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<< News >> Settlers' history rewritten: go back 30,000 years

Submitted by coldrum on Thursday, 15 November 2007  Page Views: 2736

Multi-periodCountry: Australia Type: Ancient Village or Settlement

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A cache of charcoal, stone tools and artefacts unearthed to make way for a high-rise apartment block has been found to be 30,000 years old, more than doubling the accepted age of Aboriginal settlement in Sydney.

The discovery, to be presented to an archaeological conference opening at the University of Sydney next weekend, was the result of a dig originally set up to search for signs of convict era occupation.

It is the oldest evidence yet found of humans occupying what is now metropolitan Sydney. Aboriginal burial sites at Lake Mungo, in south-western NSW, have been dated at 40,000 years, The archaeologist who led the dig, Jo McDonald, said the previous oldest evidence of human habitation around Sydney had been found in the Blue Mountains (14,700 years), at Kurnell (12,500), and near the old Tempe House on the Cooks River (10,700).

"We have always thought that humans arrived much earlier in Sydney, having made their way down the coast from northern Australia and moving inland up major rivers like the Hawkesbury and Parramatta rivers. But most of that earlier occupation evidence was drowned on the coastal plain when the sea level rose to its current height around 7000 years ago."

After some old factories were demolished in 2002 to make way for Parramatta's Meriton apartment block, archaeologists began digging for convict-era relics.

When they started finding Aboriginal relics as well, Dr McDonald was called in to help. The sandy site, on the corner of George and Charles streets, may have once been part of a crescent-shaped beach on the Parramatta River. Possibly 800 metres long and 100 metres wide, the sand body was deposited by the river when the sea level was higher around 120,000 years ago.

The archaeologists dug in three spots - the future Meriton apartments, a construction site across George Street, and the site of an old RTA office down the road.

"We found lots and lots of stone artefacts, around 20,000 of them," said Dr McDonald. "There were lots of spear points, axes, and quite a few anvils and grinding stones."

The finds indicate the Aboriginal inhabitants used some of these tools to crush water plants to make starch-based meal. There were also stones Aborigines had placed in their beach camp fires to retain the heat of the flames.

Rounded cobbles and pebbles made of yellow volcanic stone, not natural to the Parramatta area, were typical of tools used more than 5000 years ago.

"Most likely they were carried in from the Hawkesbury and Grose Rivers," said Dr McDonald. "People carried around large pieces of the stone because they had good flaking properties, and they could rely on these when they were in unfamiliar territory."

If a new tool was needed, the Aborigines simply fashioned it on the spot from one of the stones.

But the most extraordinary discovery was charcoal, possibly from ancient campfires, found about a metre beneath the surface, and very close to some artefacts. Radiocarbon dating showed that the tiny fragments, with a total volume equalling "about 10 pinheads" were 30,735 years old, give or take 400 years. Four other charcoal samples, recovered from shallower depths, gave increasingly younger ages, with the uppermost dated at 3270 years, plus or minus 35 years.

The age pattern suggested Aborigines had been routinely camping on the site for at least 300 centuries. "It's proof of the perseverance of Aboriginal culture."

smh.com.au.

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Headless Skeletons Reveal Secrets of Ancient Islanders by coldrum on Thursday, 15 November 2007
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Headless Skeletons Reveal Secrets of Ancient Islanders

A bizarre, 3,000-year-old burial site is providing rare insights into the lives of an ancient island culture.

The site in the South Pacific country of Vanuatu includes a skull in a jar and 60 headless skeletons—one of them with three skulls arrayed across its rib cage.

In 2003 construction workers at Teouma, an archaeological site on Éfaté Island, unearthed 60 skeletons. Their skulls had been taken away by mourners some time after burial.

But a new isotope analysis of teeth left behind has given researchers new clues to the lifestyle and origins of the mysterious Lapita people, ancestors of today's Polynesians and Melanesians—roughly the peoples of the central and southeastern Pacific north and east of Australia.

Isotopes are elements that have different masses, and analyzing their signatures can reveal the makeup of chemical compounds.

"We've finally got a good sample of the population," said excavation leader Stuart Bedford of the National University of Australia at Canberra.

He said the tests proved that four individuals were not born in the immediate area. This supports evidence for a rapid Lapita expansion eastward from the island of New Guinea—which today is split into provinces of Indonesia and the independent nation of Papua New Guinea—around 3,000 years ago.

(See a map of Papua New Guinea.)

"They could have come from anywhere between [islands surrounding] New Guinea and Vanuatu," Bedford said.

"The difficulty is that we now need isotopic profiles from other regions for comparison."

The Lapita are thought to have arrived on the island of New Guinea from Southeast Asia.
They struck out across the central and southern Pacific shortly afterward, reaching the chain within 200 years.
Archaeological remains—mainly their distinctive pottery—trace the Lapita's migration and settlement as far east as Tonga and Fiji within a few generations. (Related news: "Pig DNA Study Suggests New Path of Pacific Human Migration" [March 20, 2007].)

