Archaeological experimental studies have been conducted on taphonomic and artefact disturbances worldwide. Studies conducted have addressed various disturbance factors such as wind, water, animal activity, and human impact independently of one another. Generally, these studies were on a small scale with regard to the geographic range and environmental contexts covered. Additionally, no mitigation or site extent analyses have been conducted that would facilitate the management of moving and missing artefacts. The experiment was spread out over five locations in the New England Tablelands in NSW. These locations were at Barley Fields, Uralla, Kirby Farm and the University of New England Deer Park Armidale, Big Llangothlin, Llangothlin and Laura Creek west of Guyra. All locations experienced varying degrees of disturbance due to livestock, kangaroos, deer, rabbits, different slope gradient, soil, vegetation and human activity. Movement, breakage, and disappearance were common artefact disturbances in the New England Tablelands within a short six month period. Artefacts that were nor moved or moved up to seven metres experienced some breakage in less than a month, some artefacts had disappeared and some of these reappeared because of animal or human activity and environmental changes. One focus of the study was to investigate the effects of slopes on artefact movements over time. The degree of slope gradient was found not to be as significant to artefact movement as previously thought; rather, movement was due mostly to other post-depositional processes, which are discussed in this thesis. Archaeologists need to consider the potential post-depositional disturbances when determining the extremities of a stone artefact scatter. From a cultural resource management perspective it is more likely that sites recorded without these considerations may be more difficult to locate when the site is revisited for construction.

The major focus of this work has been the patterning of Australian Aboriginal beads and their functions. This work started as an investigation into the relationship between Aboriginal material culture and drainage basins and led to the role of beads in determining past human behaviours. The symbolic content of beads has been recognised and their appearance in early archaeological sites has long been accepted as identifiers of modern human behaviour. The patterning of style in beads and other material culture from hunter-gatherer societies has been investigated by authors for interpreting the archaeological record. At the time of European colonisation from the late 1700s, Aborigines were living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle with hundreds of language groups and diverse ways of living. Australia has shell beads that have been dated to over 30,000 years old and there is ethnographic material held in museums from the late 1800s to the early 1900s that shows what Aboriginal people were manufacturing during those early years. Added to that is literature that gives accounts for the use of material culture. A combination of those lines of evidence could have implications for understanding the archaeological record. For this project, I have synthesised the beaded ornaments held in Australian museums and set up a classification system that has allowed me to determine spatial patterning of beads and to investigate current theories for explaining patterning. I determined that there was clear patterning in discrete categories, no two categories had the same distribution and there were categories that were highly standardised for local use and exchange. This study has shown that the relationship between archaeological and ethnographic evidence for beads is more complex than those given by current explanations.

Associated Rock Art Traditions are surface modifications usually found in association with rock art. They are the product of repeated mechanical actions and usually lack the figurative elements of stylistic rock art traditions. While pecked cupules, fingerfluting, abraded areas, and abaded grooves are well documented both in the archaeological and ethnographic record, flaked edges have received limited recognition as an Associated Rock Art Tradition. This thesis will examine bedrock flaking as another example of an Associated Rock Art Tradition. Research was conducted in the northwest Kimberley where linear panels of bedrock flaking are abundant in association with rock art. Seventy eight sites were recorded across six (6) research areas, containing 1719 bedrock flaking panels from which 10,178 flake scars were recorded. Sites were classified as Quarry sites - abundant flaking debris; Ritual sites - limited flaking debris and rock art; and Other - limited flaking debris and no rock art. The analysis of variables from panels and flake scar measurements showed that Quarry sites were significantly different to Ritual and Other sites, containing a high quantity of larger flake scars. Ritual and Other sites were much harder to differentiate, containing flakes of similar dimensions but of varying stone quality and scar quantity. Other sites contained limited bedrock flaking panels and were interpreted as prospecting sites, where stone was assayed. Ritual sites had high numbers of bedrock flaking panels, but with much smaller flake scars than found at Quarry sites and very limited flaking debris. It is proposed here that bedrock flaking at Ritual sites represent an Associated Rock Art Tradition rather than an economic activity. The mechanical similarities between pounding and bedrock flaking may have led to these being viewed as closely related ritualised behaviours along with rubbing, hammering and incising which have been recorded ethnographically and archaeologically as Associated Rock Art Traditions.

