From the Late Pleistocene to the present: Geochemical characterisation of a lithic assemblage from Widgingarri Shelter 1, Arraluli Country, west Kimberley

Abstract

The geochemical sourcing and characterisation of lithic assemblages is surprisingly rare in Australian archaeology. The studies that have been undertaken have overwhelmingly focused on recent Holocene material and on ethnographic artefacts in museum collections with little attention paid to Pleistocene assemblages. Additionally, no work has been conducted on changes in raw material procurement over long time scales, despite many Australian sites having lengthy occupation histories.

This paper presents the results of a portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) geochemical analysis of a sizeable sample (n = 760) of lithic artefacts and ochre from the site of Widgingarri Shelter 1, one of the earliest sites in northwest Australia with discontinuous occupation from at least ∼50 ka to the contact period. This represents the first geochemical characterisation and sourcing study conducted on an Australian archaeological assemblage of this age and demonstrates how raw material procurement may have been influenced by climatic, sea-level, and landscape changes from the Late Pleistocene to the recent Holocene.