Unpublished BA(Hons) Thesis, Department of Archaeology, The University of Queensland, Queensland., May 31, 2013
This thesis examines the lithic technology of Nawarla Gabarnmang, a rockshelter in Jawoyn Country... more This thesis examines the lithic technology of Nawarla Gabarnmang, a rockshelter in Jawoyn Country, Arnhem Land, with evidence for human occupation spanning ~45,000 years ago to the present. The colonisation of Sahul was an important event in the story of anatomically and behaviourally modern humans. Despite the demonstrated behavioural and symbolic complexity of the earliest occupants, traditional approaches to Australian lithic technology have emphasised the static and simplistic nature of Pleistocene technology, contrasting it with an inventive Holocene period. This project provides new evidence on this issue by examining the lithic assemblage from Nawarla Gabarnmang to investigate technological complexity and change in Australian prehistory.
This project utilised debitage attribute analysis coupled with the theoretical framework of technological organisation to explain the nature of variation in the lithic assemblage. Initial results indicate that the sequence from Nawarla Gabarnmang demonstrates a flexible and adaptive approach to technology throughout time with changing technological strategies emerging in response to variation in environmental contexts.
Overall, this thesis demonstrates that Pleistocene technology in Australia was a part of a flexible land-use strategy that solved the problem of making a living in a landscape of changing resource structure. The findings of this thesis emphasise the value of continuing to test previous assumptions about the nature of Pleistocene Aboriginal societies and has provided new evidence that further challenges the notion of a simple two-stage sequence and a unilinear trajectory towards complexity in Australian lithic technology.
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Porr, M. & J. M. Matthews 2020. Interrogating and decolonising the deep human past. In: M. Porr & J. M. Matthews (eds.), Interrogating Human Origins. Decolonisation and the Deep Human Past. New York: Routledge (Archaeological Orientations Series), 3-31.
Post-colonial thought affects the heart of Western science. Although there is comparatively little engagement with post-colonial theory in the fields traditionally concerned with human origins or human evolution, it should be of critical importance to Palaeolithic archaeology and human evolutionary studies. Examination of recent literature dealing with so-called modern human origins highlights key neglected aspects of this discourse, namely the status of nature and rationality, and demonstrates how these aspects are entangled with ongoing political and colonial influences on the production of knowledge.
In this paper – which also serves as an introduction to this special issue of Hunter Gatherer Research – we concentrate on a number of aspects relevant to the relationships between archaeology and narratives, and also to the theoretical and methodological challenges of research involving hunting and gathering societies. We focus on the 'narrative turn', which became influential across a range of disciplines due to the shift it introduced from a story being the sole focus of analysis to 'the lamp by which other things are seen' (Kreiswirth 1994:62). Working with a narrative approach, we consider how archaeologists have framed the relationship between hunting and gathering people and their environments, and in contrast, discuss the ways that contemporary Indigenous people themselves explain these relationships and the importance of narrative in understanding such relationships. Further, we critically discuss the way narrative or storytelling has been positioned in human cognitive evolution and in establishing human 'uniqueness', highlighting some problematic ongoing trends in Western scholarship. these examples led us to question the relationship between knowledge, myth and reality, particularly in the context of the relationship between the Western academy and Indigenous knowledge. We close this paper by drawing together the implications for narratives of human evolution and hunter-gatherer archaeology. even though, or perhaps because, a narrative approach challenges the status quo we find that it offers many advantages to better understand the past and also to enhance reflexivity in the present.
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The collection of chapters presented in this volume creates spaces for expansion of critical and unexpected conversations about human origins research. Authors from a variety of disciplines and research backgrounds, many of whom have strayed beyond their usual disciplinary boundaries to offer their unique perspectives, all circle around the big questions of what it means to be and become human. Embracing and encouraging diversity is a recognition of the deep complexities of human existence in the past and the present, and it is vital to critical scholarship on this topic.
This book constitutes a starting point for increased interrogation of the important and wide-ranging field of research into human origins. It will be of interest to scholars across multiple disciplines, and particularly to those seeking to understand our ancient past through a more diverse lens.
