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Australian Archaeological Association Conference 2006 |
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Session DescriptionsKeynote address: Professor Jim O’Connell, Department of Anthropology, University of Utah.The archaeology of early modern humans: a Sahul perspective.Recent archaeological debate about the origin and spread of modern humans has focused almost entirely on evidence from Africa and western Eurasia. Data from Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea) are given surprisingly little play, especially by archaeologists based in Europe and North America. Here I review key elements of Australia-New Guinea record and discuss some of the more important implications for current arguments about the origins of our species.
The spread and settlement of modern humans in Australasia Organizer: Richard Cosgrove Upon crossing the biogeographic barrier into Sahul from Eurasia, modern humans signalled their considerable capacity for organization, communication and technological skill. However, debates about the timing of landfall in Australasia still resonate after more than 40 years, continuing to divide scientific opinion. How the crossings were achieved technically is not in question, but evidence for the direction, route, tempo of their settlement and spread is still to be fully established. Questions also remain concerning the distribution and levels of human populations as reflected in the continental archaeological record.
Indigenous Perspectives on Australian ArchaeologyOrganizer: Steve Free The purpose of this session is to provide Indigenous Archaeology and heritage students as well as communities/individuals/groups/organizations with an opportunity to present a paper or short talk on the current state-of-play regarding the protection, conservation and management of Indigenous cultural heritage in Australia, from an Indigenous perspective. The format of presentations may vary (but should be no longer than 15 minutes in duration), so please consult the session organizer about the type and length of the presentation you wish to offer.
The archaeological signature of behavioural modernity Organizer: Nicola Stern It is widely recognized that the Upper Palaeolithic record of Europe is too late and too localised to be the material manifestation of the modern behavioural repertoire. However, there is currently no consensus about whether the African Middle Stone Age record (the later portions of which are associated with the earliest modern human remains) should replace the Upper Palaeolithic record as the arbiter of how the modern behavioural repertoire is represented in the archaeological record. Indeed, there are compelling reasons for investigating whether the modern behavioural repertoire has a single, diagnostic archaeological signature.
Human-environment interactions in Australia: temporality and mutual transformations Organizers: Tim Denham and Scott Mooney During the long history of human occupation in Australia interactions between people and the landscapes they inhabited has been played out against both changing socio-cultural and environmental contexts. Although archaeologists have used palaeo-environmental data to characterise human-land relationships and palaeoecologists have used archaeological data to augment their interpretations, few Australian studies have truly integrated the perspectives offered by these different data sets. This session presents a series of case studies, representing diverse spatio-temporal scales, in which an attempt has been made to integrate archaeological and palaeo-environmental information. It is hoped that this session will stimulate further multi-disciplinary collaborations designed to explore the inter-relationship between people and their landscapes.
Debates on island archaeology in Australasia, Oceania and Asia Organizer: Organizer: Ian Lilley This general session has no tightly-defined central theme. Rather, the seven papers range widely across the archaeology of islands. Two examine long-standing theoretical issues, focussing on isolation in localities including the Wellesley Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Another three papers present results from recently-completed exploratory fieldwork, two concerning New Caledonia and the other, Torres Strait. One of the New Caledonian pieces concentrates on the pre- or at least non-European past, and like the Torres Strait paper concerns a project in which ethnohistory and contemporary local community knowledge have a central place. The second New Caledonian paper addresses questions concerning a convict heritage which has some remarkable parallels with the situation in Australia as well as some clear divergences. Another presentation summarises laboratory studies concerning the controversial "Hobbit" site of Liang Bua in Indonesia, outlining results of recent stone-tool residue and usewear analyses. A second laboratory-based paper takes up the more general issue of identifying palm species in archaeological sediments from the Asia-Pacific, where palms such as coconuts and sago have long played a pivotal role in people's lives.
Current research in Australasia, the Pacific and Asia.Organizer: Val Attenbrow This session casts the net wide to explore the results of a range of recent endeavours in Australasia, the Pacific and Asia. The geographic focus of the papers stretches from New South Wales to Western Australia, Arnhem Land and North East Thailand. The papers focus on issues relating to the identification, interpretation, management and conservation of Australia's Indigenous and European heritage, the distribution of past activity traces across the landscape (including surface stone artefacts scatters and rock art), the inter-relationship between environmental change and shifts in patterns of settlement and trade, and use-wear and residue analysis of wooden spears, which has implications for the way in which projectiles are identified in the archaeological record.
Content Approved by: AAA 2006
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