1st Edition

Prehistory of Australia

By John Mulvaney Copyright 1999
512 Pages
by Routledge

508 Pages
by Routledge

Australia's human prehistory through more than 40,000 years is the challenging theme of this masterly survey. John Mulvaney and Johan Kamminga bring together the discoveries and often controversial interpretations of six decades of archaeological research to reveal that across this island continent, in the face of contrasting environments and changing climates, human responses produced many... Read more
Preface

1 The past uncovered and its ownership

2 The diversity of surviving traces

3 Dating the past

4 Changing landscapes

5 People, language and society

6 Subsistence and reciprocity

7 Seafarers to Sahul

8 Sahul: a Pleistocene continent

9 The initial colonisation

10 The original Australians

11 Pleistocene settlement

12 Conquest of the deserts

13 Pleistocene artefacts

14 Holocene stone tool innovations

15 Theories and models

16 People of the coast

17 Regional challenges and responses

18 Island settlement

19 Tasmania

20 Art on rock

21 Rock art of temperate Australia

22 Rock art of trpoical Australia

23 Asian and European newcomers

Glossary

Endnotes

References

Index

Biography

John Mulvaney is the founder of Australian archaeology, a frequent media commentator on current issues and the only living Australian public intellectual to have had a book entirely devoted to his work. After 40 years of university teaching and advising governments, he remains a highly respected yet controversial activist.

Johan Kamminga is a consultant archaeologist, chosen by Mulvaney to assist him in surveying the last three decades of discovery.