The 'Movius Line' is the putative technological demarcation line mapping the easternmost geographical distribution of Acheulean bifacial tools. It is traditionally argued by proponents of the Movius Line that 'true' Acheulean bi faces, especially hand axes, are only found in abundance in Africa and western Eurasia, whereas in eastern Asia, in front of the 'line', these implements are rare or absent altogether. Here we argue, however, that the Movius Line relies on classifying undated surface bi faces as Acheulean on typological grounds alone, a long-standing and widely accepted practice in Africa and western Eurasia, but one that is not seen as legitimate in eastern Asian contexts. A review of the literature shows that bifaces are relatively common as surface finds in Southeast Asia and on this basis we argue that the Movius Line is in need of reassessment.

The combination of bifacial percussion and pressure flaking to make stone tools was repeatedly invented in prehistory. Bifacial percussion and pressure technology is well documented in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, but a separate and poorly understood center of innovation occurred in the Kimberley Region of Northwest Australia. Stone points first appeared there ca 4.5 kya and bifacial Kimberley Points emerged by ca 1.4 kya. Aboriginal flintknappers made Kimberley Points using traditional methods until the recent past. This study analyzes stone artifacts from 335 sites in the remote Northwest Kimberley and documents a sophisticated bifacial technology that involved seven "tactical sets" - four of them exclusive to manufacturing these points - applied in five strategic phases. It is proposed that bifacial thinning ultimately arose in response to social forces operating across Kimberley Aboriginal societies in response to demographic pressures from neighboring Aboriginal groups. The repeated invention of bifacial flaking in prehistory may be related to the messaging made possible by the manufacturing approach itself - both in virtuoso technical performance and the flexible way bifacial performances could be distributed across the natural and social landscape.

The age of much Aboriginal rock art in northwest Australia is unknown. Concentrating on headdress depictions and some specific motifs in these paintings, an experiment has been undertaken to establish the feasibility of using perceived similarities and differences in their styles to compare the relative ages of art in two major locations. The order of established chronological sequences for the paintings in the core study area, Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory has been used to establish comparative order matches with the Kimberley rock art sequences. The sequences seen in the Aboriginal rock art defined in previous research by well established authors in this topic do not appear to have been matched with the art in the two major locations, specifically using headdress depictions. In my thesis Grahame Walsh's sequence for the Kimberley has been compared with that of George Chaloupka's order for Arnhem Land (Chaloupka, 1993:47; Walsh, 2000). I felt that comparing the changes in headdress depiction over time would allow a method of wider investigation to be undertaken. It was therefore worthwhile to try a new way of comparison over a wider range of art styles than previously attempted. Using depictions of headdresses, as well as portrayals of the specific custom of circumcision, I analysed published reproductions of paintings and personal photographs from Arnhem Land (n=777) and the Kimberley (n=1066), using a database to record each headdress type and region, and then compare numbers of each type, according to the study area. Headdress types were defined by obvious shape. Observing the frequency of the most common Arnhem Land and Kimberley headdresses, I saw that in Arnhem Land, Vertical and Inclined Cones, Swept-Back hair styles and Round heads dominated with frequencies between 15% and 11%. In the Kimberley, Vertical, Inclined and Hanging cones on headdresses lead the counts (between 16% and 10%), along with Bun head shapes (10%) and Round Heads (17%). The resemblance between these particular headdress designs was notable in the Early, Intermediate and Late sequences for both Arnhem Land (AL) and the Kimberley (K). As well, a likeness in circumcision representation was noticed in both the core (AL) and the comparative study area (K), particularly relating to the more recent paintings. This suggested possible parallels in Early and Late sequences. Smaller counts of many different headdress types were also seen during the recording. Observations of paintings with approximately 5-7 headdress types seen only in either Arnhem Land or the Kimberley showed that diversity and local preferences also existed. I found that a visual and quantitative relationship was seen to exist between popular and wide-spread depictions of similar headdress motifs and circumcision motifs which may indicate communication of ideas between the people of Arnhem Land and the Kimberley regions and suggest a comparable time of painting.

