The anthropogenic manipulation of stone is ubiquitous in every
part of the world,
throughout human prehistory. The durability of stone technologies
creates an enduring
material link between the tool maker and the archaeologist,
particularly in Australia, where
stone tools are a dominant component of the extant archaeological
record, and as such,
provide fundamental access to our understanding of the technology
and lifeways of
Australia’s Indigenous ancestors. This research, which is part
of the ARC Linkage project:
Lifeways of the First Australians, analyses stone artefacts from
excavated and surface
assemblages in the southern Kimberley region. This thesis by
compilation focuses on the
technological development of points, which are a distinctive,
Holocene component of the
Australian lithic suite, in order to test a series of hypotheses,
which are presented in a
collection of published manuscripts, and unpublished manuscripts
currently being
reviewed.
Lithic artefacts are produced by reduction. When a stone is
worked into a tool, it reduces in
size, with some fragments resulting in usable pieces, others in
debitage. The process of
reduction forms the basic premise for this thesis, where
reduction is quantified by a
morphological methodology outlined in Chapters 1 and 2, and
applied to a number of
assemblages in order to reconstruct the life history of stone
tools from the Kimberley region
(Chapters 3 – 7). Chapter 3 presents a robust chronology for
point technology in the
Kimberley region, where direct percussion points first appear in
the archaeological record
between 6,000 and 5,000 years ago, and Kimberley Points appear
within the last 1,000
years. Chapter 4 provides detailed examination of a large,
excavated point assemblage from
the Mt Behn rock shelter. This analysis demonstrates that points
were produced within a
reduction continuum, where changes in reduction intensity and
artefact morphology were
sensitive to environmental change during the mid to late
Holocene. Chapter 5 presents
analyses of multiple surface assemblages across the Kimberley,
where backing technology
is shown to be a regular component of point technologies. The
presence of the Kimberley
Backed Point challenges the existing model of spatial
distributions of backing in Australia.
Chapter 6 presents a remarkable point from Carpenters Gap 1,
which was recovered with
sizable portions of adhering hafting resin, an organic resin
which was directly dated. This
artefact provides the most compelling evidence for hafting
technology used in the mid to
late Holocene, and reveals that people were hafting small,
lightly reduced points with both
mastic and binding. Chapter 7 employs a novel approach to model
the level of pedagogy, or
teaching and learning, present in two different point reduction
sequences. This manuscript
demonstrates that pedagogy can be gleaned from stone artefact
assemblages, and shows
that Kimberley Points represent a shift towards a greater
emphasis on a formal pedagogy
within the last millennium of Kimberley prehistory. Finally, this
thesis culminates in Chapter 8, which presents a summary of the
conclusions and discussions offered throughout the
manuscripts, and recommends areas of research for further
investigation
