Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:34:16.341Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Offshore islands and maritime explorations in Australian prehistory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Sandra Bowdler*
Affiliation:
Centre for Archaeology, University of Western Australia, Nedlands WA 6009, Australia

Abstract

The settlement of mainland Australia at an early (and uncertainly known) date required a water-crossing. What about the settlement of the islands — neither numerous nor large compared with the island continent itself — that are offshore from Australia? The evidence reviewed shows a late settlement for nearly all of them, and a perplexing lack of pattern.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alfredson, G. 1983. St Helena Island — a changing pattern of exploitation?, Australian Archaeology 17: 7986.Google Scholar
Allen, H. 1979. Left out in the cold: why the Tasmanians stopped eating fish, The Artefact 4: 110.Google Scholar
Allen, J., Golson, J. & Jones, R. (ed.). 1977. Sunda and Sahul: prehistoric studies in Southeast Asia, Melanesia and Australia. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Barker, B. 1989. Nara Inlet 1: a Holocene sequence from the Whitsunday Islands, central Queensland coast, Queensland Archaeological Research 6: 5376.Google Scholar
Barker, B.C. 1991. Nara Inlet 1: coastal resource use and the Holocene marine transgression in the Whitsunday Islands, central Queensland, Archaeology in Oceania 26: 102–9.Google Scholar
Beaton, J.M. 1985. Evidence for a coastal occupation time-lag at Princess Charlotte Bay (North Queensland) and implications for coastal colonisation and population growth theories for Aboriginal Australia, Archaeology in Oceania 20: 120.Google Scholar
Birdsell, J.B. 1977. The recalibration of a paradigm for the first peopling of Greater Australia, in Allen et al. (ed.): 113–67.Google Scholar
Blackwell, A. 1982. Bowen Island: further evidence for economic change and intensification on the south coast of New South Wales, in Bowdler (1982b): 4651.Google Scholar
Border, A. 1994. Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area (SWBTA): a review of cultural heritage resources their significance and land use. Commonwealth Commission of Inquiry Shoalwater Bay, Capricornia Coast, Queensland: Australian Government Publishing Service. Research Report 5.Google Scholar
Bowdler, S. 1974. An account of an archaeological reconnaissance of Hunter’s Isles, northwest Tasmania, 1973/4, Records of the Queen Victoria Museum (Launceston) 54: 122 Google Scholar
Bowdler, S. 1980. Fish and culture: a Tasmanian polemic, Mankind 12: 334–30.Google Scholar
Bowdler, S. 1981. Hunters in the highlands: Aboriginal adaptations in the eastern Australian uplands, Archaeology in Oceania 16: 99111.Google Scholar
Bowdler, S. 1982a. Prehistoric archaeology in Tasmania, in Wendorf, F. & Close, A.E. (ed.), Advances in world archaeology 1: 149, New York (NY): Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bowdler, S. 1982b. Coastal archaeology in eastern Australia. Canberra: Department of Prehistory. Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Bowdler, S. 1984. Hunter Hill, Hunter Island. Canberra: Australian National University, Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies. Terra Australis 8.Google Scholar
Bowdler, S. 1988. Tasmanian Aborigines in the Hunter Islands in the Holocene: island resource use and seasonality, in Bailey, G. & Parkington, J. (ed.), The archaeology of prehistoric coastlines: 4252. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bowdler, S. 1994. The excavation of two small rockshelters at Monkey Mia, Shark Bay, WA, Australian Archaeology 40: 113.Google Scholar
Bowdler, S. & Ryan, L. 1988. Southeast Tasmania: the Nuenonne in 1988, in Mulvaney, D.J. & White, J.P. (ed.), Australians to 1788: 308–29. Sydney: Syme & Weldon Associates.Google Scholar
