This another of those articles that I missed, the results of a dig at Moyjil Port Ritchie at the entrance to the Hopkins River, Warnambool on Victoria's south western coast. The dig investigated a charcoal and burnt stone feature associated with a scattered midden. Dating indicates a date around 120,000 years ago with the evidence marginally supporting a cultural over natural origin.
The abstract follows:
Claims for a human presence in Australia beyond 60,000 years ago must have a strong evidence base associated with rigorous methodology and intense scrutiny. In this light we present excavation results for Charcoal and Burnt Stone Feature #1 (CBS1) located within coastal dune sediments at Moyjil (Point Ritchie), Warrnambool, that independent geomorphic and OSL dating indicates is of Last Interglacial age (~120,000 years ago). While on plausibility grounds the cultural status of a feature of such great antiquity in Australia is unlikely, a cultural origin for CBS1 is less easily dismissed if assessed with an age-independent methodology. A broad range of macroscale discrimination criteria has been used to assess whether CBS1 is either a cultural hearth or a natural feature such as a burnt tree stump. On balance, evidence marginally supports a cultural origin over a natural origin. However, the absence of associated stone artefacts and faunal remains and the presence of burnt root wood precludes definitive statements on the cultural status of the feature. Our case study is methodologically instructive in terms of the potential complexities and issues of equifinality involved in the archaeological identification of ancient hearths.
McNiven Ian J. , Crouch Joe , Bowler Jim M. , Sherwood John E. , Dolby Nic , Dunn Julian E. Stanisic John (2018) The Moyjil site, south-west Victoria, Australia: excavation of a Last Interglacial charcoal and and burnt stone feature — is it a hearth?. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria 130, 94-116. https://doi.org/10.1071/RS18008Comment
The results attracted considerable interest at the time because they seemed to push back the date of Aboriginal occupation of the continent to perhaps 120,000 years. The abstract is cautious in its conclusions about cultural as opposed to natural origin.
As we get more dates from Asia, the possibility of earlier hominin occupation of Sahul becomes more plausible. The issue that then arises is whether they are Aboriginal or an earlier hominin species such as the Denisovans, given the tension between earlier dates and some of the dates attached to Aboriginal occupation by genomic modelling.
3 comments:
The name to conjure with in that paper Jim is Jim Bowler of Mungo WomanMan fame. I had a Damascene moment whilst viewing some of the photos in the David Thomson collection now in the NGV. The obvious finally struck me that Aboriginal Australians are not Asian yet they journeyed to Oz through what we now refer to as Asia occupied by Asians. Those Australian Aboriginals who first arrived in Oz weren’t an exclusive mob, they would have occupied all the lands travelled through and possibly shared with others, before some reached Oz. Archeology is now beginning to uncover that hidden history in Asia and still Australia continues to surprise and challenge. Though less so Aboriginal Australians as their storylines tell them they have always been in this land and each mob has a storyline as to how they came to ‘Country’.
Africa is far, far away.in Time and Space.
Sorry for my continued slow responses, John. I am really bogged down at the moment. I'm actually writing lecture 2 at the moment which covers this question. My feeling is that the answer lies in the Denisovans. Asians as we know them today did not exist. Up until roughly 200-150k we had Homo Erectus plus possibly others cf Floriensis and Luzonenses. I suspect there descend from Homo Erectus. Then or perhaps earlier came the Denisovans. They appear to be the missing link, so to speak, with three separate pulses whose traces can be found in North Asia and North America, South East Asia and Oceania.
A reply is nice Jim but not a necessity. My though5 processes drew a parallel between the Australian Aboriginal as an Outrider and the Coptic Christianity in Ethiopia and South Sudan. At one point Christianity was the dominant religion from Alexandria to further South than Juba. Then came the explosion of Islam from Arabia that eventually completely crossed Africa East to West leaving the Coptic Christians of Ethiopia and South Sudan as an isolate Christian population. The arrival of Asians had the same effect, leaving the Australians and PNG populations isolated. If that is a sufficiently robust train of thought then it opens up some exciting scholarship.
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