Australian archaeology can be divided into three main categories: aboriginal, historical, and maritime. Aboriginal archaeology studies the origins of Australia's indigenous peoples and aims to understand how the first migrants arrived. Historical archaeology examines industrial and structural changes to understand social and economic shifts. Maritime archaeology focuses on ships and infrastructure to learn about life near water. Together, these types of archaeology are revealing Australia's history by analyzing artifacts and sites and how human activity responded to environmental changes over time.

1. The superscripts after quotes direct you to their citation found at the end.
Anthropology Archeology Research Paper
Australian Archeology
Courtland Johnson
ANTH-2302
Katrina Nuncio

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Australian Archaeology
When Australian archeology is being studied, it is usually being divided into three
parts which is historical, maritime and aboriginal. With these types combined, they make
up a timeline of events committed to discovering the past of not just Australia, but New
Zealand, the Torres Straight islands and other surrounding places as well. Since there
is surprisingly an overwhelming amount of information on the overall state of archeology
in Australia, the paper will stick mainly to the general description of the types of
archeology and the phases aboriginal tribes and their environment go through. The
phases that Australian archeology has gone through help bring its cultures and races
together by analyzing the origin of Australians, the many changes that occurred to those
ancient people and their tribal practices.
The type of archeology in Australia that really focuses on the roots of its peoples’
ancestry is aboriginal archeology. Aboriginal archeology studies the origin of Australia’s
native races. The desire to understand where Australia’s indigenous people came from
were from the natives themselves. The Aboriginals, other natives of Australia, and the
people of the Torres Straight islands were curious of where the first settlers of Australia
came from. The most recent studies into this area recall that three phases of migration
occurred in Australia’s ancient human history. Archeologists say that Australia had no
species on its island that resembled a human, or if it did, they’ve long since died out by
the time the first group of migrants appeared. The “Negrito” Tasmanians were the first to
arrive in Australia, then the “Murrayans” and lastly, the “Carpentarians”. It is still foggy

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as to how exactly these migrants got to Australia, but there is plenty of evidence proving
that these people arrived from somewhere else. Many archeologists believe that they
got their without actually having to migrate at all. During the Holocene epoch, Australia
was combined with New Guinea as the supercontinent Sahui. If that’s the case,
comparing this to where other humans began popping up on other parts of the world,
Australia would be one of the first places to be populated by them. At Kow Swamp, a
fully intact primitive skeleton was found dating back to the Holocene epoch. Proof that
this might be true are the remains found at Lake Mungo. The relics of a prehistoric
human found there are, debatably, the oldest signs of human life. As the origin of the
first people on Australia is continued to be analyzed, the history of the continent is
slowly being revealed.
Another way that the history of Australia is being acknowledged is through the
second form of Australia’s archeology, which is historical archeology. Not to be too
confused with the former type discussed, Australia’s historical archeology focuses on
the industrial and structural changes left behind by past civilizations in Australia.
Historical relies heavily on studies and artefacts from archeological sites to fully
understand the social, and economical changes within tribes. These findings are usually
compared with the discoveries of other countries to comprehend certain aspects of early
human life altogether.
“Materials and documentation obtained via field research can be further analyzed
in the laboratory to learn how Indigenous Australians lived, used resources and adapted
to environmental changes in the past. Depending on the quality of documentation and

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research questions, archaeological material can be studied in many different ways,
enriching our understanding of human life in the past.”1
This type of archeology in Australia mainly came to be from several archeologists, like
the Australasian Society for Historical Archeology, starting to study different sites within
the continent and recording them. “These included Judy Birmingham at the University of
Sydney, Bill Culican at the University of Melbourne and John Mulvaney at the Australian
National University. In November 1970 the Australian Society for Historical Archeology
was formed. Initially focused around Sydney, ASHA gradually grew to include members
from all over Australia”3. Many archeologists are invested into researching sites for its
historical, but some are more of a challenge to approach due to them being underwater.
Lastly is the aforementioned maritime archeology of Australia. It emphasizes on
“the study of ships and shipwrecks, maritime infrastructure, maritime exploitation,
maritime identities and landscapes, seascapes, and other types of heritage, both
tangible and intangible.”2 The issue most commonly related to human maritime
archeology would be the study of currently submerged by rising sea levels, which will be
explained later. Currently, maritime archeology is being held back to the lack of
necessary underwater technology to efficiently study the seafloor.
“Underwater survey for prehistoric sites and other relevant terrestrial features
seems feasible only for particular parts of the Australian continental shelf. However, with
conditions permitting, prehistoric remains being present, and with the continuing
improvement of underwater technology, there can be little doubt that diver survey and
other direct investigations on the submerged shelf, and in estuaries and lakes, will