A vague notion of 'wanderlust' seems to be the driving force in many narratives about hominin migration (e.g. Dennell and Roebroeks 2005), but, true to the zeitgeist, O'Connell and Allen have shown us that wanderlust is all about food. The strength of behavioural ecology is the explicit nature of the underlying assumptions and the clear connection between forager theory, predictive statements and archaeological evidence. Summarising several optimal foraging models, O'Connell and Allen conclude that optimising hominins are pulled from patch to patch by the serial depletion of highest ranked resources. The logic of their scenario is straightforward: the archaeological record shows that humans colonised Wallacea and Sahul, and the theoretical model stipulates that forager movement is linked to exploitation of highest ranked prey, therefore colonisation was driven by the pursuit of highest ranked prey. One might question whether certain assumptions of optimal foraging models - for example, that foragers have perfect resource knowledge and the perfect ability to exploit it - would apply to the first wave of colonists to cross the Wallace Line, but the successful colonisation itself might be de facto evidence that the costs of imperfect knowledge were not prohibitively high. O'Connell and Allen posit that, after colonisation, movement between patches in pursuit of highest ranked prey became the norm as foragers made nearly-continuous readjustment to unstable climatic conditions.

One of the largest concentrations of rock paintings in Australia is found in the rugged Kimberley region in the northwest of the continent. A temporal sequence of visually distinctive figurative styles is presumed to span periods of cultural change and major climatic events. As the nature and course of these changes are poorly understood, this paper investigates the relationships between continuity and change in the stylistic attributes of the selected anthropomorphic figures in the rock art assemblage. Some previous Kimberley rock art researchers have argued for an abrupt discontinuity in the art assemblage between the Wararrajai Gwion (the most recent of the Gwion styles) and Painted Hand Periods (formally Clothes Peg Figure and Clawed Hand Periods respectively), while others have argued for more gradual change. Based on the study of 204 rock art sites from 15 site complexes, which included a total of 7,579 motifs and 3,685 identifiable anthropomorphic figures, we identify the core characteristics of anthropomorphic figures in each of the established stylistic periods and show that there is no evidence to support notions of an abrupt discontinuity of art through time. Rather, attribute preferences changed gradually, existing as clades of variation rather than discrete units, with identifiable threads of continuity and periods when certain attributes (core characteristics) are preferentially adopted. A quantitative analysis supports our interpretation.

Invasive predators can impose strong selection pressure on species that evolved in their absence and drive species to extinction. Interactions between coexisting predators may be particularly strong, as larger predators frequently kill smaller predators and suppress their abundances. Until 3500 years ago the marsupial thylacine was Australia's largest predator. It became extinct from the mainland soon after the arrival of a morphologically convergent placental predator, the dingo, but persisted in the absence of dingoes on the island of Tasmania until the 20th century. As Tasmanian thylacines were larger than dingoes, it has been argued that dingoes were unlikely to have caused the extinction of mainland thylacines because larger predators are rarely killed by smaller predators. By comparing Holocene specimens from the same regions of mainland Australia, we show that dingoes were similarly sized to male thylacines but considerably larger than female thylacines. Female thylacines would have been vulnerable to killing by dingoes. Such killing could have depressed the reproductive output of thylacine populations. Our results support the hypothesis that direct killing by larger dingoes drove thylacines to extinction on mainland Australia. However, attributing the extinction of the thylacine to just one cause is problematic because the arrival of dingoes coincided with another the potential extinction driver, the intensification of the human economy.

