Peter Hiscock

Technological responses to risk in Holocene Australia

It has long been recognized that the Australian archaeological record documents alterations in settlement and technological strategies in the middle of the Holocene. Discussion of the cause of those changes has been restricted largely to suggestions of the arrival of new technologies, presumably from southeast Asia, without exploring their advantages for humans occupying the continent. The model outlined here proposes that during the mid-Holocene exploitation of the landscape involved significant risks, and at that time new forms of stoneworking were adopted as an aid in reducing risk. Risk was associated with environmental change, high mobility, and colonization of previously unoccupied landscapes. Archaeological evidence reveals these processes to be associated with the adoption of toolkits that minimize risk.

Excavations at Parnkupirti, Lake Gregory, Great Sandy Desert: OSL Ages for Occupation Before the Last Glacial Maximum

Abstract We report on early occupation from the Parnkupirti site on Salt Pan Creek at Lake Gregory, on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert of northwest Australia. OSL ages from excavations, and stratigraphic correlations between dated exposures along Salt Pan Creek, show some stone artefacts in situ in sediments dating from greater than 37ka and most probably on stratigraphic grounds in the range of ~50–45ka. The deep stratigraphic section at Parnkupirti also provides a long record of the Quaternary history of Lake Gregory, which remained a freshwater system during the Late Quaternary.

Big debates over little tools: ongoing disputes over microliths on three continents

Abstract After more than a century, debate over the explanation of microliths continues. We review debates on three continents (Australia, India and southern Africa), and argue that depictions of them as purely symbolic items manufactured for public display are implausible. Two different mechanisms dominate recent discussions: 1) exchange of symbolically loaded artefacts as a device for constructing cultural connections and establishing access to territory/resources, and 2) microliths as portable and standardized tools that helped buffer foragers against economic risk and/or scheduling difficulties by increasing multi-functionality and tool readiness as an aid in reducing fluctuations in resource capture. We show that there is a different history and pattern to microlith use on each continent and dissimilar environmental contexts for microlith-intensive phases. This conclusion challenges any notion that a single simple process underpins microlith use across the globe and implies that comparative studies might enhance understandings of this process of technological change.

Multiple uses for Australian backed artefacts

Abstract Backed artefacts, otherwise microliths or backed bladelets, are key indicators of cultural practice in early Australia – but what were they used for? The authors review a number of favourite ideas – hunting, scarification, wood working – and then apply use-wear analysis and residue studies to three prehistoric assemblages. These showed contact with a wide range of materials: wood, plants, bone, blood, skin and feathers. These results are unequivocal – the backed artefacts were hafted and employed as versatile tools with many functions.

Change in the Australian desert culture: A reanalysis of tulas from Puntutjarpa rocksheiter

Abstract Claims for long‐term conservatism of an Australian desert adaptation are assessed by re‐examining one component of the stone artefact assemblage from Puntutjarpa, a rocksheiter in the Western Desert. It is concluded that significant technological changes occur and especially that adzing tools are absent from the early Holocene levels of the site. This finding confirms recent discoveries of demographic, settlement, and technological change elsewhere in the Australian arid zone; and it necessitates the rejection of perceptions of cultural continuity since the Western Desert was first occupied.

Retouched notches at Combe Grenal (France) and the Reduction Hypothesis

A detailed attribute analysis of notched flakes from upper layers of Combe Grenal, a key site in the debates about the nature of Middle Paleolithic assemblage variation in France, is used to evaluate the applicability to Combe Grenal of the reduction model offered by Holdaway, McPherron, and Roth as an explanation for morphological and size variation within notched specimens. We conclude that traditional implement types can be viewed as arbitrary divisions in a continuum of size and notch abundance, which can be explained by reference to a model of differential reduction. Specimens with greater numbers of notches are inferred to have been more reduced than specimens with fewer notches. Notch dimensions did not change as more notches were added, but complex notches were more commonly constructed in the middle of the reduction process rather than at the beginning or end. The location and abundance of notches were probably constrained by the size and shape of the flake blank: more notches were added to long flakes and to their distal end, indicating regular patterns of blank selection and treatment. These inferences can be used to suggest that flake blanks may have been an important factor in constraining the position, frequency, and perhaps even kind of notches that were placed on retouched flakes. We discuss implications of this proposition.

Making it small in the Palaeolithic: bipolar stone-working, miniature artefacts and models of core recycling

Abstract Throughout the Palaeolithic and across the globe small, regular cores were made using bipolar techniques, in which the object was placed between an anvil and hammer. While there has been much discussion about whether they might have been used as tools or were debris from a manufacturing process it is likely that both are true in different locations and at different times. What is distinctive about the bipolar technique is that it allows knappers to work artefacts down to a very small size, and this may facilitate the extension of both core life and tool life. In this article a model of that miniaturization process is evaluated against Holocene material from Australia and Middle Stone Age material from South Africa. It is likely that the capacity to miniaturize lithic artefacts would have been valuable in a variety of Palaeolithic contexts.

Generalization, inference and the quantification of lithic reduction

Abstract Today studies of lithic technology almost invariably employ models of the reduction process, and often models of the extent of reduction that specimens and classes of tools have undergone. Debates about the explanation of lithic assemblage variability are based upon methods for inferring the nature and extent of reduction. In this paper, we construct a conceptual framework for evaluating the competing reduction indices for estimating the extent of flake retouching. With this framework we offer a new synthesis of reduction indices and the debates that have surrounded their use.

Transformations of Upper Palaeolithic implements in the Dabba industry from Haua Fteah (Libya)

Different models of stone-working technology in the Upper Palaeolithic are tested by examining an assemblage from Haua Fteah, on the Libyan coast of north Africa. Evidence that some scrapers have been reworked into burins, while some burins were modified to form scrapers, show how this typically Upper Palaeolithic industry contains morphological transformations between types. This evidence is consistent with a technological continuity from the Middle Palaeolithic.

Are tulas and enso linked in Australia

Abstract The distinctive tool called ‘tula’ is an endemic adaptation, which was adopted by Aboriginal people across central and western Australia, encompassing some two-thirds of the continent. The tula is a hafted tool used for working hardwoods as well as other tasks including butchery and plant-processing. The geographic spread of tulas appears to have been rapid and no antecedent form has been identified. The sudden appearance of tulas was coincident with the onset of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions. While we do not yet have the data to establish an unequivocal causal link, in this paper we hypothesise that the appearance of this new and specialised tool at c.3700 BP was very likely a human response to the intensification of ENSO. This intensification resulted in increased aridity and climatic variability lasting almost 2000 years. We posit that this technological adaptation, an element of a risk minimisation toolkit, was part of a wider economic and social strategy adopted by Aboriginal people to cope with increasing climatic uncertainty. This possibility has implications for the diversity of innovation processes operating in Australia during the Holocene, which is further explored in this paper with concluding suggestions for future research. We offer this discussion as a platform for these future, and what we believe, are very necessary critical studies.