Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/19586
Title: Investigating human and megafauna co-occurrence in Australian prehistory: Mode and causality in fossil accumulations at Cuddie Springs
Contributor(s): Fillios, Melanie  (author)orcid ; Field, Judith (author); Charles, Bethan (author)
Publication Date: 2010
DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2009.04.003
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/19586
Abstract: Human arrival in Sahul - Pleistocene Australia and New Guinea - has long been argued as the catalyst in the decline and disappearance of a suite of extinct animals referred to as megafauna. The debate concerning causality in Sahul is highly polarised, with climate change often cited as the alternative explanatory model. On continental Australia, there are few datasets available with which to explore the likely processes leading to the extinction events. At the present time, there is one site in New Guinea (Nombe Rockshelter) and one on continental Australia (Cuddie Springs) where the coexistence and temporal overlap of humans and megafauna has been identified. The Cuddie Springs Pleistocene archaeological site in southeastern Australia contains an association of fossil extinct and extant fauna with an archaeological record through two sequential stratigraphic units dating from c. 36 to c. 30 ka ago. A taphonomic study of the fossil fauna has revealed an accumulation of bone in a primary depositional context, consistent with a waterhole death assemblage. Overall the faunal assemblage studied here (n: 8146; NISP: 1355) has yielded little direct evidence of carnivore damage or human activities. Post depositional factors such as physical destruction incurred by trampling, compaction of sediments, and/or the hydrological status of the lake at that time have played important roles. As the only known site on continental Australia where megafauna and humans co-occur, the Cuddie Springs faunal assemblage yields equivocal evidence for a significant human role in the accumulation of the fauna here. At the present time there is no evidential basis to the argument that humans had a primary role in the extinction of the Australian megafauna. The first colonisers are likely to have preyed upon those few species known to have persisted to this time, but their impact may have been restricted to the tail end of a process that had been underway for millennia prior to human arrival.
Publication Type: Journal Article
Grant Details: ARC/DP0985375
Source of Publication: Quaternary International, 211(1-2), p. 123-143
Publisher: Elsevier Ltd
Place of Publication: United Kingdom
ISSN: 1873-4553
1040-6182
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 210101 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Archaeology
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 430101 Archaeological science
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: 960899 Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity of Environments not elsewhere classified
950503 Understanding Australia's Past
Peer Reviewed: Yes
HERDC Category Description: C1 Refereed Article in a Scholarly Journal
Appears in Collections:Journal Article

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