In arid Australia the importance of grass and acacia seeds as grain led to a substantial demand by Aboriginal groups for replacement grinding slabs. This demand was met in some areas by large grindstone quarries that supplied millstones for local needs, as well as long-distance exchange networks (McBryde 1987, 1997:594; Mulvaney 1976; our terminology follows the grindstone typology set out in Smith 1985, 1986). These grindstone quarries are typically located where there are suitable sandstone outcrops on the edge of large tracts of sand plain, dune field or stony 'gibber' desert - areas where sandstone slabs are otherwise scarce. The best known examples are the quarries at Helen Springs ('Kurutiti') in the Northern Territory (Mulvaney and Gunn 1995) and others in South Australia, including Anna Creek ('Palthirri-pirdi'), west of Lake Eyre South ('Hercus 2005'); Tooths Nob ('Wadla wadlyu'), north of Reaphook Hill in the Flinders Ranges (McBryde 1997); Charlie Swamp ('Biljamana/Pidleeomina'), south of Finniss Springs Station (McBryde 1982); and the quarry complexes north and south of Cooper Creek at Innamincka (including Wild Dog Hill and McLeod's Hill) (Hiscock and Mitchell 1993; McBryde 1987, 1997). Despite their importance for desert prehistory, there are few published plans of this type of site, and little quantitative data on the scale of grindstone production (although see McBryde 1997 and Mulvaney and Gunn 1995 for exceptions). Here, we describe Narcoonowie, a small, discrete, grindstone quarry in the Strzelecki Desert in north-eastern South Australia (Figure 1). PJ Hughes briefly recorded the quarry in 1980, during an impact assessment survey of archaeological sites in the Cooper Basin (Hughes 1980, 1983). We recently relocated it on aerial photographs.

A new find of an engraved 'archaic face' in the Toomba Range, on the northeastern edge of the Simpson Desert, provides additional evidence for the production of these distinctive motifs on the eastern side of the arid zone (Figure 1). This supplements an earlier report of an engraved archaic face at Carbine Creek, 100km to the northeast of the Toomba Range (Morwood 1978, 1985). Together, these two engravings with characteristic bas-relief facial features extend the known distribution of archaic faces and suggest that sometime in the past people shared aspects of a common visual vocabulary across the entire breadth of the arid zone, north of the Tropic of Capricorn.

Early historical accounts of inter-group social networks operating between Aboriginal groups in South East Queensland and northern New South Wales, document large gatherings at which elaborate ceremonies and exchange took place. Interpretations of archaeological evidence at sites, which researchers have associated with these ceremonial gatherings, have fuelled arguments that they provided the impetus for increased social complexity during the late Holocene, as evidenced by shifts in land use patterns as well as subsistence and cultural practices. Within these highly complex economic and social alliances, described by early European settlers up until the early 20th century, ground-edged stone hatchets were reported to be one of the most prized items of exchange. This study used non-destructive, portable XRay fluorescence to elementally characterise a sample of basalt ground-edged hatchets from Southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales, as well as a potential range of basalt sources, to assess the complexity of exchange represented. In addition to museum collections, this provenancing study used a community archaeology approach to access additional ground-edged hatchets, curated by rural landholders in South East Queensland. The aim of this research project was to assess two independent but related issues. The first was a critical review of interpretations of the archaeological evidence in South East Queensland from the late Holocene that characterise hunter-gatherers societies in that region as being socially complex. In this review, I found the concept of social complexity, when used in the context of pre-contact Aboriginal communities, to be highly problematic. Not only has the definition of social complexity been vague but interpretations of the evidence to support those arguments ambiguous. Perhaps the most significant omission has been adequate interrogation of the archaeological record to understand the triggers for such an apparent significant social change in pre-contact Australia. The second was a methodological evaluation of the potential of non-destructive geochemical characterisation (portable X-ray fluorescence - pXRF) for investigating the possible geological range represented by this corpus. This pXRF study was unable to match hatchets with geographically specific source locations, due primarily to widespread basalt formations throughout the region and, as a consequence, redundancy in characterisation of sources. So while it was not possible to examine the level of social complexity of inter-group activity, the results do lend weight to arguments of extensive exchange. The community archaeology aspect of this project involved people from non-Indigenous backgrounds but who had collected Aboriginal artefacts from their rural properties. What emerged was a window onto a previously untapped source of information; access to artefacts which had not recorded and first-hand accounts of where they had been found.

