Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Beeton Shelter, Badger Island, Furneaux Islands, Bass Strait, Tasmania

Beeton Shelter contains the oldest known midden in Tasmania. It has been suggested by Sim that Badger Island was abandoned about 9,000 BP, before the island was cut off from Tasmania by the rising sea. This deposit has been dated to between 21,890 and 8,700 BP. The midden of the Beeton site contained shellfish, mostly warreners and limpets, fish bones and emu eggshells, and among the mammals, wombats, eastern grey kangaroos and forester kangaroos, pademelon,and bandicoots, as well as snakes.

Hundreds of mainly small quartz tools, less than 3 cm in length, have been found at this site. There were thumbnail scrapers, small, rounded scrapers, as well as steep-edged tools that are believed to have been used for woodworking, or possibly scraping skins.

Sources & Further reading

1. Flood, Josephine, 2004, Archaeology of the Dreamtime, JB Publications.