Anything more than a picnic? Re-considering arguments for ceremonial Macrozamia use in mid-Holocene Australia

Abstract

Influential arguments have been advanced in Australian archaeology concerning the origins and development of social and economic change in the mid-late Holocene (Lourandos 1997). One example used to support this claim is the perceived existence of ceremonial feasting events held in the semi-arid and rugged sandstone gorge systems of central Queensland, attended by large groups of people for extended periods, and underwritten by large quantities of kernels from the cycad Macrozamia moorei (Beaton 1977, 1982; see also Lourandos 1997). However the reexamination of the macrobotanical evidence from archaeological sites in this region using taphonomic analysis, replicative processing experiments, recalculations of seed density and estimations of the minimum numbers of seeds, does not support this model. This re-examination questions the role of Macrozamia seeds in the context of socio-economic change and suggests new interpretations of Macrozamia resource use.