Differing patterns of distribution from source of local and exotic artefacts have been used to set up and modify theories and models of hunter-gatherer social/political networks. Stone hatchets are useful for testing these theories because they do not decay in time. In this research pXRF technology was used to compare 242 hatchets found in south-east South Australia with known local basalt sources, and with distant sources from Central Victoria and Mount Isa. Chemical analysis determined that the great majority of hatchets came from unknown sources of similar, distinctive, stone which, unlike the local basalts, were very low in most elements from Rb to Nb in the periodic table. This majority was similar, but not a match, to stone from Mt William in central Victoria. From their distribution and frequency, this majority of hatchets was probably used as tools, but because they were found across three language areas, I conclude that they were also desirable exchange items. There was no apparent separation of useful and exchange hatchets, a difference from hunter-gatherer models which may have been a result of limited local stone sources. My research also determined that three hatchets found in SESA originated in Mount Isa, extending the distance that Mount Isa hatchets are known to have moved from Lake Eyre/Flinders Ranges to south-east South Australia. One of these was distinctively shaped, matching a type of hatchet known to have originated in Mount Isa. Another three hatchets were determined to have originated near Mt Macedon in central Victoria. These six exotic hatchets were distributed evenly across the three language areas, showing no area with a concentration of power of acquisition. I concluded that the distribution of SESA hatchets from source indicates a strong network between the three language groups, Ngarrindjeri, Bindjali and Buandig prior to European settlement, a network which was highly interactive, evenly spread across Buandig land and the southern areas of their neighbours, and with no evidence of dominance by one group in any language area.

This paper questions our understanding of the movement of bones by animal scavengers in the archaeological record. Since assumptions regarding the effects of animal scavenging shape final interpretations of skeletal element frequencies in archaeological faunal assemblages, they are important for our understanding and reconstruction of ancient human behaviour. The results of a 4-year actualistic kangaroo scavenging study from Australia are used to question our understanding of the movement of the bone by contrasting visual data captured by motion-activated digital game cameras with traditional taphonomic studies using skeletal element frequencies. Game cameras are commonly used by ecologists to capture the behaviour of living species but have not yet been used in experimental archaeology where visually documenting animal scavenging behaviour can be used to understand the movement of carcasses and individual bones. Results suggest that traditional zooarchaeological analyses may not be accurate indicators of hunted versus scavenged prey in archaeological faunal assemblages. Moreover, they most certainly fail to document the entire suite of animals scavenging a carcass. These implications are discussed with particular reference to the ability to definitively ascertain the role of humans in the megafaunal extinction debate in Australia.

Oral traditions, especially contrasted with written history, are typically portrayed as inaccurate. Commenting on native title claims in the US, Simic (2000) made the specific claim: "As a general rule, unwritten legends that refer to events more than 1,000 years in the past contain little, if any, historical truth". So can preliterate Indigenous languages tell us anything factual about the distant past, or does the transmission of historical facts become inevitably corrupted? Changes in sea levels around the Australian coast are now well established. Marine geographers can now point to specific parts of the Australian coast and know with some confidence what the sea levels were at a particular time before the present. This paper reports on a substantial body of Australian Aboriginal stories that appear to represent genuine and unique observations of post-glacial increases in sea level, at time depths that range from about 13,400-7,500 years BP. This paper makes the case that endangered Indigenous languages can be repositories for factual knowledge across time depths far greater than previously imagined, forcing a rethink of the ways in which such traditions have been dismissed.

