Allen & Unwin
ISBN
1 86448 066 1
$39.95pb 364pp

Archaeology of Aboriginal Australia
Tim Murray
'Introductory pieces before the various sections give an idea of the historical contexts that produced the included papers, and represent original and informative contributions from a range of specialists. They help in establishing the clearly-needed link between the business of making discoveries and the need to think about what discoveries mean....The book will be invaluable for teaching purposes, bringing together major protagonists in some of the most important debates among archaeologists of Aboriginal Australia' Professor Matthew Spriggs, ANU

This collection of essays and papers provides a detailed introduction to the archaeology of the Australian continent. The new essays present the current 'state of the art' for each section and are written by leading scholars in each sub-field of the discipline.
features...
• the antiquity of human settlement in Australia
• patterns of colonisation
• the significance of change in Aboriginal society in the late prehistoric period
• the usefulness of reconstructions of past ecological systems in understanding the histories of Aboriginal societies
• the value of rock art and stone tool technology in understanding the human history of Australia
• the archaeology of Aboriginal-European contact

Contents
1 The Changing Contexts of the archaeology of Aboriginal Australia -Tim Murray
PART I: General Surveys
2 Antiquity -Jim Allen
2a Radiocarbon determinations, luminescence dating and Australian archaeology –Jim Allen
2b Beyond the radiocarbon barrier in Australian prehistory -Richard Robert, Rhys Jones & M.A. Smith
2c The contamination of Pleistocene radiocarbon determinations in Australia -Jim Allen & Simon Holdaway
3 The pattern of continental occupation: late Pleistocene colonisation of Australia and New Guinea- M A Smith
3a When did humans first colonise Australia? –Jim Allen
3b New evidence from Fraser Cave for glacial age man in southwest Tasmania –Kevin Kiernan, Rhys Jones & Don Ranson
3c Pleistocene dates for the human occupation of New Ireland, northern Melanesia –Jim Allen, Chris Gosden, Rhys Jones & J. Peter White
3d Pleistocene occupation in arid Central Australia –MA Smith
4 The Archaeology of Sahul- Tim Murray
4a Notions of the Pleistocene in Greater Australia –Jim Allen
4b The fifth continent: problems concerning the human colonisation of Australia –Rhys Jones
4c Biogeography, human ecology and prehistory in the sandridge deserts –MA Smith
5 Late Holocene Australia and the Writing of Aboriginal History- Christine Williamson
5a Holocene environments and prehistoric site patterning in the Victorian Mallee –A. Ross
5b Perspectives on 'trends toward social complexity in prehistoric Australia and Papua New Guinea' –Norma Yoffee
5c The cemetery as symbol: the distribution of prehistoric Aboriginal burial grounds in southeastern Australia –Colin Pardoe
5d The childhood of William Lanne: contact archaeology and Aboriginality in Tasmania – Tim Murry
PART II: Special Studies
6 Change and Variation in Human Ecology -Simon Holdaway
6a Palaeoecology and Pleistocene human occupation in south central Tasmania –Richard Cosgrove, Jim Allen & Brendan Marshall
7 Revitalising Artefact Analysis -Peter Hiscock
7a Stone tool functions in the Western Desert –Brian Hayden
8 The Archaeology of Rock-art in Australia -Christopher Chippindale
8a Of lightning brothers and white cockatoos: dating the antiquity of signifying systems in the Northern Territory, Australia –Bruno David, Ian Mcniven, Val Attenbrow, Josephine Flood and Jackie Collins
9 A Reader's Guide -Tim Murray