A Matter of Balance: An overview of Pleistocene occupation history and the impact of the Last Glacial Phase in East Timor and the Aru Islands, eastern Indonesia

Abstract

This paper explores the subsistence records from cave sites with Pleistocene-aged deposits in East Timor and the Aru Islands during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), and discusses these records within the context of the limited archaeological evidence for LGM occupation from elsewhere in the Indonesian Archipelago. Although Timor and the Aru Islands are at similar latitudes, the onset of aridity had markedly different impacts on the settlement and subsistence choices available to hunter-gatherers in these two regions. We suggest that the different occupation trajectories seen in Timor and Aru during the LGM are related, at least in part, to biogeographic contrasts across the Indonesian Archipelago.