Technological responses to risk in Holocene Australia

Abstract

It has long been recognized that the Australian archaeological record documents alterations in settlement and technological strategies in the middle of the Holocene. Discussion of the cause of those changes has largely been restricted to suggestions of the arrival of new technologies, presumably from southeast Asia, without exploring their advantages for humans occupying the continent. The model outlined here proposes that during the mid Holocene exploitation of the landscape involved significant risks, and at that time new forms of stoneworking were adopted as an aid in reducing risk. Risk was associated with environmental change, high mobility and colonisation of previously unoccupied landscapes. Archaeological evidence reveals these processes to be associated with the adoption of toolkits that minimize risk.