Bowman, G.M. 1985. Oceanic reservoir correction for marine radiocarbon dates from northwestern Australia, Australian Archaeology 20: 5867 Google Scholar
Brown, S. 1993. Mannalargenna Cave: a Pleistocene site in Bass Strait, in Smith et al. (ed.): 258–71.Google Scholar
Campbeli, J.B. 1982. Automatic seafood retrieval systems: the evidence from Hinchinbrook Island and its implications, in Bowdler (1982b): 96107.Google Scholar
Cherry, J.F 1990. The first colonisation of the Mediterranean islands: a review of recent research, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 3/2: 145221.Google Scholar
Clarke, A. 1992. Recent archaeological research on Groote Eylandt. Paper presented at Australian Archaeological Association Annual Conference, Jindabyne NSW, December 1992.Google Scholar
Davidson, D.S. 1935. The chronology of Australian watercraft, Journal of the Polynesian Society 44: 116; 69–84; 137–52; 193–207.Google Scholar
Dortch, C.E. & Morse, K. 1984. Prehistoric stone artefacts on some offshore islands in Western Australia, in Australian Archaeology 19: 3147.Google Scholar
Dunnett, G. 1993. Diving for dinner: some implications from Holocene middens for the role of coasts in the late Pleistocene of Tasmania, in Smith et al. (ed.): 247–57.Google Scholar
Fullager, R. 1984. An archaeological survey of the coast from Cape Howe to Wingan Point including Gabo Island, in Coutts, P.J.F. (ed.), Coastal archaeology in south-eastern Victoria: 233–57. Melbourne: Ministry for Planning and Environment. Records of the Victorian Archaeological Survey 1.Google Scholar
Gaughwin, D. 1983. Coastal economies and the Westernport catchment. Unpublished MA thesis, La Trobe University, Melbourne.Google Scholar
Hall, J. 1982. Sitting on the crop of the bay: an historical and archaeological sketch of Aboriginal settlement and subsistence in Moreton Bay, southeast Queensland, in Bowdler (1982b): 7995.Google Scholar
Hall, J. & Bowen, G. 1989. An excavation of a midden complex at the Toulkerrie Oystermens lease, Moreton Island, S.E. Queensland, Queensland Archaeological Research 6: 327.Google Scholar
Jones, R. 1976. Tasmania: aquatic machines and off-shore islands, in Sieveking, G. de G., Longworth, I.II. & Wilson, K.E. (ed.), Problems in economic and social archaeology: 235–63. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Jones, R. 1977a. Man as an element of a continental fauna: the case of the sundering of the Bassian bridge, in Allen et al. (ed.): 317–86.Google Scholar
Jones, R. 1977b. The Tasmanian paradox, in Wright, R.V.S. (ed.), Stone tools as cultural markers: 189204. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Jones, R. 1978. Why did the Tasmanians stop eating fish? in Gould, R.A. (ed.). Explorations in ethno-archaeology: 1147. Albuquerque (NM): University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Jones, R. 1979. A note on the discovery of stone tools and a stratified prehistoric site on King Island, Bass Strait, Australian Archaeology 9: 8794.Google Scholar
Jones, R. & Allen, J. 1979. A stratified archaeological site on Great Glennie Island, Bass Strait, Australian Archaeology 9: 211.Google Scholar
Keegan, W.F. & Diamond, J.M. 1987. Colonization of islands by humans: a biogeographical perspective, Advances in archaeological method and theory 10: 4992.Google Scholar
Kirk, R.L. 1987. The human biology of the original Australians, Search 18: 220–22.Google Scholar
Lampert, R.J. 1981. The Great Kartan Mystery. Canberra: Australian National University, Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies. Terra Australis 5.Google Scholar
Lourandos, H. 1985. Intensification and Australian prehistory, in Price, T.D. & Brown, J. (ed.), Prehistoric hunter-gatherers: the emergence of cultural complexity: 385423. Orlando (FL): Academic Press.Google Scholar
Moore, D.R. 1979. Islanders and Aborigines at Cape York. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
