Introduction

Australia is unique in that it is the only continent peopled exclusively by hunter-gatherers until the arrival of European settlers in the late 18th century ce. Ethnographic and historical information from the last two centuries paints a picture of an extraordinarily diverse society, with a richly creative spiritual life and a range of highly successful adaptations to different environments. Archaeological evidence also indicates that Australian Aboriginal society over the last ten thousand years was dynamic and innovative. Holocene Australia therefore provides a unique perspective on the range of variability of hunter-gatherer societies in both space and time. Why and how this adaptation persisted in Australia, when elsewhere the hunter-gatherer way of life survived only in marginal environments, are also of interest and call into question the notion of inevitable progress to social and economic complexity.

Archaeologists traditionally draw a distinction between the Pleistocene and the Holocene. The profound environmental changes that occurred with the retreat of the ice some ten thousand years ago are associated with major economic and social transformations leading to the emergence of agriculture and the development of complex urban societies in many areas of the world. However, Australian prehistory does not easily fit this pattern. The absence of significant continental glaciation means that environmental change is more usefully understood through long-term trends in precipitation. Indeed, the stabilisation of sea levels by about six thousand years ago is arguably a more useful division. At this time, rising sea levels finally severed the land connections between mainland Australia and Tasmania and New Guinea, and substantial areas of the continental shelf were inundated.