Analysis of strontium and oxygen isotopes in the teeth also proved the Lapita were neither solely hunter-gatherers, as had been speculated, nor intensive farmers, Bedford said. Rather, they were a mix of the two.

"The isotope analyses are pretty much confirming a mixed diet," Bedford said. "We've got fish, pig, chicken, and cultivated plants like taro and banana."

The tests also returned evidence of a diet rich in wild-caught fish, flying foxes, and turtles.

Two contrasting theories exist about the Lapita, Bedford said.

"One is that they island-hopped, trashing local marine and indigenous fauna before moving on without too much gardening. The other (holds that) they came with a "transported landscape," complete with pigs, chickens, dogs.

"Until now, we haven't had the skeletal remains to do a decent isotopic analysis to give us that data, but the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle."

(Related news: "Rat DNA Offers Clues to Pacific Colonization, Study Says" [June 9, 2004].)

Bedford's Lapita archaeological investigation was supported in 2004 by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)

Skull Secrets

The team also found pottery burial jars, the oldest so far discovered in the region. The containers are similar to others found in Taiwan and in Southeast Asia. One contained a human skull.

It was common Pacific ceremonial practice to remove the skulls of the dead after decomposition and take them to a sacred place for storage.

But at Teouma, researchers found seven skulls left behind. Three were arranged on the chest of the skeleton of an elderly male, one of the four apparent visitors to the group.

"He may have been one of the senior members of the community," suggested Bedford, "or possibly one of the founding settlers of the colony."

In 2006 a similar grave was uncovered at Teouma, in which three skulls had been placed around the legs of another individual.

To Bedford's knowledge, the number three isn't specifically mystical.

Samples of the newfound ancient DNA have been sent away for analysis, but he said the overall poor state of preservation might conceal any possible familial links to the skulls found in 2006.

Professor Glenn Summerhayes, head of archaeology at Otago University in New Zealand, agreed the arrangement was a mystery.

"Mass burials are not unusual, but having heads of different people associated with the body? We haven't got a clue," Summerhayes said.

"The million-dollar question is: Who are these people? Are they the people who made the pottery? Or people they've killed, slaves they've brought in? We don't know."

Though Bedford's recent dietary analysis revealed two groups, "are we looking at two different populations, or a single population with different food taboos within it?" Summerhayes asked.

"We don't know what the answers are," he said, "but these results mean we can start asking the right questions."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/11/071102-headless-skeleton_2.html
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Cemetery reveals prehistoric practices by coldrum on Thursday, 15 November 2007
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Cemetery reveals prehistoric practices

Australian National University
Analysis of a 3000-year old burial site in Vanuatu has revealed strange funerary customs and other important evidence of the way of life of prehistoric Pacific islanders according to a report released 30 October 2007.

The sixty skeletons were found buried next to ornate ceramic pots, some in carefully laid out south-facing graves, and in one case three heads had been laid on the dead person’s chest.

The research team, including several Australians, has been working on the site since its discovery in 2003. Their findings will be published 30 October 2007 in the journal American Antiquity.

The scientists, from Durham, UK, Otago, NZ and the Australian National University, have analysed the strontium, carbon and oxygen isotope signatures of the teeth of many of the skeletons to get vital information about their geological origin, their diet and likely source of their drinking water.

Dr Stuart Bedford, from the Department of Archaeology and Natural History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, at ANU was involved in the research.

"This is the first time we’ve been able to profile this pioneering population, what they looked like, the state of their health, their diet and also we are able to get some idea of their mortuary practices which appears to be quite complicated and continuing on over a period of a year or more," said Dr Bedford.

The results from the team’s analysis strongly suggest that some of the skeletons had migrated from distant coastal locations, potentially as far away as Southeast Asia.


http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20070111-16526.html
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Dig uncovers ancient desert dwellers by coldrum on Thursday, 15 November 2007
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Dig uncovers ancient desert dwellers

University of New England
New archaeological evidence, published in October in the journal Australian Aboriginal Studies, reveals that Aboriginal people visited the Watarrka Plateau, south-west of Alice Springs, 13,000 years ago.

Archaeologists Dr June Ross from the University of New England and Dr Mike Smith from the National Museum of Australia were dropped by helicopter on the Watarrka Plateau as part of a survey of rock art in the Watarrka (Kings Canyon) National Park.

"The new finds were unexpected," said Dr Ross (who is pictured here at the Watarrka site). "We were carrying out a small excavation to establish the age of a rock art site, when we uncovered stone artefacts – small, multi-purpose tools – in an ancient buried sand plain."

Radiocarbon dating of charcoal in these sediments showed that Aboriginal people were using the area at the end of the last ice age.

"While the results from the excavation at Watarrka provide a small window into the past," Dr Ross explained, "we will have to uncover additional evidence before we can establish a clear picture of desert life over the past 13,000 years."

