Archaeology Of Australia
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Archaeology Of Australia
Australian archaeology is a large sub-field in the discipline of archaeology. Archaeology in Australia takes four main forms: Aboriginal archaeology (the archaeology of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia before and after European settlement), historical archaeology (the archaeology of Australia after European settlement), maritime archaeology, and the archaeology of the contemporary past (after World War II). Bridging these sub-disciplines is the important concept of cultural heritage management, which encompasses Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sites, historical sites, and maritime sites. Research and investigations Archaeological studies or investigations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and culture in Australia have had many different agendas through time. Initial archaeological investigation was often focused on finding the oldest sites. By the 1970s, archaeological research was also concerned with the environment and the ...
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Archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, archaeological site, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. It is usually considered an independent academic discipline, but may also be classified as part of anthropology (in North America – the four-field approach), history or geography. The discipline involves Survey (archaeology), surveying, Archaeological excavation, excavation, and eventually Post excavation, analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. A ...
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Wallace Line
The Wallace Line or Wallace's Line is a faunal boundary line drawn in 1859 by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and named by the English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley. It separates the biogeographic realms of Asia and 'Wallacea', a transitional zone between Asia and Australia (continent), Australia formerly also called the Malay Archipelago and the Indo-Australian Archipelago (Present day Indonesia). To the west of the line are found organisms related to Asiatic species; to the east, a mixture of species of Asian and Australian origins is present. Wallace noticed this clear division in both land mammals and birds during his travels through the East Indies in the 19th century. The line runs through Indonesia, such as Makassar Strait between Borneo and Sulawesi (Celebes), and through the Lombok Strait between Bali and Lombok, where the distance is strikingly small, only about 35 kilometers (22 mi), but enough for a contrast in species present on each isl ...
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Tim Flannery
Timothy Fridtjof Flannery (born 28 January 1956) is an Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist, conservationist, explorer, author, science communicator Science communication encompasses a wide range of activities that connect science and society. Common goals of science communication include informing non-experts about scientific findings, raising the public awareness of and interest in sci ..., activist, and public scientist. He is especially known for his 1994 book ''The Future Eaters'', on the natural history of Australasia, which was adapted for television in 2006, and his 2006 book ''The Weather Makers'', about the effects of climate change in Australia. As a researcher, Flannery had roles at several universities and museums in Australia, specialising in fossil marsupials and Evolution of mammals, mammal evolution. He made notable contributions to the palaeontology of Australia and New Guinea during the 1980s, including reviewing the evolution a ...
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Kow Swamp Archaeological Site
Cast of Kow Swamp 1 The Kow Swamp archaeological site comprises a series of late Pleistocene burials within the lunette of the eastern rim of a former lake known as Kow Swamp (north-central Victoria, Australia). The site is south-east of Cohuna in the central Murray River valley, in northern Victoria, at . The site is significant for archaeological excavations by Alan Thorne between 1968 and 1972 which recovered the partial skeletal remains of more than 22 individuals. Locality The name of Kow Swamp is derived from ''ghow'', a Yorta Yorta words which refers to the white gypsum soil found in the area. Kow Swamp is now a permanent water body, due to its use for irrigation storage, in circumference, with an average depth of . Originally a low lying swamp, it was filled when the Murray River is in flood or running at high levels, while Bendigo creek provides a smaller amount of water. Discovery There is evidence of recent Aboriginal occupation of the area from canoe trees and ...
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Western Australia
Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Australia is Australia's largest state, with a land area of , and is also the List of country subdivisions by area, second-largest subdivision of any country on Earth. Western Australia has a diverse range of climates, including tropical conditions in the Kimberley (Western Australia), Kimberley, deserts in the interior (including the Great Sandy Desert, Little Sandy Desert, Gibson Desert, and Great Victoria Desert) and a Mediterranean climate on the south-west and southern coastal areas. the state has 2.965 million inhabitants—10.9 percent of the national total. Over 90 percent of the state's population live in the South-West Land Division, south-west corner and around 80 percent live in the state capital Perth, leaving the remainder ...