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eventually contribute as much to the interpretation of pre-transgression coastal/ sub-
coastal conditions, and human or biotic adaptations…”6
The findings discovered from maritime archeology help provide a clearer image of the
changes in Australia’s past and how it affected the people that lived there.
Archeologist Tim Flannery worked on understanding a very crucial change in
Australia that makes it how it is today. Currently, the continent can easily be seen as an
arid and dry environment, but what is important to know is that it wasn’t always like that.
At a certain point in Australia’s history, it went through a significant climate change,
causing several plant and animal species to go extinct. A probable cause of this that
archeologists have arrived at is large human settlement. Small amounts of studies
declare that the exact reason for this is similar to a case in America. Similar to America,
certain plant species’ that were paramount to Australia’s climate were possibly
consumed to extinction by early tribes. Archeological sites such as the ones at Cuddle
Springs in New South Wales and Keilor in Victoria are the only ones that show proof of
this hypothesis. There a very few amounts of kill sites that supply the evidence of mass
extinctions due to hunting. That doesn’t exactly set the Australian tribes scot-free since
their development of animal farming around 18,000-7,000 years ago led to some
extinctions. It wasn’t just the environment that changed, but also the tribes themselves.
Harry Lourandos, an archeologist, describes the effects Australian tribes went through
as intensification, which is the debate that social change is what causes the economy of
tribes to change. This is usually associated with the massive changes that every tribe
phased through around 4,000 years ago. During that time, an increased number of
artefacts and sites appeared along with growth of the sites themselves. Over the span

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of the Holocene epoch to present day, the melting of glaciers from the last ice age has
slowly increased sea levels on the planet. Kent Flannery named this the Flandrian
transgression and related the global event to a phenomenon known as broad spectrum
revolution, referring to when tribes decide to broaden their hunting preferences in
response to climate deviations. The Flandrian transgression provided a multitude of new
opportunities to hunt in different places since the rising water level calmed strong rivers,
allowing more edible marine life to swim upstream and, in tune, bringing along more bird
species to hunt those fish. “Blessed” by these fluctuations in temperature, Australian
tribes were invited to a new world of resources and eventually invented new ways of
cultivating them.
As the overall environment of Australia is remodeled by the Flandrian
transgression, tribes that began to widen their diets to include fish and plants, also
developed their own ways of hunting them. W.E Roth, an archeologist, studied some of
the ways the aboriginal people hunted, such as using nets and “beaters” to hunt
kangaroos. In operation, nets with 3 sides enclosed are used for the kangaroos to be
chased into and then are clubbed to death by the assigned “beaters” while they’re
caught inside. Tribes also used other clever tactics to capture large land animals such
as chasing them off shore eventually leading them into a fish trap. For a time,
archeologists believed that aboriginal people had never discovered the concept of
agriculture back then, but are disproven by studying their use of “bush tucker” plants.
Though they were found in places that weren’t favorable, the women of some tribes
would take the more immature plants and place them closer to their sites. Other uses
for vegetation by the aboriginal people was “firestick” farming. In overgrown forests,

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canopies were opened up using “firestick” farming allowing sunlight to germinate the
isolated plants and attract marsupials. This form of farming also, “encouraged the
regrowth of eucalypt trees and edible plant food such as bracken, from which the roots,
young leaves and shoots could be eaten. The ash from the burnt areas was a fertilizer
for the regrowth as soon as it rained.”4 Aside from that, there wasn’t much reason for
ancient Australians to pursue agriculture due to extreme instability of the continent’s
climate. The Walker circulation, discovered in the twentieth century by Gilbert Walker,
which is the wavering of global pressure forces causing dramatic highs-and-lows in
temperature in the south-eastern Pacific Ocean is the biggest reason for Australia’s
climate. These high-and-lows are better known as the El Nino and La Nina Southern
Oscillation, El Nino being the several years of warmer weather. The sites of Kuk in
Papua New Guinea were the only ones discovered to have attempted growing plants
only in favorable conditions.
Australian archeology, in essence, is a constant lesson teaching the ways of how
its ancient civilizations responded to certain changes and how it turned out for them.
There is still much that has yet to be found due to the ever-increasing sea level and
more to be researched from the sites dating back to the Holocene epoch.

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Citations
1. http://australianmuseum.net.au/the-aboriginal-archaeological-collection
2. http://www.aima-underwater.org.au
3. http://www.asha.org.au/society-history.html
4. http://austhrutime.com/fire-stick_farmers.htm
5. Dortch, C. E. "ROTTNEST AND GARDEN ISLAND PREHISTORY AND THE
ARCHAEOLOGICAL POTENTIAL OF THE ADJACENT CONTINENTAL SHELF,
WESTERN AUSTRALIA." 1277. Www.library.uq.edu.au, n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.