Technological provisioning and assemblage: variation in the Eastern Victoria River region, northern Australia: a Darwinian approach
Abstract
This thesis documents systems of stone artefact provisioning, or the strategic
organisation of procurement, manufacture, transport and consumption of stone artefacts,
on the edge of the semi-arid zone in northern Australia, and from an evolutionary
perspective. Advances in lithic studies have developed synthetic concepts, largely
derived from processual and behavioural archaeology and evolutionary ecology, which
help model the optimal design and assembly of technical systems in relation to resource
structuring and changing levels of risk and mobility. Applying these concepts to the
explanation of assemblage variability in Wardaman Country offers new insight into the
reasons for Holocene technological change in this region. This explanation emphasizes
natural selection acting on stimulated cultural variation as potentially a key process
bringing about a shift in the nature of implement production and technological
provisioning. Directional technological change is seen as potentially the result of
partially successful attempts to track optimality through feedback between proximate
goals and current selective forces. Methods are developed to examine the effects of
these processes on stone artefact assemblages. Foraging practices and technological
responses are first modelled in relation to the environmental structuring of the region
using optimal foraging theory. Consideration is then given to the likely changes in
resource structure that took place over the last 15,000BP, and the likely effects on
foraging and technological provisioning strategies. The derived hypotheses are tested
against assemblage data from 293 open sites and 4 stratified rockshelters. The results
indicate apparent major changes in technological provisioning and land use that may have been caused by delcines in the abundance and predictability of resources and
resulting in increased subsistence risk following the onset of ENSO-driven climatic
variability after 5,000BP, and reaching their greatest severity between 3,500 and
2,000BP. The results have important implications for an understanding of Northern
Australian prehistory, including the potential causes of broadly similar technological changes across large regions of the top end, the timing of increased inter-regional
contact and the spread of new technologies, as well as the importance of tracking
historical continuity as a means of understanding social procsses connected to regional
technological change.