Thousands of rock shelters in the Hamersley Ranges of north-west Western Australia are revealing new evidence of how Aboriginal people moved inland across the Pilbara in ancient times.
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| Scarp Archaeology's team digging in a rock shelter near Newman [Credit: Michael Slack] |
"We know that Aboriginal people got to the inland Pilbara around 40,000 years ago but we don't know what happened to them after that," Dr Slack said.
"There's a lot of blanks on the maps that we're trying to fill in. That's important because it ties in with the extinction of what's known as the megafauna, the giant animals that once inhabited Australia — giant wombats and kangaroos."
Dr Slack said there was a lot of argument among experts about what wiped out megafauna.
"The Pilbara has the ability to possibly answer that question because we know people pre-date that extinction event," he said.
Migration across northern Australia
Dr Slack's research is shedding light on how and why Aboriginal people moved across vast areas of inland Australia.
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| Surveying Newman rock shelters [Credit: Michael Slack] |
"You've got two fantastic river systems [the Fortescue and the Ashburton] that feed into the centre."
"[This work] has dramatic impact in terms of our understanding of the settlement and the antiquity of occupation of Aboriginal people in Australia."
Putting it into the context of other research across the continent, Kakadu National Park contains evidence still being debated by archaeologists of potential occupation of 65,000 years ago.
In comparison, rock shelters in Newman previously thought to be occupied around 20,000 years ago are now confirmed to be at least 40,000 years old.
"What's significant about a pre-20,000 year date is that at this time of around 40,000 to 30,000 [years ago] the climate is a lot similar to what it is today," Dr Slack said.
"This is a crucial period that we're trying to understand in terms of the colonisation of Australia and how it happened. The last ice age occurred between around 18,000 to 20,000 years ago and that's the next question that we're looking at."
Big questions of antiquity
The new Australian Research Centre-funded Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage will be looking at the big questions of antiquity over the next seven years.
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| Scarp archaeologists exploring caves near Newman, WA [Credit: Michael Slack] |
"We are looking at new areas of the Pilbara where we might find more rock shelters and great evidence of older occupation and exciting artefacts," Dr Slack said.
"I think that's one of the beauties of doing archaeology — there's so little that's been done in this country. There's so few of us and such a massive country with such a long history of people that every time you go out and look for something you find something new, and something exciting is out there."
"I think everyone finds it really exciting that they are involved in the project. Some of the old [Indigenous] people say they already knew that. And of course they did, because their version of history goes back a lot longer than anything we can tell them."
"What's really interesting is when the two things parallel each other so the archaeology can both inform and complement Dreamtime stories and connections to places. We do find sometimes that a story place ties in with one of the important old sites."
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| Loving his work: Michael Slack surveying a Newman cave [Credit: Michael Slack] |
"There's a certain amount of the adventure in every archaeologist — it's the kids dream to go out and discover the past. You do have days where you are dusting off artefacts and finding things that are in the soil and haven't been exposed to the light of day in 20,000 to 30,000 years," Dr Slack said.
"I love the Pilbara, I love the landscape like everyone else that lives or works in the Pilbara."
Authors: Lisa Morrison and Susan Standen | Source: ABC News Website [November 17, 2017]
