Description - Life on the margins (Terra Australis 38) by Patrick Faulkner
The
research presented here is primarily concerned with human-environment
interactions on the tropical coast of northern Australia during the late
Holocene. Based on the suggestion that significant change can occur within
short time-frames as a direct result of interactive processes, the
archaeological evidence from the Point Blane Peninsula, Blue Mud Bay, is used
to address the issue of how much change and variability occurred in
hunter-gatherer economic and social structures during the late Holocene in
coastal northeastern Arnhem Land. The suggestion proposed here is that
processes of environmental and climatic change resulted in changes in
resource distribution and abundance, which in turn affected patterns of
settlement and resource exploitation strategies, levels of mobility and,
potentially, the size of foraging groups on the coast. The question of human
behavioural variability over the last 3000 years in Blue Mud Bay has been
addressed by examining issues of scale and resolution in archaeological
interpretation, specifically the differential chronological and spatial
patterning of shell midden and mound sites on the peninsula in conjunction
with variability in molluscan resource exploitation. To this end, the
biological and ecological characteristics of the dominant molluscan species
is considered in detail, in combination with assessing the potential for
human impact through predation. Investigating pre-contact coastal foraging
behaviour via the archaeological record provides an opportunity for change to
recognised in a number of ways. For example, a differential focus on
resources, variations in group size and levels of mobility can all be
identified. It has also been shown that human-environment interactions are
non-linear or progressive, and that human behaviour during the late Holocene
was both flexible and dynamic.
Buy Life on the margins (Terra Australis 38) by Patrick Faulkner from Australia's Online Independent Bookstore, BooksDirect.
A Preview for this title is currently not available.
No Stock on Hand, Supplier Has No Due Date for Supply.
