The archaeology of Australia's deserts / Mike Smith, National Museum of Australia.

Figures and Tables; Preface; Acknowledgements; Note on Calibration of Radiocarbon Dates; Chapter 1 The Archaeology of Deserts: Australia in Context; Positioning This Research; Australia's Deserts; The Ecological Background; The Deserts People; Human Ecology; The Archaeology of Deserts; The Politics of Practice; Chapter 2 Deserts Past: A History of Ideas; The Dead Heart of Australia; Desert Societies; Ancient Petroglyphs; The `Great Australian Arid Period'; Shifts in Climatic Belts; Culture Histories; Physical Anthropology; Stone Tools; Historical Linguistics.

The Australian Desert CultureLake Mungo and the Willandra Lakes; Initial Colonisation of the Desert; Beyond the Willandra; Desert Refugia; Islands in the Interior; `The Australian Aboriginal as an Ecological Agent'; A Land Transformed?; Landesque Capital; Social Intensification; Writing the History of the Desert; Chapter 3 The Empty Desert: Inland Environments Prior to People; The `Desert Transformation' Concept; Age and Origin of Australias Deserts; The Last Interglacial in Australian Deserts; Quaternary Context; Lakes and Saltlakes; Lake Eyre: `A Continental Rain Gauge'; Other Inland Lakes.

The Arid RiversDesert Dunes and Dust; Inland Vegetation during the Last Interglacial; Last of the Dryland Megafauna; The Katapiri Fauna; Lake Callabonna; Population Ecology; Collapse of the Katapiri Fauna; Genyornis; Overview: The Desert Prior to People; Interglacial Landscapes; The Landscapes of Colonisation; Chapter 4 Foundations: Moving into the Deserts; The Continental Setting; A Modicum of Ideas; Invasion Biology; Geographic Background to Colonisation of the Desert; Routes; Early Sites: Chronology and Distribution; Northern Desert Fringe; The Willandra Lakes and Lower Darling River.

Cuddie SpringsThe Arid West Coast; Pilbara; Nullarbor Plain; Central Australia; Western Desert; Desert People; WLH1 (Mungo 1); WLH3 (Mungo 3); Assemblages and Site Inventories; Subsistence and Economy; Ecological Impacts; Discussion: Moving into the Deserts; A Global Perspective; Dispersal and Colonisation; Desert Societies 45-30 Ka; Chapter 5 Islands in the Interior: Last Glacial Aridity and Its Aftermath; Ideas about Refugia: Archaeological Frameworks; The Contraction of Settlement; Life in Glacial Refugia; Reoccupation of Desert Lowlands; Where Are the Refugia? Biogeographic Perspectives.

Inland Environments during the Last Glacial MaximumThe Impact on Australian Drylands; Implications for Human Ecology in the Interior; The Archaeological Record 30-12 Ka; Interpreting Site Histories and Stratigraphy; The Desert Uplands; Central Australia; The Inland Pilbara; Other Desert Uplands; The Arid Core; The Lake Eyre Basin; The Problem of the Sandy Deserts; The Shifting Margins; The Carpentarian Gorge Systems; The Arid West Coast; The Nullarbor; The Darling River and Willandra Lakes; Discussion: The Last Glacial Maximum Revisited.

Chapter 6 The `Desert Culture' Revisited: Assembling a Cultural System.

"This is the first book-length study of the archaeology of Australia's deserts, one of the world's major habitats and the largest block of drylands in the southern hemisphere. Over the last few decades, a wealth of new environmental and archaeological data about this fascinating region has become available. Drawing on a wide range of sources, The Archaeology of Australia's Deserts explores the late Pleistocene settlement of Australia's deserts, the formation of distinctive desert societies, and the origins and development of the hunter-gatherer societies documented in the classic nineteenth-century ethnographies of Spencer and Gillen. Written by one of Australia's leading desert archaeologists, the book interweaves a lively history of research with archaeological data in a masterly survey of the field and a profoundly interdisciplinary study that forces archaeology into conversations with history and anthropology, economy and ecology, and geography and earth sciences"-- Provided by publisher

Includes bibliographical references (pages 349-390) and index.

Print version record.

English.

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