Aboriginal responses to Late Quaternary environmental change in a Mediterranean-type region: Zooarchaeological evidence from south-western Australia

作者：Dortch Joe^*; Balme Jane; Ogilvie Jane

来源：Quaternary International, 2012, 264: 121-134.

DOI：10.1016/j.quaint.2011.06.017

South-western Australia is a Mediterranean-type region with characteristic hot dry summers and wet winters. There is little evidence for intensification in resource use by Aboriginal people in this region although elsewhere in Australia intensification is indicated by increasing numbers of seed grinding stones and exploitation of other new plant resources, especially during the mid-late Holocene. These conditions imply departures from models of population growth and intensification of resource use at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in the Mediterranean Basin. Multiple prey attributes were explored as potential criteria for prey ranking to measure resource depression in zooarchaeological sequences dating from 22,000 to 400 BP at four limestone rock shelters occupied by Aboriginal hunter-gatherers in the far south-west. Assuming the criteria are valid, little evidence was found of switching between higher or lower-ranked resources between Pleistocene and Holocene sequences. In this region changes in stone technology that occur across Australia in the Holocene do not seem to translate to changes in fauna exploitation. However, this may be because of the peculiarities of this Mediterranean-climate region in which the biota were relatively unaffected by post-glacial climate oscillations, meaning that there was little pressure on populations living there.

• 出版日期2012-6-20