"Crafting Country is an important step in making the archaeology of the Pilbara more accessible...[it] fills an important gap in our understanding"

- Simon Wyatt-Spratt, Lithic Technology

'Using compliance datasets, Bird and Rhoads have begun to demonstrate what an effective set of methods for stone artefact analyses might look like where landscape‐scale approaches are privileged, and temporal aggregative processes are not ignored. Indeed, this book should be a staple for consultants and academics working in the Pilbara for years to come.'

- Kane Ditchfield, Archaeology in Oceania

Based on ten years of surveys and excavations in Nyiyaparli country in the eastern Chichester Ranges, north-west Australia, Crafting Country provides a unique synthesis of Holocene archaeology in the Pilbara region. The analysis of about 1000 sites, including surface artefact scatters and 19 excavated rock shelters, as well as thousands of isolated artefacts, takes a broad view of the landscape, examining the distribution of archaeological remains in time and space. Heritage compliance archaeology commonly focuses on individual sites, but this study reconsiders the evidence at different scales – at the level of artefact, site, locality, and region – to show how Aboriginal people interacted with the land and made their mark on it.

Crafting Country shows that the Nyiyaparli ‘crafted’ their country, building structures and supplying key sites with grindstones, raw material and flaked stone cores. In so doing, they created a taskscape of interwoven activities linked by paths of movement.

Les mer

Based on ten years of surveys and excavations in Nyiyaparli country in the eastern Chichester Ranges, north-west Australia, Crafting Country provides a unique synthesis of Holocene archaeology in the Pilbara region.

Les mer

List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Peter Hiscock

1. Background: compliance archaeology and research in the Pilbara
2. Research framework
3. Natural environment and cultural contexts
4. Surface artefact scatters
5. Rockshelters
6. Site and landscape
7. Crafting country

References
Index
Appendices

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This unique study of Aboriginal archaeology in the Pilbara region examines how the Nyiyaparli people interacted with and 'crafted' the land.

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781743326169
Publisert
2020-04-02
Utgiver
Sydney University Press; Sydney University Press
Vekt
400 gr
Høyde
254 mm
Bredde
178 mm
Dybde
20 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
344

Om bidragsyterne

Caroline Bird is a consulting archaeologist with Archae-aus and an Honorary Research Associate with the Western Australian Museum. She specialises in stone artefact analysis.

James W. Rhoads is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, and an Honorary Research Associate at the Australian Museum, Sydney. His main area of interest is in Papua New Guinea ethnoarchaeology