources of ethnohistoric information are like nuggets of gold - valuable and just as rare. Ethnoarchaeology has often involved people who no longer procure stone or manufacture stone tools. Helpful locals can include residents and archaeologists involved in survey work - the calibre of their information is very variable but sometimes leads to exciting discoveries that might otherwise have been overlooked. My paper will include examples from my research and hopefully elicit discussion of other researchers' experiences and suggestions for overcoming problems.

Lithic analysis and ethnography support a model of composite tool manufacture at sites along the Onkaparinga Estuary, SA. This is shown through technological analysis of the two most common flaked raw materials: quartz and quartzite. Quartz, highly prevalent in the region’s ethnographic literature as the barb component of barbed spears and clubs, was reduced largely by bipolar and microblade techniques. Conversely, quartzite was reduced by free hand percussion.

Hammerstones, and important aspect of technological study, were mainly quartzite and rarely quartz. Fracturing features of the different rock types have influenced both reduction sequences and raw material selectivity for tool use at these sites.

Use-wear analysis on quartz microblades also supports their use as barbs. Quartz and quartzite flakes and ‘formal’ tools also subjected to use-wear study, confirm wood working activities at these sites: plausibly from spear-shaft shaving.

With grass-tress (Xanthorrhoea sp.) and block quartz in the river’s gorge section upstream, reeds in the estuary swamps, and quartz and quartzite cobbles in the river beds, all components for barbed implement production are available along the river’s direct course. As such, a picture of regional land use patterns are gauged from stone artefacts.

Quarries have largely been ignored by many archaeologists for several reasons. Often quarries are seen as forming a shattered, overlapping, shallow, non-diagnostic, unattractive, redundant and voluminous mass of data creating nothing but serious methodological problems (Ericson 1984:2). However, the quarry is the logical place to begin when studying the technological organisation of a stone-tool system. in Australia a limited amount of archaeological work has centred on quarries alone. Work has tended to be either descriptive or concentrated on manufacturing techniques, petrological source studies, ethnographic accounts, organisation of stone distribution and patterns of logistics and settlement (Fullagar 1994), with little attention given to the internal spatial structure of the quarries or problems with sampling techniques. In an attempt to gain pattern out of apparent chaos I will outline the methodology and madness of an approach to quarry analysis used in Sturt National Park, western NSW.

This paper investigates the lithic assemblage of the coastal dune site of Moana, 35 km south of Adelaide. Since European colonisation, large numbers of Aboriginal artefacts have been recovered from the area and stored at the South Australian Museum. As lithic scatters are still common at the site, and new material continues to erode out of the sand dunes, it was possible to compare and contrast the on site material with that housed in the museum collection. Samples from the museum (n=955) and on site (n=716) lithic assemblages were analysed in terms of identified collector, and the technological attributes of each artefact. The results show a collection bias towards artefacts manufactured from exotic materials (i.e. those not locally sourced), and against the collection of quartz artefacts. Stone implements showing clear signs of retouch and/or utilisation also appear to have been collected on a preferential basis. Collection of artefacts from this site has been subjective, and to a large degree determined by the collector's research interests rather than objective sampling. A discrepancy therefore exists between the museum collection and the actual occurrence of stone artefacts for this site. Sole reliance on either the on site or museum sample for Moana would provide misleading data and ultimately misleading archaeological research results.

The South Molle Island Quarry can be considered a relatively expansive site. This is so both in terms of quantity of flaked material (a conservative estimation puts this at over 8 million artefacts) and the time span over which it was utilised (ca 9,000 years). However, preliminary results of a recent technological analysis undertaken as part of a PhD research project, have caused a rethink of raw material availability. There is an argument that availability of raw material was in decline and this will be examined with regard to patterns of core selection and reduction on the South Molle Island Quarry. The implications of these patterns for later stage reduction on the quarry will also be explored.

Jamie Reeves

Heat retainer hearths, or ovens, are a common feature of the open site spatial record in the arid and semi-arid regions of western NSW. Generally they remain as the only structural feature of the record and occur in association with vast lithic scatters. A brief discussion of how natural agents, taphonomy and geomorphology influences the preservation of these features will be followed by the dating results and a variety of possible occupation scenarios couched with a landscape approach.

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