The moth-hunters : investigations towards a prehistory of the south-eastern highlands of Australia

Abstract

This thesis examines the prehistory of the Southern Uplands of Australia, a region of tablelands and highlands in the extreme south-east of the continent. From ethnographic and archaeological evidence the unique exploitation of the Bogong moth is reconstructed, and the pattern of seasonal transhumance which it engendered. The importance of moths is assessed in the subsistence economy of the region, and an analysis made of prehistoric food resources. Ethnographic evidence on prehistoric population, material culture, trade, inter-tribal relations, customs and language is also examined, and a series of hypotheses set up to be tested by archaeological fieldwork. Settlement patterns are investigated by a locational analysis of camp-sites, and artifactual variation is explained in terms of the function, location, culture and chronology of sites. Then the question of time-depth is examined, and a prehistoric cultural sequence set up for the Canberra-Monaro region from the evidence of excavations in nine small rock-shelters . This sequence spans the last four millenia, but a lower dimension is added to it from Cloggs Cave, a limestone cave at Buchan on the periphery of the mountains. There, human occupation was found extending back into the Glacial Period, and the deposit also contained a rich faunal assemblage, with important environmental implications. Finally, the ethnographic, archaeological and environmental evidence is integrated in an attempt to reconstruct the prehistory and life-style of hunter-gatherers in the Uplands from the Pleistocene to Protohistoric Period.