O’Connor, S. 1990. 30,000 years in the Kimberley: a pro–history of the islands of the Buccaneer Archipelago and adjacent mainland, west Kimberley, Western Australia. Unpublished Ph.D thesis. University of Western Australia, Perth.Google Scholar
O’Connor, S. 1992. The timing and nature of prehistoric island use in northern Australia, Archaeology in Oceania 27: 4960.Google Scholar
O’Connor, S. 1994. A 6700 BP date for island use in the West Kimberley, Western Australia: new evidence from High Cliffy Island, Australian Archaeology: 39: 102–7Google Scholar
Pardoe, C. 1986. Population genetics and population size in prehistoric Tasmania, Australian Archaeology 27: 16.Google Scholar
Pardoe, C. 1991. Isolation and evolution in Tasmania, Current Anthropology 32: 121.Google Scholar
Reber, G. 1967. Additional carbon dates from Tasmania, Mankind 6: 429.Google Scholar
Rowland, M.J. 1980. The Keppel Islands preliminary investigations, Australian Archaeology 11: 117.Google Scholar
Rowland, M.J. 1981. Radiocarbon dates for a shell fishhook and disc from Mazie Bay, North Keppel Island, Australian Archaeology 12: 63–9.Google Scholar
Rowland, M.J. 1982. Further radiocarbon dates from the Keppel Islands, Australian Archaeology 15: 43–8.Google Scholar
Rowland, M.J. 1983a. Aborigines and environment in Holocene Australia: changing paradigms, Australian Aboriginal Studies 2: 6277.Google Scholar
Rowland, M.J. 1983b. A note on corrections to radiocarbon dates from the Keppel Islands, Australian Archaeology 17: 134–5.Google Scholar
Rowland, M.J. 1984. A long way in a bark canoe: Aboriginal occupation of the Percy Islands, Australian Archaeology 18: 1731.Google Scholar
Rowland, M.J. 1985a. Archaeological investigations on Moa and Naghi Islands, Western Torres Strait, Australian Archaeology 21: 119–31.Google Scholar
Rowland, M.J. 1985b. Further radiocarbon dates from Mazie Bay, North Keppel Island, Australian Archaeology 21: 113–18.Google Scholar
Shulmeister, J. 1992. Late Quaternary environmental history of Groote Eylandt, Northern Australia (abstract), Quaternary Australasia 10(2): 35.Google Scholar
Sim, R. 1989. Flinders Island prehistoric land use survey. Report to the National Estate Grants Program on behalf of the Tasmanian Archaeological Society.Google Scholar
Sim, R. 1994. Prehistoric human occupation in the King and Furneaux Island regions, Bass Strait, in Sullivan, M., Brockwell, S. & Webb, A. (ed.). Archaeology in the north: proceedings of the 1993 Australian Archaeological Association Conference: 358–74. Darwin: Australian National University, North Australia Research Unit.Google Scholar
Sim, R. & Thorne, A. 1990. Pleistocene human remains from King Island, southeastern Australia, Australian Archaeology 31: 4451.Google Scholar
Smith, M.A., Spriggs, M. & Fankhauser, B. (ed.). 1993. Sahul in review: Pleistocene archaeology in Australia, New Guinea and Island Melanesia. Canberra: Australian National University, Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies. Occasional Papers in Prehistory 24.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M. 1989. The dating of the Island Southeast Asian Neolithic: an attempt at Chronometric hygiene and linguistic correlation, Antiquity 63: 587613.Google Scholar
Sullivan, M.E. 1982. Exploitation of offshore islands along the New South Wales coastline, Australian Archaeology 15: 819.Google Scholar
Tindale, N.B. 1977. Further report on the Kaiadilt people of Bentinck Island Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland, in Allen et al. (ed.): 247–73.Google Scholar
Underwood, S. 1992. HC3: an analysis of an open stratified site on High Cliffy Island, the Kimberley region, Western Australia. Unpublished BA (Hons.) thesis, University of Western Australia, Perth.Google Scholar
Veth, P. 1993. The Aboriginal occupation of the Montebello Islands, northwest Australia, Australian Aboriginal Studies 1993(2): 3949.Google Scholar