Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Puritjarra Rock Shelter - Characterising Artefact Assemblages from the Late Pleistocene and Holocene

In this paper the author¹ presents the first detailed study of the large artefact assemblage from the Late Pleistocene of central Australia. Based on lithics analysis Puritjarra Rock Shelter has been shown to have been used more intensively over time, significant character shifts taking place at 18,000 BP, 7,500 BP and 800 BP, which reflects significant re-organisation across the landscape. Over a period of 30,000 years the same generalised flake and core technology appears to have been used, though there was limited change to the topology of the artefacts over that period.

See Aboriginal Art - the Pilbara Engraved Stones

Sources & Further reading

1. SMITH, M.A., 2006. Characterizing Late Pleistocene and Holocene stone artefact assemblages from Puritjarra rock
   shelter: a long sequence from the Australian Desert. Records of the Australian Museum 58(3): 371–410.