Theses
This project utilised debitage attribute analysis coupled with the theoretical framework of technological organisation to explain the nature of variation in the lithic assemblage. Initial results indicate that the sequence from Nawarla Gabarnmang demonstrates a flexible and adaptive approach to technology throughout time with changing technological strategies emerging in response to variation in environmental contexts.
Overall, this thesis demonstrates that Pleistocene technology in Australia was a part of a flexible land-use strategy that solved the problem of making a living in a landscape of changing resource structure. The findings of this thesis emphasise the value of continuing to test previous assumptions about the nature of Pleistocene Aboriginal societies and has provided new evidence that further challenges the notion of a simple two-stage sequence and a unilinear trajectory towards complexity in Australian lithic technology.
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Porr, M. & J. M. Matthews 2020. Interrogating and decolonising the deep human past. In: M. Porr & J. M. Matthews (eds.), Interrogating Human Origins. Decolonisation and the Deep Human Past. New York: Routledge (Archaeological Orientations Series), 3-31.
Post-colonial thought affects the heart of Western science. Although there is comparatively little engagement with post-colonial theory in the fields traditionally concerned with human origins or human evolution, it should be of critical importance to Palaeolithic archaeology and human evolutionary studies. Examination of recent literature dealing with so-called modern human origins highlights key neglected aspects of this discourse, namely the status of nature and rationality, and demonstrates how these aspects are entangled with ongoing political and colonial influences on the production of knowledge.
In this paper – which also serves as an introduction to this special issue of Hunter Gatherer Research – we concentrate on a number of aspects relevant to the relationships between archaeology and narratives, and also to the theoretical and methodological challenges of research involving hunting and gathering societies. We focus on the 'narrative turn', which became influential across a range of disciplines due to the shift it introduced from a story being the sole focus of analysis to 'the lamp by which other things are seen' (Kreiswirth 1994:62). Working with a narrative approach, we consider how archaeologists have framed the relationship between hunting and gathering people and their environments, and in contrast, discuss the ways that contemporary Indigenous people themselves explain these relationships and the importance of narrative in understanding such relationships. Further, we critically discuss the way narrative or storytelling has been positioned in human cognitive evolution and in establishing human 'uniqueness', highlighting some problematic ongoing trends in Western scholarship. these examples led us to question the relationship between knowledge, myth and reality, particularly in the context of the relationship between the Western academy and Indigenous knowledge. We close this paper by drawing together the implications for narratives of human evolution and hunter-gatherer archaeology. even though, or perhaps because, a narrative approach challenges the status quo we find that it offers many advantages to better understand the past and also to enhance reflexivity in the present.
The collection of chapters presented in this volume creates spaces for expansion of critical and unexpected conversations about human origins research. Authors from a variety of disciplines and research backgrounds, many of whom have strayed beyond their usual disciplinary boundaries to offer their unique perspectives, all circle around the big questions of what it means to be and become human. Embracing and encouraging diversity is a recognition of the deep complexities of human existence in the past and the present, and it is vital to critical scholarship on this topic.
This book constitutes a starting point for increased interrogation of the important and wide-ranging field of research into human origins. It will be of interest to scholars across multiple disciplines, and particularly to those seeking to understand our ancient past through a more diverse lens.
This project utilised debitage attribute analysis coupled with the theoretical framework of technological organisation to explain the nature of variation in the lithic assemblage. Initial results indicate that the sequence from Nawarla Gabarnmang demonstrates a flexible and adaptive approach to technology throughout time with changing technological strategies emerging in response to variation in environmental contexts.
Overall, this thesis demonstrates that Pleistocene technology in Australia was a part of a flexible land-use strategy that solved the problem of making a living in a landscape of changing resource structure. The findings of this thesis emphasise the value of continuing to test previous assumptions about the nature of Pleistocene Aboriginal societies and has provided new evidence that further challenges the notion of a simple two-stage sequence and a unilinear trajectory towards complexity in Australian lithic technology.