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Featured researches published by Nicola Stern.


PLOS ONE | 2015

The Mungo mega-lake event, semi-arid Australia: non-linear descent into the last ice age, implications for human behaviour

Kathryn E. Fitzsimmons; Nicola Stern; Colin V. Murray-Wallace; William Truscott; Cornel Pop

The Willandra Lakes complex is one of the few locations in semi-arid Australia to preserve both paleoenvironmental and Paleolithic archeological archives at high resolution. The stratigraphy of transverse lunette dunes on the lakes’ downwind margins record a late Quaternary sequence of wetting and drying. Within the Willandra system, the Lake Mungo lunette is best known for its preservation of the world’s oldest known ritual burials, and high densities of archeological traces documenting human adaptation to changing environmental conditions over the last 45 ka. Here we identify evidence at Lake Mungo for a previously unrecognised short-lived, very high lake filling phase at 24 ka, just prior to the Last Glacial Maximum. Mega-lake Mungo was up to 5 m deeper than preceding or subsequent lake full events and represented a lake volume increase of almost 250%. Lake Mungo was linked with neighboring Lake Leaghur at two overflow points, creating an island from the northern part of the Mungo lunette. This event was most likely caused by a pulse of high catchment rainfall and runoff, combined with neotectonic activity which may have warped the lake basin. It indicates a non-linear transition to more arid ice age conditions. The mega-lake restricted mobility for people living in the area, yet archeological traces indicate that humans rapidly adapted to the new conditions. People repeatedly visited the island, transporting stone tools across water and exploiting food resources stranded there. They either swam or used watercraft to facilitate access to the island and across the lake. Since there is no evidence for watercraft use in Australia between initial colonization of the continent prior to 45 ka and the mid-Holocene, repeated visits to the island may represent a resurrection of waterfaring technologies following a hiatus of at least 20 ky.


Journal of Human Evolution | 1994

The implications of time-averaging for reconstructing the land-use patterns of early tool-using hominids

Nicola Stern


Quaternary International | 2009

Symbolic behaviour and the peopling of the southern arc route to Australia

Jane Balme; Iain Davidson; Jo McDonald; Nicola Stern; Peter Veth


Journal of Archaeological Science | 2014

Depositional history and archaeology of the central Lake Mungo lunette, Willandra Lakes, southeast Australia

Kathryn E. Fitzsimmons; Nicola Stern; Colin V. Murray-Wallace


Archaeology in Oceania | 2015

Evidence for Pleistocene seed grinding at Lake Mungo, south‐eastern Australia

Richard Fullagar; Elspeth Hayes; Birgitta Stephenson; Judith Field; Carney Matheson; Nicola Stern; Kathryn E. Fitzsimmons


Quaternary Science Reviews | 2014

Fish otolith geochemistry, environmental conditions and human occupation at Lake Mungo, Australia

Kelsie Long; Nicola Stern; Ian S. Williams; Leslie Kinsley; Rachel Wood; Katarina Sporcic; Tegan Smith; Stewart J. Fallon; Harri Kokkonen; Ian Moffat; Rainer Grün


Archaeology in Oceania | 1993

Excavations at Mackintosh 90/1 in western Tasmania: a discussion of stratigraphy, chronology and site formation

Nicola Stern; Brendan Marshall


Geoarchaeology-an International Journal | 2002

FxJj43: A window into a 1.5-Million-year-old Palaeolandscape in the Okote Member of the Koobi Fora Formation, Northern Kenya

Nicola Stern; Nick Porch; Ian McDougall


Archive | 2013

Strategies for investigating human responses to changes in landscape and climate at Lake Mungo in the Willandra Lakes, Southeast Australia

Nicola Stern; Jacqueline Tumney; Kathryn E. Fitzsimmons; Paul Kajewski


Archive | 2011

The Role of Information Exchange in the Colonization of Sahul

Peter Veth; Jo McDonald; Nicola Stern; Jane Balme; Iain Davidson

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Peter Veth

University of Western Australia

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Elspeth Hayes

University of Wollongong

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Ian S. Williams

Australian National University

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Jane Balme

University of Western Australia

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