Agricultural hunter-gatherers: food-getting, domestication and farming in pre-colonial Australia (original) (raw)
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Palaeo-environments and past human subsistence patterns are difficult to determine from dualpatterned faunal assemblages where human and non-human predators have accumulated and intensively modified animal bones. This paper examines such records in the Leeuwin-Naturaliste Region of south-western Australia, where a thin belt of coastal limestone contains caves and rock shelters with rich faunal deposits. The Late Pleistocene and Holocene part of this record derives from four archaeological sites: Devil's Lair, Tunnel Cave, Witchcliffe Rock Shelter and Rainbow Cave. Correspondence analysis combined with cluster analysis enables a preliminary assessment of habitat changes using simple species abundances in the faunal assemblages and comparison with indices of past human activity in the sites and the species' present habitat preferences. These inferred changes, consistent with previous analyses of faunal remains and tree charcoal, suggest that late Holocene sites document Aboriginal occupation in coastal heath, scrub and woodland. Late Pleistocene deposits record hinterland occupation at times of low sea-level when the coast was up to 30 km seawards of its present position and the surrounding vegetation was open-forest or woodland. As rainfall increased and vegetation changed in the Holocene, species foraging in open-woodland declined or became locally extinct, while species requiring closed canopy habitats increased. Rank-order correlations of taxa and archaeological remains from depositional sequences before and after the environmental change indicate that the occupiers of late Holocene sites favoured the same generalist species that occupiers of Late Pleistocene sites had favoured, which were available at all times. Prey habitats, foraging behaviours and historic records of ethnographic hunting and settlement pattern suggest that this local continuity is consistent with maintenance of a ''dispersive mode'' subsistence pattern in the region.
Australian Pastoralists in Time and Space: The Evolution of a Complex Adaptive System
Ecology and Society, 2006
Newcomers and exotic livestock have displaced indigenous hunter-gatherers from Australia's drylands over the past 200 yr. This paper seeks to learn from and explain the adaptive process involving the initially naïve newcomers, their stock, and Australia's ancient landscapes. We review pastoral adaptation at the national, regional, and enterprise scales. These scales are linked, and so we use "panarchy" theory with its concept of "adaptive cycles" as an analytical framework. Past pastoral adaptation can be summarized by changes in key linkages: pastoralists (1) are now connected to more individuals than when they first moved into the rangelands, but are less reliant on local hubs for these connections; (2) have weaker links to the environment as environmental feedbacks have been reduced; (3) have stronger links to alternate land uses, but weaker links to governance; and (4) have stronger links to the global economy. Further change is inevitable. Pastoralism is likely to remain as the core activity in Australian rangelands, but the dynamic linkages that shape the system will, in future, connect pastoralists more strongly to post-production economies, information and more distant social networks, and to a more diverse group of land users.
Revisiting the 'Neolithic Problem' in Australia
The more we learn about varieties of subsistence, the less clear defi nitions of 'agriculture' become, and the harder it is to see the Australian and New Guinean data as falling into separate classes. Some Australian data, if found in New Guinea, would label those societies as agricultural. I suggest two avenues, residue analysis and historical research, along which research in this matter might usefully continue.
While food consumption is a basic need, why would anyone engage in the labour-intensive process of food production, when resources capable of satisfying those same needs are naturally available through hunting, gathering and/or fishing? The archaeological record of Australasia, including New Guinea, Melanesia and Australia, offers different perspectives on the processes and the consequences of the adoption of food-producing strategies by human societies. In this paper, I explore the concepts of domestication and cultivation through Australasian evidence, and comparatively with examples from other regions of the world, in order to illustrate the diversity of human relationships with their living and geological environment. I argue that the dependence upon food-producing strategies was the unintended result of a prolonged process, involving a series of conscious decisions by human agents. These decisions were almost surely consistent with the socio-economic context in which they were taken, and it is likely that they pursued the preservation of their former lifestyles rather than socio-cultural change. I further argue that the impact of food production strategies on human communities, within the co-evolutionary context of domestication and cultivation, is particularly relevant for understanding the potential of human adaptive capabilities.