The excavation was part of an ongoing collaborative investigation – involving researchers at the University of New England, the National Museum of Australia, and the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Service – of patterns of past human occupation within Central Australia. Chris Day, Chief District Ranger for Watarrka National Park, said Northern Territory Parks had "an ongoing commitment to supporting scientific research". "Knowledge about past human use of the deserts assists both ourselves and the traditional owners to make informed management decisions," he explained.

This collaborative research builds on the ground-breaking discoveries of Dr Smith (who was the first student to graduate with a PhD in prehistoric archaeology from UNE's Department of Archaeology) showing that people were living in the Central Australian arid zone 35,000 years ago.

"The finds at Watarrka are sparse but important," Dr Smith said. "They confirm early use of the relatively well-watered country in the George Gill Range, midway between the better known ice-age sites of Kulpi Mara and Puritjarra."

Both Dr Ross and Dr Smith thanked Aboriginal custodians at Lila for their permission and support for this work.


http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20070211-16527-2.html
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Ice age Australians sheltered in caves by coldrum on Thursday, 15 November 2007
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Ice age Australians sheltered in caves

Ice age Aboriginal Australians protected themselves from bitterly cold winds by flocking to caves in one of the most inhospitable parts of the continent, says an archaeologist.

Ian Gilligan, a postgraduate researcher from the Australian National University, lays out his argument in the current issue of the journal Antiquity.

Gilligan says parts of the island state of Tasmania are buffeted by high-speed winds, including the southwest quarter.

"It's more exposed to the prevailing southwesterly, the coldest wind," says Gilligan. "It's higher up, it's colder, it's further south."

But Aboriginal people seem to have gone there during the last ice age to escape the worst of the cold.

"The only real evidence we have for Tasmanian Aboriginal people during the ice age is in that very coldest, windiest southwest corner and that's a paradox," he says.

Researchers have found ice age stone tools age in rock shelters and caves in the southwest, Gilligan says, but not in other parts of the island.

Until now, he says researchers have not explained why people once flocked to the exposed southwest because scientists have underplayed the importance of protection from the cold in determining where people live.

"In terms of human tolerance of cold, it's not the air temperature it's wind chill that's important," he says. "Half of that is air temperature, the other half is wind."

He argues the caves and steep valleys of the southwest provided important shelter from chilling winds.

"Whilst the temperature may be somewhat colder in that area, what the southwest offered to humans during the glacial maximum was protection from wind," he says.

A seasonal pattern?

Gilligan says it's early days for his theory that the cold drove humans to the southwest during the ice age, but the idea is also supported by evidence on hunting patterns.

He says Dr Richard Cosgrove of La Trobe University has found ice age remains of hunted wallaby in the area were more abundant in winter.

In other words, the colder the season, the more likely Aboriginal people were to live in the southwest.

While there is no actual evidence of ice age Aboriginal people living on the coast in the milder months during the ice age, they would have had abundant food in the form of fur seals and mutton birds, says Gilligan.

He says any evidence for ice age habitation of the coast is likely to have been destroyed by rising sea levels.

Gilligan says ice age Tasmanians living in the southwest would have sewn cloaks of wallaby skins to protect themselves from the cold when hunting in the open.

This is supported by the discovery of bone needles and tools that could be used to clean hides, he says.

Living in a cave

Gilligan also says there is evidence that Neanderthals and modern humans in places like Europe also used caves to escape the cold.

But he says, apart from seeking protection from cold, humans don't generally like living in caves.

"They're frightened of their dark recesses and prefer to live in the open," he says.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/2039661.htm
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Archaeological find rewrites Tasmania's history by coldrum on Thursday, 15 November 2007
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Archaeological find rewrites Tasmania's history

In the early 1980s, Australia was embroiled in a bitter environmental battle, centered on the Franklin River valley, an ancient rainforest wilderness that was due to be dammed in a massive hydro-electric scheme. The issue attracted worldwide attention, divided families and ultimately brought down the Federal government.

For a long time everyone thought that this remote area was uninhabitable and had never been inhabited by humans. When the Hydro-Electric commission justified the dam project it assumed that no archaeological remains were at risk. But then the discovery of a limestone cave revealed a hoard of human treasure.

Only now have the finds been analysed, by archaeologist Jillian Garvey, who has sifted through quarter of a million animal fragments and 75,000 tool fragments from the cave, and found that far from the area having never been occupied, there were people living here 15-20,000 years ago.

There's a lot more to discover in what is now thought to be one of Australia's richest archaeological sites. These findings could not have occurred if the area had been flooded by the Hydro Electric project. Awarded World Heritage Area status in 1982, which secured its survival, this incredible primeval wilderness is now protected and is home to Tasmanian devils, quolls, orange-bellied parrots, groves of Jurassic pencil pines and ancient dolertie crags. Used as a backdrop in the Walking with Dinosaurs documentaries, it continues to amaze the world and slowly reveal its many secrets.
http://www.homesworldwide.co.uk/global/australia/news/articles/archaeological_find_rewrites_tasmanias_history?news_id=0046902
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