Puntutjarpa rockshelter revisited: a chronological and stratigraphic reappraisal of a key archaeological sequence for the Western Desert, Australia

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Publication Date

January 2017

Publication Title

Australian Archaeology

Volume Number

83

Issue Number

1-2

Abstract

Puntutjarpa Rockshelter was the first archaeological site excavated in the Australian desert. Dug between 1967 and 1970, the archaeological sequence was originally interpreted as a continuous record spanning the last 10,000 years BP. With a new series of radiocarbon and OSL dates we show that Puntutjarpa primarily contains a mid-Holocene deposit with a veneer of last millennium material and a thin underlay of terminal Pleistocene evidence. We show that over the last 12.0 kyr, there were three discrete phases of site-use at Puntutjarpa – 12.0–9.7 kyr, 8.3–6.2 kyr and ∼1.1–0 kyr – each with differences in the nature and intensity of occupation. This removes key field evidence for the ‘Australian Desert Culture’, a concept that has increasingly become an anomaly since the 1980s.

Keywords

Smith, Mike, Williams, Alan N., Ross, June

Geographic Subject

Australia

Document Type

Article

Language

English

Identifier

SFS0055621_00001

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