Ground-edged artifacts were an important part of the Australian Aboriginal toolkit. They had practical day-to-day uses, but some had symbolic and social values that led to their movement across great distances. Australian provenance studies document long-distance Aboriginal exchange systems extending over hundreds of kilometers. The size and complexity of exchange systems and social networks were contingent upon resources and the productivity of a region's environment. Along the fertile, well-watered lands east of the Great Dividing Range, movement of objects may have been geographically more circumscribed than in drier areas to the west. One hundred and twenty-one mafic, ground-edged artifacts from the New South Wales (NSW) Central Coast and 368 geological specimens from potential sources were non-destructively analyzed by portable X-Ray fluorescence spectrometry. Results indicate the existence of a well-used basalt source within the region at Peats Ridge-Popran Creek as well as multiple local and non-local sources up to 430 km from Mangrove Mountain on the NSW Central Coast.

Archaeological use of non-destructive pXRF has been most systematically applied to the classification and provenancing of volcanic glass (obsidian) artefacts. Comparable work has yet to be developed for non-vitreous artefacts. We report results of pXRF analysis for a sample of grey to black (mafic) aboriginal hatchets from Sydney and adjacent coastal regions to the north and south. The study shows both broad and detailed classification is achievable depending on rock type and degree of elemental depletion or enrichment of the samples. PXRF analysis reveals not only distinct patterns of resource use between the three regions of this study but also enables a high degree of geographic resolution in the case of the basalt artefacts of our sample. We conclude that non-destructive pXRF is effective for reliable characterisation of non-vitreous stone artefacts that have a sufficiently complex and enriched compositional signature (i.e., unaltered basalts); with ~50% of the basalt hatchets in our sample matched with spatially and geologically specific sources.

The production of rock art by Indigenous Australians continued throughout recent centuries, often documenting the arrival of Asians and Europeans in various parts of Australia, but this very recent rock art has until now not been explored in detail from a continent-wide perspective. In this chapter, we outline the nature of this imagery, the issues associated with identifying contact period rock art, and the results of case studies in Wollemi National Park, near Sydney (New South Wales), the Pilbara region, near Roebourne (Western Australia), the deserts and ranges of Central Australia, and Western Arnhem Land (Northern Territory).

The earliest accounts of Central Australian rock art were recorded in the journals of the explorer Ernest Giles, who set out in 1872 to explore the unknown interior of Australia. Mounted on horses, he and his two companions followed the dry sand bed of the Finke River into the rugged and relatively well watered central ranges. before turning south-west across the mulga-covered plains which run west to the sand dune country where surface water is found only after rains. Several months into the trip, after days without water, the party's progress was impeded by a vast salt lake whose surface proved treacherously boggy. forcing the riders to turn hack to what Giles quaintly recorded as 'a little pass and glen where we knew that water was to be got' (1995:49). The water, described as 'thick and dirty with a nauseous flavour', was found by digging a deep trench into the sand (Giles 199):50). Subsurface water seeped slowly into the bottom of the trench leaving lime for the men to explore their surroundings as they waited to water their horses.

The Dreaming, the Tjukurpa of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara people has many visual manifestations. Distinctive topographic features and a multitude of remarkable natural patterns and marks in the landscape speak of the adventures and actions of Ancestral Creators. Rock paintings and engravings, and other modified forms such as stone arrangements affirm the Tjukurpa and define the symbolic landscape. Rock art motifs and other meaningful marks are known by the Pitjantjatjara word walka, a term that can be applied to any design created by Ancestral Creators or by Aboriginal artists.