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Thermoluminescence Dating
Thermoluminescence dating (TL) is the determination, by means of measuring the accumulated radiation dose, of the time elapsed since material containing crystalline minerals was either heated (lava, ceramics) or exposed to sunlight (sediments). As a crystalline material is heated during measurements, the process of thermoluminescence starts. Thermoluminescence emits a weak light signal that is proportional to the radiation dose absorbed by the material. It is a type of luminescence dating. The technique has wide application, and is relatively cheap at some US$300–700 per object; ideally a number of samples are tested. Sediments are more expensive to date.Thermoluminescence (TL) dating
, University of Wollongong, Australia

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Rhys Jones (archaeologist)
Rhys Maengwyn Jones (26 February 1941 – 19 September 2001) was a Welsh-Australian archeologist. Biography Jones was born in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales and educated at Whitchurch Grammar School, Cardiff. He was an undergraduate at Emmanuel College, Cambridge where Graham Clarke, Eric Higgs and Charles McBurney were his instructors in archaeology. He spoke Welsh fluently. He arrived in Australia in 1963 to take up a teaching position at the University of Sydney, where he later completed his PhD on Tasmanian Aboriginal archaeology. In 1969 he moved on to the Australian National University where he spent the rest of his career. He was an Honorary Professor of the University of Wales, Newport, and a Fellow of the University of Wales, Lampeter. For one year, he was Australian Visiting Professor at Harvard University. He was married to fellow archaeologist Betty Meehan, with whom he travelled to Arnhem Land in the 1970s to live alongside and observe the Anbarra people. ...
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Landbridge
In biogeography, a land bridge is an isthmus or wider land connection between otherwise separate areas, over which animals and plants are able to cross and colonize new lands. A land bridge can be created by marine regression, in which sea levels fall, exposing shallow, previously submerged sections of continental shelf; or when new land is created by plate tectonics; or occasionally when the sea floor rises due to post-glacial rebound after an ice age. Prominent examples Former land bridges * The Bassian Plain, which linked Australia to Tasmania * The Antarctic Land Bridge, which connected South America, Antarctica, and Australia during the Late Cretaceous and Early Paleogene * The Bering Land Bridge (aka Beringia), which intermittently connected Alaska (Northern America) with Siberia (North Asia) as sea levels rose and fell under the effect of ice ages * GAARlandia, a hypothesized land bridge which potentially connected the Greater Antilles with South America during ...
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Warratyi
Warratyi is the site of a rock shelter in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Located around north of Adelaide and about inland, it has been identified as the oldest known site of human habitation in inland Australia. Newspapers reported that this rock shelter was discovered by chance in 2011 by a local resident who stumbled upon it while looking for somewhere to go to the toilet. Researchers found thousands of artefacts and bone fragments, which enabled them to date the shelter's occupation to a number of periods between 49,000 and 10,000 years ago. The finds include the earliest evidence in Australia of the development of bone and stone-axe technology, the use of ochre, and interaction with megafauna such as '' Diprotodon''. Discovery The site is located in the ancestral lands of the Adnyamathanha, an Indigenous Australian people. It lies in a gorge at the southern end of the Lake Eyre basin in the northern Flinders Ranges. Its discovery came about by chance during an ...
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Lake Mungo
Lake Mungo is a dry lake located in New South Wales, Australia. It is about 760 km (472 miles) due west of Sydney and 90 km (56 miles) north-east of Mildura. The lake is the central feature of Mungo National Park, and is one of seventeen lakes in the World Heritage listed Willandra Lakes Region. Many important archaeological findings have been made at the lake, most significantly the discovery of the remains of Mungo Man (the oldest human remains found in Australia), Mungo Woman (the oldest human remains in the world to be ritually cremated), and the location of the ''Lake Mungo geomagnetic excursion,'' the first convincing evidence that geomagnetic excursions are a geomagnetic phenomenon rather than sedimentological. History The area that in 1979 was declared a National Park is the traditional land of the Barkindji, Nyiampaar and Mutthi Mutthi. These original inhabitants were driven off by European squatters for their sheep farming in the 1840s, a remnant of wh ...
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