A Late Pleistocene site on Watarrka Plateau, Central Australia

Abstract

Palaeoclimatic research suggests that the period between 13 000 and 6000 BP is likely to have seen some of the most favourable conditions for hunter–gatherer settlement in the interior of the continent. The northern monsoon system reestablished itself around 13 000 BP, creating a seasonally wetter regime with greater runoff and denser vegetation than that which prevailed during much of the mid-late Holocene (Wyrwoll and Miller 2001; Hesse et al. 2004). This period also appears to have lacked the high inter-annual or inter-decadel variability that characterises the current ENSO cycle, which began around 4000– 5000 BP (Gagan et al. 2004; Moy et al. 2002). We could expect to find evidence, at this time, for an expansion and some intensification of Aboriginal settlement in central Australia — but the period is poorly documented in archaeological sequences across arid Australia. In central Australia, only two sites of this age have been located: Puritjarra, where use of the rockshelter intensified and diversified after 13 000 BP and again after 7500 BP (Smith 2006); and Kulpi Mara, where there is a discrete occupation layer dating between 12 000 and 13 000 BP (Thorley 1998a). Further afield, Puntutjarpa rock-shelter, near Warburton, has a rich occupation layer dating to 6000–7000 BP with more ephemeral traces of occupation at 10 200 BP (Gould 1977). We report excavations at NEP22, a small site on the Watarrka plateau (now part of Watarrka-Kings Canyon National Park) (Figure 1), that shows the presence of chipped stone artefacts in a buried sand plain at 11 440 BP. These finds are sparse, but confirm human use of the relatively well-watered country in the George Gill Range, a key drought fall-back region for desert populations in the ethnographic period.