The study of rock art throughout the world has recently taken a retrospective view of the theoretical approaches traditionally adopted in its analysis and reporting. This has been triggered principally by feminist arguments that much of the ethnographical and anthropological scholarship was largely male centric. Reviewing existing data generated by both male and female researchers revealed that a Eurocentric and androcentric reporting was endemic and this stimulated new approaches. The cry was for 'women to be placed back in the picture' and the pendulum swing was impressive. Feminist advocates had their day with 'gender' taking front of stage. This was a healthy reaction to its absence and has resulted in analysis of feminist issues been absorbed into recent mainstream archaeological research. However, it is now time for a more considered approach to be taken where the male, female and other are considered and are given equivalent attention.

The sexual diversity of painted, anthropomorphic figures depicted in the rich rock art assemblage of the vast Kimberley region in northwestern Australia is marked. The assemblage has a Pleistocene origin (Roberts et al. 1997; Ross et al. in prep.) with distinct stylistic changes evident through time (Walsh 2000; Welch 1993). The most recent stylistic period, the Wanjina period, retains its relevance for the Aboriginal inhabitants of the region today.

The archaeological records in the Old World and Australasia reflect a pattern of simple approaches to stone flaking in early stone tool assemblages followed by a later proliferation in more complex approaches. Although the pattern is similar in structure, the proliferation of complex flaking occurred much later in Australasia. 'Simple' stone flaking can be characterized as the arrangement of flake removals in chains and 'complex' approaches involved a hierarchical arrangement. Some archaeologists see the proliferation of hierarchical reduction sequences as a reflection of hominin cognitive changes, but 'Homo sapiens' colonizers of Australia - carrying a toolkit made by simple chaining - were cognitively modern. The Australian proliferation has been explained as a response to ecological conditions but this proximate explanation fails to account for the complex nature of hierarchical reduction sequences. Demographic modeling that links the emergence of complex stone flaking to population structure or growth better accounts for the proliferations in both the Old World and Australasia. Efforts to reconstruct hominin migrations through Asia by focusing on the 'derived' parts of stone toolkits track demographically-linked trends rather than initial emigration events.

Australia was colonized by at least 40,000 bp and scientists agree that the continent was only ever occupied by anatomically and behaviourally modern humans. Australia thus offers an alternative early record for the archaeological expression of behavioural modernity. This review finds that the pattern of change in the Australian archaeological sequence bears remarkable similarity to the pattern from the Lower to Upper Palaeolithic in the Old World, a finding that is inconsistent with the 'symbolic revolution' model of the origin of modern behaviour. This highlights the need for archaeologists to rethink the implications of the various criteria and scales of analysis used to identify modern human behaviour.

Traditional paradigms governing the generation of actualistic taphonomic faunal models suggest that outcomes will vary depending on the particular environmental zone in which data is generated. Scavenging experiments were carried out in two distinct environmental zones (temperate and semi-arid) in New South Wales, Australia, to test the validity of this prevailing paradigm. The results of this study suggest that a particular environmental zone may not be as important a variable as other taphonomic factors, such as natural versus cultural agents of accumulation. These observations are part of larger study whose goal is to provide a working taphonomic model for faunal accumulations in open archaeological sites derived from Australian contexts.

"Great antiquity" been claimed for the engraved rock art assemblage found in arid regions across Australia but it was not until more recently that a chronological measure was assigned to the phrase. A range of indirect evidence has led to claims that engraved assemblages may date from as early as 30,000 years ago although little direct dating of the petroglyphs has been undertaken to support such assertions. Ethnographic accounts document Indigenous informants assigning the origin and antiquity of engraved rock art to the 'Alcheringa' (Dreaming or Creation Time) or remote past. In an attempt to clarify the timing of the origins of engraved rock art assemblages in central Australia, a dating project was undertaken by Dr Mike Smith, Dr Alan Watchman and myself.

Toolmakers in Queensland Australia used ingenious knapping techniques to produce an implement with a large bulb of percussion and a gouge-shaped cutting edge: the "gull-wing tula adze". The author concludes that the tool results from a unique compromise between an inefficient knapping technique and a peculiar - but in this case desirable -phenomenon of fracture mechanics.